If his 20th solo album, The Man Upstairs, is less excitable than the likes of Underwater Moonlight, Fegmania! and Queen Elvis, it's a change that many Hitchcock agnostics will welcome. [Sep 2014, p.68]

Every note of this compelling album backs her up. [Sep 2014, p.72]

Distance takes the intensity of 29013's Blindspot, and doubles it. [Sep 2014, p.77]

Bell's racked howl brings a hardcore intensity to it all, but there's bags of melodic nous just below the scorched surface. [Sep 2014, p.81]

They're immersed in keyboard-assisted '80s pop and brooding white soul, with overtones of New Order and Lloyd Cole, while XCox's Morrissey-like vocals again underscore their love of The Smiths. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Blessed by an amiably husky voice, Jurvanen unfurls elegant melodies and intelligent economical arrangements. [Sep 2014, p.67]

His latest mixes John Fahey-like acoustic work with occasional brief bouts of his familiar electric shredding. [Sep 2014, p.75]

No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness. [Sep 2014, p.66]

Alias is where the giddy exhilaration and buoyant lift of early Magic Numbers grows into a bold, spacey and sensational creation. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Martin continues to brew new hybrids of dystopian dub reggae, industrial noise and experimental hip-hop. [Sep 2014, p.70]

Tracks here borrow from the likes of Breach and Disclosure, and, as on "Buffalo," can be weedily underpowered where they once impressively unhinged. [Sep 2014, p.69]

A faithful if condensed cover of Yes' "Heart Of The Sunrise," sweetly sung by Drozd, concludes what is essentially a likeable frivolity, and a stop gap before their next Flaming masterwork. [Sep 2014, p.73]

Taylor maintains the intimacy of Yorkston's sound, highlighting the weary warmth of his voice, and adding instrumental shading, while KT Tunstall and The Pictish Trail bring harmonic depth. [Sep 2014, p.81]

There's artifice in Booker's make-up but the troubled, strutting loner, serving sizzling sides of electrified psyched-swamp blues, is a role he inhabits with conviction and aplomb. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Long In The Tooth, his first full set of secular studio originals since 2005's The Real Deal, has it share [of gems]. [Sep 2014, p.70]

The whole thing feels like a dusky gambol through America's musical past. [Sep 2014, p.81]

Their head conceptualist is now guitarist Helios Creed, who's kept the vision tight, true to the corroded metal, viscous electronics and Burroughsian collages of their signal albums, 1977's Alien Soundtracks and 1979's Half Machine Lip Moves. [Sep 2014, p.71]

It's not earthshaking, but there's nothing wrong with simply being likable. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Wagner is adept at evoking children's half-remembered nightmares. [Sep 2014, p.81]

His wonky debut taps kosmische, post-punk and lo-fi electronic noise, but keeps its sights on the pop hook. [Sep 2014, p.79]

The overall mood is The Band given Taylor Swift's budget, on heartfelt and easily wounded love songs. [Sep 2014, p.78]

L'Aventura could well be his best album. [Sep 2014, p.78]

It's all so ancient that it becomes thrillingly modern. [Sep 2014, p.78]

It's '60s-soul funky rather than frenzied testifying. [Sep 2014, p.76]

Passerby is an acoustic record of great subtlety and warmth, so much that it overcomes the chick-lit preciousness of Randell's lyrics. [Sep 2014, p.75]

If they're sometimes guilty of overdoing the chirpiness, their songwriting crafty is best served on the more subdued "Dearly Departed Friend" and "Sweet Amarillo." [Sep 2014, p.75]

Ex is full of Hawtin's old sleek menace and disdain for obvious peaks, though the sound design is fractionally lusher than that of brutalist texts like Musik (1194). [Sep 2014, p.75]

Chroma strikes a largely upbeat mood, producer Dan Carey foregrounding a McGuinness vocal that's more often irksome than endearing amid the skittering rockabilly beats and lively but derivative soundscapes. [Sep 2014, p.75]