In 2017 it sounds like a revelation, not just a reminder of their glorious volatility, but also a raggedly beautiful effort that stands alongside The Replacements' best records. [Nov 2017, p.46]

An album that splendidly makes the most of a unique creative kinship, as well as a shared desire to cast light in dark places. [Nov 2017, p.18]

Much of Arise draws from the duo's [Moses Boyd and Binker Golding] spartan energy. Boyd serves a one-man Art Blakey, Sly Dunbar, Carlton Barrett and Tony Allen, swinging in a Caribbean vernacular. ... McFarlane has a pop sensibility that's unusual in the jazz world, and her songs are based around strong melodies. [Oct 2017, p.31]

It's a bravura fusion of dense-art metal/pop and strutting baroque disco. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Colors may be less anarchic than his most famous albums from the 1990s, but he emerges as a studio tinkerer who has grown more disciplined but no less eccentric. [Nov 2017, p.24]

Enjoyable solo debut. [Nov 2017, p.30]

It's All Right... functions almost like a best of. [Nov 2017, p.32]

[French Touch] feels like a soft option. Yet there's no denying the chic sophistication with she delivers stripped-down versions of hits associated with Patsy Cline, The Rolling Stones, Tammy Wynette, Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, the Clash and Abba. [Nov 2017, p.24]

The mood is pensive, walking the line between downbeat and quietly uplifting, but this is among the best set of songs Finn has written. [Nov 2017, p.26]

The Kid is a hugely satisfying example of Smith';s wholesome and harmonious vision, one that manages to enmesh the wonders of music, memory and nature via analogue synthesis with out explicit reference to the healing properties of crystals. [Nov 2017, p.38]

He injects these economic songs with a modish sense of sophistication. [Nov 2017, p.35]

1992 – 2001 does a fine job of collating their best moments from a career that spawned four albums and two EPs, as well as offering nine unreleased tracks from the hours of music they recorded in an empty bedroom that served as a regular rehearsal space.

Mondanile doesn't always have the songs to pull off the silver jacket. "Wearing A Mask" hints at band beefs past, much as "In The Hallway" does to the Real Estate mode, but these and the intricate guitar licks of "Mannequin" are the only moments where Ducktails make their fusion spark. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Significantly more wonderful than it is frightening. [Oct 2017, p.24]

Best of all, perhaps, the skill and imagination she displays in her arrangements suggest that there's a lot of scope for adventure in the future of a musician who found her groove but seems unlikely to get stuck in it. [Nov 2017, p.34]

These songs covey a visceral dread through crashing guitars and her unsettling matter-of-fact twang evokes the no-escape confinement of a volatile relationship. [Nov 2017, p.32]

Solidly crafted but with few surprises. [Nov 2017, p.28]

Tunes like Burt Bacharach's "blue On Blue" and The Young Rascals' "How Can I Be Sure" are perfect for Almond's pirouetting croon. [Oct 2017, p.23]

Bidin’ My Time draws from every corner of Hillman’s long career, mixing folk rock and country rock and bluegrass into an amiable sound, somehow both modest and ambitious.

He's wisely opted to sound as different from his father as he possibly can, swathing his alt.rock songs in haunting layers of deep electronica, although there are giveaway traces of the family DNA in the voice and in the swirling Indian motifs. [Nov 2017, p.28]

It comes across, surprisingly, as a wildstyle update of the bricolage fusions Weatherall started out exploring in the early '90s. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Big tunes. Not much heart. [Nov 2017, p.30]

Cry Cry Cry is 21st-century rock at its most delectably omnivorous. [Nov 2017, p.39]

At times the production is overly slick, but Sky Trails is a strong, sinuous piece of work. [Nov 2017, p.37]

Gathering is another collection of Dylanesque strummings, rescued as always from generic blandness by Ritter's alacrity as a lyricist and husky grin of a voice. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Que Aura sees the West Coast-based singer-songwriter embrace an '80s-infused psychedelia that occasionally mutates into a disco strut. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Talk of losing his "soul and conscience" and floundering in an ocean with no land in sight suggests deep trauma, hinted at disturbingly in songs such as "Pun" "Dark Lights" Yet there's also evidence of at least a partial re-emergence into the light on "Humbug," which sounds like the Be Gees if produced by Brian Eno. [Nov 2017, p.32]

The dissonant guitars and whirring synths land on the more accessible side of avant-garde rock, veering into sia-esque pop on tracks like "Greener Stretch," though revelling in never quite resolving its melodies. [Nov 2017, p.36]