His fourth album is unlikely to convert the legions of naysayers, but some sparks of invention penetrate the blanket of aural blandness and vapidly anthemic pop. [Dec 2013, p.66]

It might just grow into an even better record than The Courage Of Others, as one get used to the way it replaces Smith's precision and popcraft with the new Midlake's love of digression and sonic adventure. [Dec 2013, p.62]

The quartet concentrated on developing more pleasurable lines, and on well-structured songs rather than open-ended jamming. [Dec 2013, p.59]

Free Your Mind, looks to the two summers of love--psychedelia in 1967 and rave in '89--for inspiration and is mixed by Tame Impala's guru Dave Fridmann, yet its tasteful blend of chugging acid and euphoric choruses means it resembles an elaborate Screamadelica pastiche. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Ambient ebb and flow aside, vocals and synth/guitar motifs show Outside as a pp record, while a darkly urgent cover of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "Strange Form Of Life" provides unexpected topspin. [Nov 2013, p.67]

The girls have made a gorgeously restrained full-length debut that intimates both youthfulness in its most innocent state and startling self-awareness. [Nov 2013, p.74]

Yes, it’s fascinating at times to be a witness to the meticulous construction of great music, but the contents of this boxset feel a mite desperate, rather than generous, and the flabbiness of its 11-minute jams is entirely inappropriate for an album that famously doesn’t contain an ounce of fat.

At times it recalls the hyper-vivid, motorik jazz of Stereolab circa Cobra And Phases; elsewhere, it's closer to Tropicalia given a 21st-Century re-boot. But the very best songs here incorporate everything, unexpectedly changing shade. [Nov 2013, p.75]

A vivid, shapeshifting debut album. [Nov 2013, p.74]

The lumbering "Livingston Bramble" aside, the music is elegant and winding. [Nov 2013, p.74]

There's a rich atmosphere of Americana on the faith-questioning "Falsetto" and the hop-skipping hoedown "On My Conscience," while the lover's lament "Priscilla" and emotional navel-gazing of "Half Of Me" find him dallying on the outskirts of John Grant pop grandeur. [Sep 2013, p.86]

For the most part, it's an effective addition.... The only real snag here is Rose's voice, which sometimes sounds so detached as to be barely present. [Nov 2013, p.78]

Fanfare rummages through the past in a way that will provide aural comfort food for many Uncut readers and writers but Wilson has found a way of personalising and transforming these fragments into a very contemporary music. [Nov 2013, p.61]

If the relationship to the original often seems tenuous, there's nothing abstract here: each note wrings something potent and direct from its origin. [Nov 2013, p.76]

There are still missteps--the ungainly "Chain My Name" and "Spilling Lines"--but between these sit a brace of casually innovative slow jams. [Nov 2013, p.76]

It's a typical cyclical riff and chant but, unlike other Tuareg bands, driven by full drums. Elsewhere, the quieter "Achaka Achail Aynaian Daghchilan" comes complete with subtle blues flourishes. [Nov 2013, p.79]

It's a genius pop album by a genius pop singer-songwriter. [Nov 2013, p.70]

Wenu Wenu is at last the genuine article. That it also captures the chaos of his live show is no small achievement either. [Nov 2013, p.80]

There's no denying the monstrous likes of "AO" and "Fast Seconds" are well constructed, but they're little more than assemblages of over-familiar parts. [Nov 2013, p.78]

[The set] has ramshackle charm. [Nov 2013, p.89]

The official line on In Utero is that it's a raw uncomfortable document of a band in turmoil and a songwriter on the edge. That's partly true, but it's also cathartic, invigorating, full of terrific, scabrous pop songs, and a good laugh to boot. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Much of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy is content to sit, lost in a maze of Echoplex, navigating its own navel. [Nov 2013, p.81]

A slight tendency to clutter is in evidence, but when the band pare it back, it's magical. [Nov 2013, p.81]

Thile is in a different class to the aspirational dabbling of contemporary music's most famous interpreter of Dowland, Sting. [Nov 2013, p.79]

With each track developing at an imperceptible pace, this is subtle but irresistibly compelling. [Nov 2013, p.69]

A joy to listen to. [Nov 2013, p.69]

Dent May favours freewheeling, psych-funk pop that nods at The Beach Boys and The Carpenters, but adds notes of samba, mariachi and '50s lounge music. [Nov 2013, p.69]

It's a wonderful pop album and there's a genuinely delightful innocence here. [Nov 2013, p.69]