The spartan tracks without drums, backed only by clumsy piano, remain highly effective. [Nov 2016, p.31]

"Dandy," a fond-but-smart homage to Bowie that channels the spirit of "All The Young Dudes" with unashamed nostalgia. It's the standout track on his first album of new songs in six years--but there's plenty else here that's worth hearing, too. [Nov 2016, p.31]

This is bold, imaginative, and, on occasion, deliciously strange. [Nov 2016, p.32]

No-one would argue this is the equal of his '70s production heyday, but he remains indefatigable in his energies. [Nov 2016, p.35]

It's the usual earnestly proficient, blandly yearning fare, every song a Hallmark valentine set to a John Lewis Christmas advertisement. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Peyroux's smoky, Holiday-esque voice has seldom sounded finer as the trio's jazzy ambience is lent a wonderful natural reverb by the vaulting acoustics. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Russian Circles display a welcome eagerness to cut to the chase whether they're crafting gentler soundscapes like "Overboard" or hurtling through the doomy mathcore of "Vorel." [Nov 2016, p.37]

Sea Of Noise feels not just formally but emotionally authentic. [Nov 2016, p.39]

Argentinian rockers Los Enanitos Verdes turn "Travelin' Band" into a turbocharged burst of bilingual tropical rockabilly, and Spanish singing star Bunbury adds a thrilling salsa dance workout to "Corre Por La Jungla." [Nov 2016, p.40]

Brian Jonestown do this stuff so much better. [Nov 2016, p.40]

They sound reinvigorated, if somewhat aimless. [Nov 2016, p.40]

These 10 songs feel bold, nourishing and emotionally resonant. [Nov 2016, p.34]

It's touches like these--the suggestiveness of the pauses, the silences, the miniature worlds between the painterly notes Cooper and Hoare play--that makes Dusk, for all its influences and its rear-view mirror vision of classicist pop, such a seductive album. [Oct 2016, p.30]

Overall, the palette is dusky, the tone understated. [Oct 2016, p.25]

Carson Cox's over-emotive delivery and a bombastic arrangement tip the album's power-ballad finale, "I Will Not Sleep Here," into Night Ranger Territory. Thankfully, the trio is more careful about its point of reference elsewhere. [Oct 2016, p.35]

The only pity is that navigating one's way around the three hours and 20 minutes of music is such a fiddly business. [Oct 2016, p.46]

The underlying sense given off by the LP's inventive chord changes, soaring melodies, eloquent language and silky vocals--notably on the rhapsodic "Semaphore" and "Flight"--is that of a 21st century Joni Mitchell. [Oct 2016, p.31]

It's when Leithauser plays on his home ground of rueful romantic desperation (as he does on the title track), though, that he really hits his stride. [Oct 2016, p.31]

The pair navigate a procession of deep, massaging drones, crashing waves of pink noise and shimmering tone clusters that shift between tranquil calm and coruscating melody. [Sep 2016, p.79]

Despite its old-school roots, Lady Parts sounds sharp and invigorating. [Oct 2016, p.31]

The absence of Kim Deal--who left in 2013--continues to be felt: her natural warmth and goofy charm would add welcome nuance here. [Oct 2016, p.37]

The Staten Island quartet blend the fixtures and fittings of noisy US slacker rock--Sonic Youth drones, Pavement squalls--but add a bubblegum pop sensibility. Their vocalist Joseph D'Agostino, however, remains something of an acquired taste. [Oct 2016, p.26]

He seems to have found his metier on his new label, Lost Map, where he delights in roving electronica. [Oct 2016, p.37]

In the same jolie-laide class as Red Krayola and Pere Ubu at their most ungainly, its ugliness may be a new form of beauty. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Rennie's lyrics remain full of transfixed wonder, sketching places where ghosts swim in the air and sea kelpies call fro, the shallows, while Brett's lugubrious tones are a perfect conduit for songs like "Gold," "Gentlemen" and state -fair attraction "Tiny Tina," the world's smallest horse. [Oct 2016, p.32]

Blood Bitch confirms her singular methodology is now at its most surgically precise and bold. In realising her uncontainable ambitions, one might even suggest it represents Hval's coming of age. [Oct 2016, p.38]

The result is a beautifully atmospheric travelogue on which their voices and guitars, plus occasional harmonica, are accompanied by nothing more than the sound of the rails humming and a whistle blowing. [Oct 2016, p.34]

Ten-minute jazz romp "Night Terrors" aside, Berry's sweet tooth brightens what is otherwise his straightest set yet. [Oct 2016, p.25]