Jess Hickie-Kallenbach’s woozy, bluesy, melismatic moans, Finlay Clark’s detuned guitar crackles and David Kennedy’s scrambled action-painting drums can become a little unrelenting over the long haul. But standout tracks like the combustible, centrifugal “Silver Grit Passes Thru My Teeth” and the brooding, tempo-twisting “M M M” reward patient listeners with hypnotic intensity and off-kilter beauty. [Jul 2024, p.39]

This is perhaps her most conventional release. [Jul 2024, p.39]

Hyperdrama boasts the same kind of air-punching swagger and imaginative ambition that made Random Access Memories so inescapable. It also benefits from a similarly formidable guestlist. [Jul 2024, p.35]

“Poppies” is an aching, Beatle-esque waking dream, half-heard car radio for company, prime Aimee Mann a comparison. Cleveland’s distorted electric guitar, cool, Stereolab-like synth glides and dub Ethio-jazz further colour the scene. [Jul 2024, p.35]

Noel Gallagher, who has been writing with Weller since 22 Dreams, co-pens one of the best songs he’s put his name to in a while: a stomping piece of glammy punk called “Jumble Queen”. .... Elsewhere, Weller’s own songs are also beautifully enhanced by other collaborators. [Jul 2024, p.24]

Producer Aaron Dessner’s quick working pace and embrace of imperfection have helped deliver a rawer set of songs written when Atwell was weaning herself off antidepressants and feared feeling’s return. [Jun 2024, p.29]

It's a beautiful-sounding record with tracks like "Somber The Drums" and "Everyone Out" providing moments of tender poppy beauty amid the general sense of decay. [Jun 2024, p.32]

“MC Mambo” by the mixed-heritage German-Ghanaian collective Pepper, Onion, Ginger Salt is aborderline novelty quasirap number that oozes wonky DIY charm, like much of this uneven but absorbing collection. [Jun 2024, p.50]

If that means she sometimes leans into apparently clichéd sentiments on “Keep Calm Carry On”, “Do Or Die”, the Buddhism-evoking “Om Shanti Om” or even her gossamer-soft cover of Dire Straits’ “Why Worry”, her whispery vocal style, often accompanied by plucked acoustic guitar and understated strings, still captivates. [Jun 2024, p.30]

Enchanting. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Lives Outgrown is a quite different prospect to Gibbons' previous work - more intimate, more personal, coloured by the grief and goodbyes se has weathered in recent years. But it is still possible to find a thread that runs from here to Out Of Season, and back to Portishead. [Jun 2024, p.23]

If it can feel a little hermetic, he’s at his best on the Eno-ish lullaby “First Responder”, where strings and lap steel drift in like a summer breeze. [Jun 2024, p.39]

On their second outing, these three peripatetic musicians pick up more or less where they left off on their 2022 debut. This is no bad thing. [Jun 2024, p.27]

The result is a highly engaging, emotionally rich debut, where defiant working-class pride anthems like “Dig!” jostle for space alongside the soaring urban blues confessional “This Here Ain’t Water” and the joyously puerile playground chant “Shithouse”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

As LaFarge tells it, Rhumba Country is partly the tunes he hummed to himself while reaping and sowing. Fine tunes they are as well. [May 2024, p.35]

The results range from flights of lysergic beauty on “Rainbow Ball”, “Split Screen” and “Seen” to a burst of jagged, early-days energy on “Nothing To Do”. For the first time in ages, they’re not overthinking it. [Jun 2024, p.36]

This is a stark and often moving listen, setting her coldly operatic voice against a backdrop of billowing modern classical and wintry electronics. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Arab Strap songs mostly have a strong, vinegary flavour, and this is abracingly sour album over the long haul. The relentless misanthropic grind can drag in places. But as ever, Moffat’s withering scorn is sweetened by beautiful poetry, tender emotion and self-aware, bruise-black humour. [May 2024, p.36]

At its best, like the gorgeous, nine-minute “Round The World”, his bittersweet sound feels like the work of an art-music auteur. [May 2024, p.30]

So how does that chaos translate into making music in your fifties? With greater depth and variety, it would appear. [Jun 2024, p.36]

What strikes you is the sheer variety of styles and textures that Keenan and Cargill were playing around with. It’s a shimmering patchwork of ideas and moments, some more realised than others, some beautiful, some stark. .... Spell Blanket is a glimpse at what might have been. A memory of the future. [May 2024, p.42]

This merging of hypnotic rhythms with pulsing electro is apparent throughout, especially on squelchy tracks like "Got To Be Who U Are", and the result is a potent fusion. [Jun 2024, p.36]

Tracyanne Campbell still writes exquisite songs that don’t sacrifice melancholy for cleverness, and the band still provide smart arrangements that nod to country, Motown, Brill Building pop and other distinctly American sounds. [May 2024, p.32]

A cresting, rolling record of complexity and depth. [May 2024, p.24]

Ranging from explosive Afro-funk workouts by Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi and Les Bantous de la Capitale to more psych-influenced stunners by Abeti et Les Redoutables and Zaiko Langa Langa, these rediscoveries are thrilling enough for Congo Funk! to deserve a place next to African Scream Contest among Analog Africa’s most indispensable collections. [May 2024, p.53]

Despite remarkable playing and energy that charges through much of this record, it’s also contemplative, varied and tender at times, with the gentle sway of tracks like “Takoba” hitting as hard as the noise and fury of “Sousoume Tamachek”. [May 2024, p.38]

The LP opens with “My Golden Years”, a delectable mélange of Harrisonian 12-string riffs, Wilsonian harmonies and layer-cake hooks, and reaches its apex with the glorious Beach Boys homage “In The Eyes Of The Girl”, with Sean Ono Lennon co-producing and playing bass. [Jun 2024, p.35]

Jazz remains the root of his sound, with Washington’s saxophone as bold and vibrant as ever. But the grand orchestral sweep of albums past is pared back, replaced by adeeper engagement with hip-hop, funk and soul. [May 2024, p.41]