Sure, the age is clear in the voices of Matt Piucci and Steven Roback, but so is the honesty inside songs that mine lost brothers, opportunities, and time. [Jul 2023, p.86]

It's absorbing stuff, even shorn of the images. [Aug 2023, p.87]

If there isn't a great leap forward, there is progression on assorted fronts, so The Best Is Yet To Come embraces all-out rock, but Scared Of Love suggests acoustic ballads could be an alternative way ahead. [Sep 2023, p.88]

Aqueous groove Up tackles mid-romance feelings of inadequacy, while coldwave-y Begging You Now infers a darker supplication. Ever-infectious, however, and rarely short of good fun, this one should substantially further the threesome's upward trajectory. [Sep 2023, p.91]

Supernatural Thing makes a strong case for keeping that odd flame alive. [Aug 2023, p.82]

The years don’t fall away – you feel every one – but this recording shows just what a beautiful thing that can be.

This pared-back sonic trip sings with freshness and immediacy. [Sep 2023, p.89]

Fluid, cultured, but never wilfully indulgent, Days In The Desert refuses to sit still. [Sep 2023, p.89]

Welshpool Frillies maintains the high standard GBV since he reunited them six years ago. [Sep 2023, p.82]

The second half - "a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret" - will undoubtedly lose a few fans, yet Rowland still manages to pull a gem out of the fire with the touching My Submission. [Aug 2023, p.78]

Warbling soul, classical lieder, No Other's stage-musical rapture, the title track's echo of Copeland's 1986 New-Age-synth album Keyboard Fantasies - all united by his seemingly unshakeable belief in humanity. [Aug 2023, p.84]

Interspersed with scored interludes and fragments of poetry read by Jessica Griffin of Would-Be-Goods, the effect is one of benign diffusion, the hazy avenues of MacLean's impressionistic lyrics running through the music as if the songs themselves now inhabit that hypnopompic state of consciousness where the centre cannot hold. [Aug 2023, p.86]

Over time, however, it can feel like Clarke has excised the excitement along with the Extraneous matter, his balefully lovelorn tenor, now right out front without distracting clutter, often too reedy to carry the show. [Sep 2023, p.84]

Fate Of The faithful is ostensibly No Quarter, Meeting The Master is Thank You, and The Falling Sky cribs a Robert Plant-style harp solo so perfectly that GVF can likely taste his spit. Be in no doubt, however, that frontman Josh Kiszka's Olympian wail can part the waves of cynicism and make the scales fall from your eyes. [Sep 2023, p.88]

While Django Django's eclectic impulses roam wild - Krautrock, house, techno, acid rave and electronica - on this sprawling set, they're anchored by duets. [Sep 2023, p.92]

A profoundly satisfying album, unreservedly recommended. [Sep 2023, p.86]

For all these disturbances, this grappling with difficult stuff of life and death, there is lovely, graceful ease to The Ballad Of Darren. This isn't the sound of a band trying to react against their past, or challenge their Britpop audience with US noise, or justify their existence - it's Blur simply showing what they do best. [Sep 2023, p.80]

Blackwell remains an inveterate magpie of all things psychedelic. [Sep 2023, p.84]

He and his guests have history, but the second half of Mountains might have benefited from fewer backing singers - however good, they over-egg the songs. [Sep 2023, p.86]

It's as if the quintet has not yet achieved lift-off velocity. As such, the most fascinating tracks here are the older standards. [Sep 2023, p.94]

The spartan structure makes for an intimate if one-paced experience and Potter's singing us more spoken in Marianne Faithfull style, with a hint of Weimar, but she's a beguiling storyteller. [Sep 2023, p.83]

There's also a cameo by Ruben Blades on the lively Pajarito Volo, but Ochoa remains the undoubted star of the show. [Sep 2023, p.82]

At times City Of Gold may sound a little hungover after the euphoric heights of 2022, but Tuttle shows every sign of pushing through. [Aug 2023, p.78]

This opens with rocking electric blues guitar, rolling piano and a singalong chorus. The warm, barroom feel continues in Alcohallelujah. [Aug 2023, p.80]

Discs two and three mostly consist of unedited or alternate takes of material on the main disc. A full-length Transylvania Boogie, previously released in edited form, turns out to have been mostly a long, meandering shuffle with a drum solo. Hitherto undocumented titles Halos And Arrows and Moldred turn out to be, respectively, an exploratory guitar overdub piece (all that’s missing is Joni Mitchell at the mike) and a brief Tommy/Vincent composite with added bass. [Aug 2023, p.90]

...Bolgatanga is easily AHC's most accessible, vivid approximation of Brian Eno's fabled "vision of a psychedelic Africa". [Aug 2023, p.78]

Welcome echoes include Bramah's sinister, cogent non sequiturs and the contorted, sharp-edged rock sounds, and the urgent to interpret everything as a reference to MES becomes flesh with the spectral/beefy Harlequin Duke. [Jul 2023, p.85]

While all but a handful of the songs from the 13 track Angels & Queens have already been drip-fed via a series of singles, EPs and last year's seven-track mini-album, Gabriels' desire to take their time with the making of their long-awaited debut album has certainly paid off. [Jun 2023, p.84]