Weirdest of all is "Don't Forget Jayne", where JBL freaks out over a wonderfully odd fusion of Taylor's disjointed samba drumming and Wener's smooth jazz guitar licks. [Mar 2025, p.34]

Here he bans repetition of verses and choruses, compacting a double album's detail into 40 minutes. [Feb 2025, p.35]

Mostly, on Friar Tuck, that leads to an exhilarating 40 minutes. It doesn’t have the madcap range of 1991’s Peggy Suicide or the following year’s Jehovahkill, records on which Cope explored the rough and ready, first-take ethos he’d discovered on 1989’s Skellington and 1990’s Droolian, but these 12 songs are brimming with a breezy vitality that’s not always been present on Cope’s epic releases over the last couple of decades. [Jan 2025, p.28]

In the past few years Hayden and McLoughlin have teamed up with Richard Chamberlain in Schisms. Their ultra-lo-fi fuzzball psychedelic improv can be exhilarating, but exists on a very different planet (or at least in a far muggier climate) than the exquisite acoustic snowglobe of Cold Blows The Rain. [Jan 2025, p.24]

As with most ambient works, English's LP plays best as a set piece, through gauzy, soft-gushing epic "V" is a particular beauty. [Jan 2025, p.34]

These songs often have a conceptual bent - take the lyric of "Last Scene Of All", collaged together from fragments of Shakespeare plays - although Lewis' vocal, a world-weary baritone with shades of '80s Scott Walker, ensure they slip down fairly easily. [Jan 2025, p.39]

Despite the number of musicians there is a more focused feel to tracks like "Eye For Keys" and even a drop of trippy folk on "In The Tall Trees." Fans of Comets On Fire will find much to enjoy. [Feb 2025, p.39]

An album that is as imaginative as it is innovative. [Feb 2025, p.39]

The outcome isn't exactly surprising, as it falls in line with a relatively recent explosion in modular exploration (see Bitchin Bajas, Caterina Barbieri) but at times it is very beautiful. [Mar 2025, p.32]

These days Chacon can't stop telling it like it is - and long may he do so. [Jan 2025, p.32]

The current lineup lacks that ritualistic Jamaican component - the nyabinghi-style conga playing of the late Pablo Gonsales and the Skatalites-influenced sax of Mike "Bammi" Rose - but there are still great moments. [Jan 2025, p.32]

A slippery amalgam of Chicago house, Detroit techno, acid house grooves and sleazy electro-pop. Delirious fun it is too. [Jan 2025, p.32]

Pursues the vibe [heard on 2022's We've Been Going About This All Wrong] further, enjoying a kind of midlife techno-goth glow-up, on tracks "Idiot Box" and the incendiary "Indio" coming on like a female-fronted Future Islands or Pet Benatar joining Curve. [Feb 2025, p.43]

The Purple Bird is a consummate listen-through that makes highlights hard to pick but "Boise, Idaho", a yearning beauty with a fine arrangement and hints of Glen Campbell, is one. [Feb 2025, p.30]

Hiatt has rarely rocked harder than on Forever. Yet those moments are also smartly tempered by songs that sometimes flirt with '80s psychedelia ("Ghost Ship") and the kind of country-roots balladry with which she first made her name over a decade ago. [Jan 2025, p.34]

At other times he falls back on elegantly vintage-clad pastichery, but then the stomping baroque pop duet of "I Gotta Limit" and the sun-dappled wistfulness of "To Live For What Once Was" prick up our ears once again. [Jan 2025, p.31]

Only an underpowered "Nightclubbing", slathered in hair-metal guitar-rock slammers dilute an otherwise exhilarating night of impressively gutsy jazz-metal bruisers. [Feb 2025, p.39]

Just gorgeous. [Jan 2025, p.40]

Folk bends under their queries, but doesn't break. [Jan 2025, p.31]

In returning to their foundational style, Tunng sound as full of surprise and mystery as ever. [Jan 2025, p.41]

C Duncan's fifth album, like Ricard Hawley's catalogue, is imbued with an old-fashioned, Technicolor warmth. [Feb 2025, p.34]

Their playing is more expressive as ever. Happily, the maturation of Larkin Poe's sound coincides with a step forward in songwriting. [Feb 2025, p.39]

Five tracks of interlaced and overlapping open tunings and drone where individual parts shape the eloquent whole, to irresistibly radiant effects. [Jan 2025, p.31]

It's four-square Manics Big Music, with James Dean Bradfield's guitar especially eloquent, echoing Keith Levene's sour whine on the title track and beautifully relaxed on "Being Baptised"'s Smith-like elegy. [Feb 2025, p.37]

A richly inventive trip made off the usual musical map. [Feb 2025, p.43]

Lankum producer John 'Spud' Murphy helps bring form to these candid candlelit songs of rapture and reflection, while guests include Cormac MacDiarmada and multi-instrumentalist Anna Mieke, whose strings prove gently transportive. [Feb 2025, p.40]

Lower fused dream-pop, experimental hip-hop, indie sludge and illbient, with texture and production effects crucial. ... Best are the wonky blues-hop of "Pompeii Statues" and "Hope For The Night Time", which suggests the raspy-voiced Booker joining a lo-fi Mercury Rev on Spacebomb. [Feb 2025, p.33]

They take a clear delight in topping their scrappy indie-pop tunes with folk-rock vocal harmonies. [Jan 2025, p.34]