Its largely brooding, contemplative mood raising ghosts and evoking bruised skies. [Mar 2023, p.92]

A fine collection from a timeless song craftsman. [Mar 2023, p.84]

7s feels like therapy for its creator but has the power and potential to rub off on us all. [Mar 2023, p.88]

A blend of well-crafted original material alongside several covers. [Mar 2023, p.89]

Highly seductive and pulsates with youthful energy. [Mar 2023, p.88]

Orbital remain a comforting presence, and still have plenty to say. [Mar 2023, p.85]

Yet it all still swings, rocks and rolls like a galleon in a squall, the Stones live remaining the luxury you can't do without. [Mar 2023, p.102]

O'Neill has locked into humanity's flawed relationship with nature. But there's celebration too. [Mar 2023, p.92]

What follows is a quietly substantive if still somewhat pallid, meditation on faith and death. [Mar 2023, p.92]

Their most corrosive cocktail yet of melodious sunshine pop and blackly comedic lyrics. [Mar 2023, p.85]

The likes of Beck and Stevie Nicks play supportive rather than starring roles, and the sonic flavours here recall the noir clubby pop of Humanz (2017). The woofer-pumping reggaeton of Tormenta however sees Albarn step aside to let Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny shine. [Mar 2023, p.85]

Lewis hits peak saxophone artistry here. [Mar 2023, p.89]

Dickinson is the singer's best foil since Bernard Butler, spinning a kaleidoscope of suave, modernist soul-pop. [Mar 2023, p.87]

It's also the group's most exciting, most engaged, most breathtaking album this century. [Mar 2023, p.85]

The source isn't always apparent, as Loscil and English's manipulations drift closer to the ambient techno of Gas. [Mar 2023, p.91]

A follow-up that finds the pure-toned Montreal-based singer painting with a wider palette, thanks to backing from pianist Felix Fox-Pappas and Toronto jazzers BADBADNOTGOOD. [Mar 2023, p.89]

The past might be intoxicating, but The Candle And The Flame - lucid, conversational, immediate - is beautifully present in its moment. [Mar 2023, p.84]

All guns are still blazing, but slightly differently. [Mar 2023, p.86]

They sing beautifully together and play everything. [Mar 2023, p.83]

Hawk's stentorian baritone croon is almost irony free and his freewheeling songs blossom because of it. [Mar 2023, p.93]

Despite its unruly title, Anarchist Gospel takes all the splits and divisions, the churn and the confusion, and turns them into something remarkably centred and complete, the work of a songwriter who knows who she is and how she got there. [Mar 2023, p.82]

A blissful escape from whatever ails you. [Feb 2023, p.89]

Young Fathers remain a frequently forbidding proposition, and all the better for it. Thrillingly, it's still impossible to predict what we might hear next in any of their tracks. [Mar 2023, p.88]

Fans of the early records of Margo Price and Courtney Marie Andrews will find much to love here, while the diversion into groovesome country soul on Rows Of Clover keeps the head nodding. [Feb 2023, p.84]

His own music finally snaps into focus: gone, the scrappy garage/glam, in favour of sophisticated singer-songwriterly pop constructed around acoustic guitar, strings, extravagantly multi-tracked vocal harmonies and consistent tunes. [Mar 2023, p.86]

The album's abstemious drums help the untethered material breathe, and on point contributions include Lisa Hannigan, and fellow voyager Daniel Lanois, whose sombre instrumental opener Prelude To Song primes us for gravitas-laden songs of loss, warning, transformation and stoicism. [Mar 2023, p.92]

Delicate yet powerful, and utterly compelling. [Feb 2023, p.92]

Elements of deep soul and space-age pop combine to create a retro-futurist vibe, songs sounding instantly familiar but slightly fried, as if beamed in from other worlds. [Feb 2023, p.84]