Whether her anguish is existential or emotional is uncertain, but the song’s downbeat nature makes it an unusual album exit. What is abundantly clear is that Bock’s creative star is very much with her. [Nov 2024, p.38]

Moonchild Sanelly guest on “Streets Is Calling”, woozy dub soundscapes accompany “The Traveller”, Afrobeat and Afro-Cuban rhythms collide on “Shaking Body”, and the sense of jazz as a hybrid, liberating form is unselfconsciously embraced. [Oct 2024, p.33]

It leaps between the glitch-hop of “Bezerk” to the android hymn “Don’t Go”; from the thumpy funk of “In My Head” to the pulsating UK garage of “Something”. It also employs some audacious samples, like the drumless samba that backs “Walk In The Park”, or the Cuban rumba groove under the vaporous soul of “Mood To Make Love”. But it’s unified by Lowe’s soft, supple voice and a quiet air of hope, warmth and radiance. [Nov 2024, p.40]

It may surprise some, and disappoint others, but this is a record that ultimately finds Sparhawk turning pain into a kind of spiritual beauty. In that, it continues his work of over three decades, from the spectral I Could Live In Hope right up to the imploded noise of Hey What. [Sep 2024, p.22]

There’s the customary minor-key acoustic lilt played out at a range of tempos somewhere between rumba and reggae, served with the occasional light garnish of bleeps. Far from being a problem, that’s almost certainly the way Chao’s fans like it. [Oct 2024, p.35]

Thurston Moore’s ninth solo album might begin with a weirdly angular nursery rhyme set to sparse plucked strings but he’s soon bending his guitar into all sorts of freaky shapes on an album that stands among his best solo works. [Oct 2024, p.37]

Finds his laconic voice soundings more Lou Reed-like than ever. The songs, though, are classic Wynn, all psych and jangle. [Sep 2024, p.39]

It can be quite hard to pin down what they’re trying to do. This makes Orchestra Hits curious, even if their mining of goth and the ’80s, with its attendant melodrama and gestural angst, isn’t always successful. [Oct 2024, p.41]

Their pop songs always leave traces in the memory, but the real gems occur when they take it slow and low. [Nov 2024, p.43]

With Wasser’s careworn voice centre-stage and basic parts recorded live with her simpático band, there’s a new simplicity, swing and airy languor in play on these 12 eloquent, soul-pop songs. [Oct 2024, p.37]

Five Dice, All Threes sounds like they’ve caught up with themselves: even if Bright Eyes are struggling to scrape together optimism about the future, there is every reason why their fans should. [Nov 2024, p.30]

A dazzling set that even outstrips 2020’s Source, with the bearing of a modern classic. [Oct 2024, p.34]

The irresistible “It’s Mine Now” cheats tragedy by taking ownership; “Siren Song” finds its folkloric sea legs after flailing; “Grand Final” grabs the moment with jubilant pop panache. [Oct 2024, p.40]

It’s all interestingly varied stuff, although the chopping and changing of styles makes it hard to get a handle on who The Voidz really want to be. [Oct 2024, p.33]

Channelling their individual talents for explorations of the sublime, they make effects-heavy and expansive dronescapes that upset “post-rock” assumptions while tilting obliquely at Alice Coltrane’s organ/synth works, Swans, Suicide and Scott Walker’s avant-gardism. [Nov 2024, p.43]

There are thrills aplenty, particularly the raging “Broken Boys” and surprisingly Gary Numan-esque “Moth To The Flame”, but despite the mournful “I Belong To”’s validation and redemptive closer “Sunrise”, the mood’s still frequently dark. [Nov 2024, p.43]

It’s a vibrant and genre-spanning collection, from the stripped-back piano house of opener “Wanna” via the UK garage flavour of “Waited All Night” (featuring xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim). Elsewhere, there are touches of R&B, disco, pop and electro-funk as the record unfurls with all the grace and flow of a masterful DJ set. [Oct 2024, p.43]

The many versions of that song [Ballad Of A Thin Man] sprinkled throughout the discs illustrate the fluctuations of interpretation, form and commitment that were a feature of Dylan’s first tour in eight years, unremarked at the time but now on full view. [Nov 2024, p.48]

While the recitation by guest Moor Mother lends form and force to “Our Mother’s Lights” and Fujita’s saxophonist father adds Jan Garbarek-like lines to three other tracks, the album is otherwise distinguished by the music’s shimmering beauty and other sounds that glide overhead like the birds evoked by the title. [Sep 2024, p.33]

As Shirt progresses, grungey riffs begin to cut through on “Itch” and the White Stripes-y chorus of “Rag”. Elsewhere, his slacker songcraft commands evermore empathy as “Voices In My Head” employs a neat acoustic motif and “Music” offers a piano-led lullaby to close a short, deceptively sweet affair. [Oct 2024, p.41]

It’s all strong enough to hopefully attract listeners beyond Tindersticks’ hardy fanbase. [Oct 2024, p.43]

Pure electronica, like the understated “Only Silent Words” and viscous “A Time Mirror (Biophony)”, is appealingly reflective too, but often one yearns for the unexpected, which “A Colour Field (Holocene)”’s slowly developing melody and a series of “Life Study” vignettes fortunately provide. [Oct 2024, p.41]

This Is BASIC plays as galvanising and gleeful, not only to audience effect but clearly for its makers, too. In all of that, it’s anything but. [Oct 2024, p.32]

Yet really immerse yourself in the thing, and these seven extended pieces become lighter, transcendent, strangely accessible. [Oct 2024, p.33]

For all the dark corners of her ever-changing self she avidly explores, the intrinsic brightness and irrepressible energies in her songwriting continue to enrich the experience of accompanying her. [Sep 2024, p.31]

Pure pleasure with an experimental edge. [Oct 2024, p.34]

Whatever the provenance of these songs, Indoor Safari is marvellous, by any reasonable critical metric a glorious confection. [Sep 2024, p.26]

While a little lacking in variation, it’s a most welcome return for a band who have come out of retirement but still know how to land a punch. [Sep 2024, p.36]