The songwriter’s takes on treacherous relationships come with a Vampire Weekend-ish talent for a multi-part melody and Phoebe Bridgers’ ear for pertinent one-liners, the stately “Underwater”, “Move Me”, the title track and bedsit-ABBA kiss-off “Cold” all deep, powerful, overwhelming. [Sep 2022, p.23]

A revitalised rock’n’roll soundtrack for a push towards the brightening of the light. [Sep 2022, p.33]

As a lyricist, she remains the understatement queen, “Let’s keep all our doctor’s appointments” from “Be Careful With Yourself” perhaps one of the most superbly subtle statements of devotion in recorded song. Nobody underdoes it better. [Sep 2022, p.26]

Whatever meanings are to be gleaned here, Bleed Out still rates as one of the band’s hardest-rocking outings. [Sep 2022, p.28]

Lifetime Achievement embraces the folksier elements of his sound, paring the music down to guitar, banjo, occasionally a harmonica and even more occasionally a full band. [Sep 2022, p.22[

The brutal realism Greil Marcus heard in X’s debut Los Angeles remains in John Doe’s solo incarnation as hard-bitten Americana troubadour, here offering 1890s tales of spartan hardship, his songs’ killers and victims chased across the South by poverty and guilt. [Jun 2022, p.26]

Lyrical malaise is matched, as ever, by immaculately crafted electronic pop music that veers just as much into joy, elation and euphoria as it does melancholic introspection. [Sep 2022, p.24]

Pinning this endlessly complex songwriter’s work down to a single tagline or meaning is unwise. His songs are not always easy, they’re not always straightforward, but 10 albums in, they’re mounting up to create one of the most impressive bodies of work of the century so far. [Sep 2022, p.16]

Longer songs are punctuated by studio chatter, voicemails, birdsong and other ambient sounds, lending the whole project an artfully informal intimacy. [Sep 2022, p.32]

Whenever he [frontman Jeremy Gaudet] does lose his footing, the band’s imaginative take on mid-2000s indie rock – all churning guitars and zigzagging synths – steadies this Chopper. [Sep 2022, p.26]

A revolutionary step in the band’s catalogue this is not, but the sound of Dwyer and co having a lot of fun in his basement radiates throughout, as does the band’s seamless knack for tapping into any strand of punk they turn their hand to. [Sep 2022, p.28]

Cheat Codes finds Danger Mouse rolling with a new lyrical foil and this one feels like it could run and run. [Sep 2022, p.22]

Lennox and Kember create breezy sonic collages of sunshine melody, fluidly chugging rhythms and fizzing analogue synths without succumbing to full retro-jukebox pastiche. [Sep 2022, p.29]

The album is more of a celebration than a wake, thanks to the Promise Of The Real’s youthful exuberance and Young’s own ageless spirit. [Sep 2022, p.32]

On a musical level, Lynn imparts these songs with an unhurried grace. And while there’s an agreeable twang to “Black River” and folk-country steel on “In A Moment”, synths form the album’s bedrock.

A mood of high seriousness pervades, but Spirit Exit’s blend of spirituality and futurism is often transfixing. [Aug 2022, p.25]

His spacious and captivating 2020 LP Alexandra felt like a breakthrough in this respect; Fleeting Adventure is even better.

Going Places is a felicitous reversion to type, full of mature and nuanced songcraft. [Sep 2022, p.30]

What makes Friendship different, though, are Wriggins’ striking songs, minted in the sort of conversational poetry at which Lucinda Williams excels. [Aug 2022, p.26]

There’s a palpable sense of world-weariness in his vocals and in the band’s fuzzy hooks, which makes everything sound both precarious and oddly poignant. [Aug 2022, p.25]

A bold re-statement of artistic identity. [Sep 2022, p.25]

A tantalising exploration of modern-day kosmische. Seemingly liberated by technology, these two fiftysomething blokes conjure the kind of utopian panoplies dreamt up by Harald Grosskopf and Neu! on the 24-minute “A Yellow Robe”, a swirling, burbling journey that also nods to recent experiments by Roman Flügel and Peder Mannerfelt. [Sep 2022, p.27]

Where earlier material flowed freely, here his fiddly funk and plastic grooves contrive a kind of new-age electro that at times is suave and smooth but rarely settles into anything satisfying; as much as they exude a sense of wellness. [Aug 2022, p.23]

A brace of Nick Lowe-penned Brinsley Schwarz tracks (“Surrender To The Rhythm”, “Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love”) are forensically faithful to the originals, but the older men bring an oaky maturity to Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” that likely eluded their younger selves. [Sep 2022, p.30]

Steve Shelley and Lee Ranaldo were impressed enough to pitch in, helping form a warmly familiar yet still sometimes thrilling debut album. [Sep 2022, p.24]

Ayewa always makes ambitious albums, but Jazz Codes feels like her richest yet, her Lemonade, her To Pimp A Butterfly. [Sep 2022, p.28]

These empathetic tales teem with life. [Sep 2022, p.32]

“Build A Fire”, too, is an air-punching anthem, though Torquil Campbell prefers lighter-waving on “To Feel What They Feel”, which, like “If I Never See London Again”, turns to polished ’80s production techniques. They can’t shake their melancholy, however. [Sep 2022, p.32]