Wiggy electronics abound, from the urgent gallop of the title track and the woozy psych-pop of “Kinetic Connection” to the cinematic orchestrations of “Slacker” and “A Quarter To Eight”. Think The Flaming Lips’ sci-fisonics given a very English twist. [Oct 2022, p.26]

The result is both viscerally corporeal music, full of gristle and breath, and richly ambient. [Oct 2022, p.27]

Here his [Vieux's] guitar melts audaciously into Khruangbin's spacey atmospherics and futuristic R&B. [Nov 2022, p.38]

There are strong moments, from the sweet, mixtape-ready “Backup Plan” to “Sweet Tooth”, which brings pep and rockier guitar. But Moss badly needs a bit more Upside Down energy. [Oct 2022, p.29]

Over a barrage of different beats, Hutching creates abstract-expressionist drip paintings using a single colour, or striking day-glo illustrations using broad brush-strokes, or pointillistic portraits using hundreds of identical dots. [Nov 2022, p.24]

There’s a tenderness to the way he puts the instruments in conversation with one another, drawing out Younger’s harp and Macie Stewart’s melancholy violin solo. That’s ultimately what makes this record so powerful, even if you’re not familiar with its touchstones: by colliding the past with the present, McCraven makes a point of making progress. [Oct 2022, p.24]

Things Happen That Way isn’t an exemplar of his style, nor (clearly) is it a late-career blooming, but it is a richly resonant farewell from a maverick veteran. [Oct 2022, p.32]

The album maintains its hallucinatory aura throughout; it’s a dazzling aural anime from a wildly original artist. [Oct 2022, p.29]

The songs are raunchy and resentful, idealising and vocally aching for a lover, or wrestling with more complex feelings. [Nov 2022, p.26]

Songs such as the languid “Deeper” and the joyous “Stoned Love” are full of spiritual healing, as self-doubt is replaced by a hard-won inner radiance. [Oct 2022, p.32]

Bittersweet melancholy is rarely more refined. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Some thoroughly arresting moments that fall midway between Justin Vernon and Scott Walker. [Nov 2022, p.26]

They're not best known for melodicism, but in a funny way the slow-blooming compositions here are full of charming, playful melody, detailed in exotic colours. [Nov 2022, p.25]

It’s rarely coherent and not always pretty, but the most effective therapy rarely is. [Oct 2022, p.26]

TV Priest remain wedded to a very contemporary wading-through-treacle post-punk feel but at times add a little space to the music rather than surrendering to claustrophobia. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Auto-Tuned electro-soul, reggae-lite rhythms and deceptively political lyrics are key motifs here, although Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs lends some grungey thrust to "Fall First." [Nov 2022, p.36]

The album come out riffing, with a packed list of guest guitarists. ... Ozzy sounds world-weary, sometimes a bit knackered. [Nov 2022, p.35]

This recurring tendency to grandiosity is especially frustrating given that less is generally more throughout the album. [Nov 2022, p.35]

People Helping People is evenly split between eerie, washed-out rumblings and more frenzied outbursts of Sonic Youth-ful skronk and motorik madness. [Oct 2022, p.33]

Infectious, silly and even a little dangerous again. Through it all — even on the two quieter tracks, which stick outa little awkwardly among the Killing Joke fuzz — Brett Anderson is the consummate guide, vocally at his peak. [Oct 2022, p.34]

There’s a seam of pop here that his parent band largely lacked, which fills moments like “You Remind Me” with a warm flush of romance. [Oct 2022, p.29]

It captures the core of what Jones does. His compositions are always assured, and his playing is never overwrought. [Jul 2022, p.29]

“Savage” and “Maps” could be John Foxx’s Ultravox remixed by Larry Levan, the songs’ harder synth and post-punk textures continually softened by Polar’s emotive vocals and Geist’s love of warm, soulful grooves. [Sep 2022, p.23]

The mood of Expert In A Dying Field is yearning and reflective, as Stokes picks over the bones of relationships on mournful janglers like “Your Side”, punky rocker “Silence Is Golden”, the shimmering “Best Left” and terrific closer “2am”. [Oct 2022, p.25]

Gibbard's freighted eloquence gives Asphalt Meadows its unsettling immediacy. [Oct 2022, p.26]

The seemingly simple yet thoroughly conceptualised material here, all held within specific harmonic language, is beautifully realised. [Oct 2022, p.26]

An ear for arrangement detail — be it fuzzy synths or rustic washboard-like percussion — lifts often simple, acoustic-led songs into enduringly captivating territory. [Oct 2022, p.36]

Pandemic restrictions demanded some creative rethinking for these seven tracks. ... Guitars are still central, however, whipping the Chameleons-like “Ricochet” along and performing as bedrock melodic clanging for the six-minute, Sisters-adjacent closer, “Tearing Up The Grass”. [Oct 2022, p.33]