Its peaks evoke Jack White's maximalist blues fusion. [Nov 2022, p.94]

Isn't shy about where it's coming from, and it is assured. But ... It lacks their previous warmth. [Nov 2022, p.93]

Nothing Special sometimes swims so far out of focus that it's difficult to share Sheff's vision, while at other times it surges and soars towards everything that was fascinating about Okkervil River. [Nov 2022, p.84]

An intriguing, stylistic volte-face. [Nov 2022, p.94]

Budget-price corporations such as Lidl and Ryanair take a mauling, amid a sonic barrage which occasionally coalesces into pleasing punk-funk but mostly glories in making lap-steel sound like a cement mixer. [Nov 2022, p.92]

Their penchant for bold riffs and big climaxes comes with little individual grandstanding. [Nov 2022, p.91]

Editors have hatched a perturbed and maximalist affair whose thundering algorithms target the darkest, least inhibited corners of the dancefloor. [Oct 2022, p.90]

A pleasant way to pass time in transit, but not a destination itself. [Oct 2022, p.82]

The inventiveness on display is undeniably impressive, but the process sometimes hides a little too much of the artist behind it. [Nov 2022, p.86]

They remain a magical band still searching for a commensurate album, arriving at a record whose thrills are real but fleeting. [Nov 2022, p.92]

A few tracks disappoint; but there's lusty Fever Forever and graceful Beating On The Outside, which could be Roseanne cash. [Oct 2022, p.90]

More coherent than some rejigged castoffs ought to be. [Oct 2022, p.84]

The arrangements sound less finessed, less "performed" and more file-shared this time out, and you sense Patient Number 9 has known corrective surgery. The great man's ongoing rage against the dying of the light still as its triumphs, though. [Oct 2022, p.85]

Perfect for Twin Peaks' Bang Bang bar, but at 90 minutes duration its lesser parts drag like an over-indulgent director's cut. [Oct 2022, p.87]

Pale Blue Eyes' debut album deftly executes a type of electro-inclined pop which initially surfaced as the edges of post-punk softened to embrace melody over angularity. [Sep 2022, p.94]

McKenzie is so focused on craft ahead of melody that an album this determined to be without jokes might have actually benefited from a couple. [Sep 2022, p.93]

Their ongoing Heavy Rocks series plays things relatively straight, however, restricting their palette to metallic tones. Even so, this third volume rewrites the rulebook. An opening brace of tunes gallop like vintage Motorhead, if they were being chased by wild banshee saxophones. [Oct 2022, p.90]

Though the ingenuity of the project occasionally outguns the quality of the songwriting, Darnielle's spadework has resulted in a zesty, spontaneous-sounding record. [Sep 2022, p.95]

His voice remains strident as the album veers from pared-down solo to spritely contributions from the likes of Chaim Tannenbaum and David Mansfield, plus a less successful string arrangement. [Sep 2022, p.90]

A concept album set in the 1890s, revelling in simplicity. [Oct 2022, p.92]

It's a free-wheeling surge of glitchy beats and fizzing, ravey energy, with the wobbly UK garage underpinnings of Echo Party a notable standout. [Oct 2022, p.86]

Fluorescent keyboards crowd Kiwi Jr.'s once-open spaces on Chopper, making the surface of their first "produced" LP feel more like an oil slick than the band's past terrain of jagged delights. [Sep 2022, p.93]

Mixture of West Africa and Caribbean influences. Oscar Jerome's glowing highlife guitar opens Dide O, a midway tryptic with Soul Searching (Afrobeat) and We Give Thanks. (soul). [Sep 2022, p.96]

Escapology is frequently, characteristically unsettling. [Sep 2022, p.86]

The band retreated into the more self-contained approach which has spawned My other People. [Jul 2022, p.92]

A diverting curio, then, rather than essential. [Sep 2022, p.87]

Without the accompanying visuals, Ugly Season makes most sense when there's a vocal to centre it. [Aug 2022, p.86]

It puts ZZ's impeccably-tuned engine room under the microscope, their "just us and the music" gambit paying off. [Aug 2022, p.90]