While Like Clockwork sometimes felt a little leaden, Villains flies by. [Sep 2017, p.31]

That old-time, good-time vibe can occasionally dip into hokeyness, as the album title signals, but slow numbers like "Lindsey Button" and "Put 'Em Up Solid" are where the group excels. [Sep 2017, p.28]

This is a holiday fling of a record. Chilled and tempting as a beachside mojito--and just as potent. [Sep 2017, p.30]

Acoustic guitar features, alongside synths, samples and field recordings, but for all their adventurism, these songs have structure. Still, diversity rules. [Sep 2017, p.32]

A Boy From Tupelo is ultimately a necessary and revealing addition to Presley's vast catalogue, one that spins a fascinating yarn about a pimply kid who transformed into something unprecedented: a rock star. [Sep 2017, p.50]

It largely manages to avoid vapid repetition and provides plenty of charm and promise for the future. [Sep 2017, p.37]

He's gone full pastoral, the birdsong and countryside imagery matching the dreamy, sunny major-sevenths. [Sep 2017, p.30]

"Give Me Love" and "Last Time" may articulate different relationship stages, but are euphoric in their own ways. [Sep 2017, p.35]

A lush and ambitious piece of progressive pop music. [Sep 2017, p.38]

The fifth album by the Mo Wac founder's creative collective doesn't quite cut the mustard. [Sep 2017, p.38]

Beautifully moving. [Aug 2017, p.32]

What sets his debut apart from other similar singer-songwriters are the cinematic, electronic textures that he weaves around his work, but also the off-kilter material. [Aug 2017, p.32]

Commendable ambitions, uneven results. [Sep 2017, p.26]

It's an album of songs beautiful on the surface, but with darkness nibbling on all sides. [Sep 2017, p.18]

Like a cross between X-Ray Spex and rage Against The Machine as reinterpreted via US hardcore, there's plentiful anger, but also a hopefulness. [Sep 2017, p.26]

The results is some of the richest, most compelling and least lonely-sounding music of Granduciel's career. [Sep 2017, p.24]

Throughout the album, melodies stop and start like film scores: they change key, tempo, time signatures and even musical genres to suit the flow of the story. [Sep 2017, p.22]

Stein mostly carries an air of pleasant politeness, which rather fails to convey the darkness beneath tales of gambling addicts and bottles of bourbon in the fridge. [Aug 2017, p.38]

A wealth of new material for diehard fans. [Aug 2017, p.46]

Kinder Versions offers up a stormy swell of sound that's intermittently compelling even if Mammut's wilder instincts can seem tethered down by plodding rhythms. [Sep 2017, p.32]

Often, she comes across as heir to songwriters such as Todd Rundgren and Randy Newman--raising a jaded, critical eye to the world. [Sep 2017, p.38]

This is an album dominated by the two remaining Isley Brothers. Ronald Isley's distinctive tenor groan sounds particularly good on slowies such as "Mercy Mercy Me" and Leon Thomas' "Let The Rain Fall On Me." [Sep 2017, p.30]

There's a clutch of self-penned gems, "In The Middle Of It All's" momentous heartache, and some superlative country-soul interpretations, the pinnacle being Dan Penn and Donnie Fritts' "Rainbow Road." [Sep 2017, p.45]

He's louder and stranger than ever, growling his way through 11 songs that mix stomping glam rackets with lumbering. [Sep 2017, p.26]

These smooth edges still cut deep. [Aug 2017, p.38]

Hip Mobility favours digital modernism over analogue nostalgia, yet admits the wonder and romance inevitably in play. [Aug 2017, p.35]

No-one writes with such wince-inducing accuracy about their target audience as their former Beautiful South pairing. [Sep 2017, p.30]

An inspired collection of sonically inventive, discreetly theatrical pop. [May 2017, p.30]