Booker T can still effortlessly access the pleasure principle that transcends musical trends and fleeting fashions, with an instinctive grasp of groove and momentum that speaks directly to heart, feet and head alike. [Sep 2013, p.84]

The Cairo Gang's superb, weighty, meticulous album still manages to pack a mighty punch. [Sep 2013, p.85]

The spread, encompassing piano and mellotron, is pretty; the songs rather maudlin. [Sep 2013, p.85]

The pair's Run The Jewels hits hard but has brains to spare. [Sep 2013, p.87]

Full of sound and furry. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Songs like "That Loneliness" can make Jagwar Ma sound a little clean-living, while the ingenuous "Let Her Go" simply bowls you over with sun-bleached pop-psych. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Jay-z attempts to balance his great wealth, tough history and news responsibility while retaining his grit. Magna Carta... generally pulls it off. [Sep 2013, p.90]

What's here feels a bit decaffeinated, downbeat Moby-ish electronica over which Lynch speaks or sings in a shaky blues croon. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Like a blurrier version of Tame Impala's Lonerism, each listen reveals further pleasures. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Uncanny Valley mostly just splashes around pleasantly in the easy-listening shallows. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Gentle pedal-steel weepies and shimmering, folk-rock beauty are testament to her new-found freedom. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Benjamin "Raffertie" Stefanski invents a kind of haute couture techno-soul on this classy debut. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Aside from the squelchy hypnotism of "In The Air," it's often a little aimless. [Sep 2013, p.94]

It's the darker numbers in which Jewel's muse gleams brightest. [Sep 2013, p.95]

There's much knowingness in his brazenness, and it's a mark of his talent that he stares hubris in the eye and nearly gets away with it. [Sep 2013, p.97]

The venom and rage of the Jim Jones live experience is captured more effectively on this third album than its predecessors, but there;s also greater depth to the playing and writing. [Nov 2012, p.76]

It's the album's deft balance between Sitek's freewheeling and darkly ambient aesthetic and the familiar sub-Beatles melodies that make BE a bold leap forward in the mould of Paul Weller's recent psych-inspired reinventions. [Jul 2013, p.71]

The results are so convincing, the only question is what took him so long. [Mar 2013, p.73]

[Blixa Bargeld is] in a whimsical mood, Mae West-flirtatious on "Come Up And See Me" and the booming "I'm smiling/From the bottom of my fair-trade soul" on the title track. Meanwhile, a delicate cover of The Tiger Lillies' "Alone With the Moon" is dispatched with a rich sonority. [Aug 2013, p.77]

She fails to stand out in a crowded marketplace. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Midwesterner Pokey LaFarge infuses would-be moribund styles with rare vigour, though lyrical concerns are anything but nostalgia. [Jul 2013, p.77]

The Inheritors is a fiercely original feast of experimental sound. [Jul 2013, p.76]

This pairing with the UK Soothsayers collective proves an easy fit, framing Campbell's precise, melodic vocals with intricate horn-led arrangements and adding judicious dub effects. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Almost every one is a pure and lovely miniature. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Immersive and claustrophobic, Ruby Red seems designed for solitary listening under headphones. [Aug 2013, p.72]

This is Clark, now in his 72nd year, as the rumpled poet of American folk-blues, imparting these semi-brisk, string-driven tales with his own unique brand of sad, funny, dry wisdom.

Tiden follows much the same formula [as 2011's Stunden] of Satie-esque piano sketches nestled in softly lapping rhythms, muted electro shadings and vaguely lysergic drones.

The sixth LP covers a familiar spectrum from table-thumping anthems to torrid speed-polkas and booze-punk shanties. But it also features agreeably surreal humour and occasional tender interludes. [Aug 2013, p.71]