It's over in a flash, an exhilarating fairground ride you won't want to disembark. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Its aim is true, uplifting and yes, mighty persuasive. [Mar 2024, p.80]

The works-in-progress disc of this handsome reissue package gives an even starker impression of a man rummaging joyfully through the studio toy box, now slapping down an instinctively lively drum beat, now jumping on a synth he’s only just plugged in, and rolling with it.

Her ability to dominate a room with minimal musical movement is astonishing; this record lowers the temperature, heightens the sense, slows down life, frame by frame. [Mar 2024, p.85]

Rendered with a delicate, impressionistic touch, Phasor's dreamlike entreaties cut far deeper than predecessor Far In's lockdown ruminations. [Mar 2024, p.90]

What Now is no less discursive, plundering so many styles that it might instead be called What Next. But working with co-producer Shawn Everett in a series of top-tier Nashville hubs, Howard makes it cohere not only through the prayer bowls that clang and drone between tracks but also through the way she captures the wild vacillations of falling in and out of something that’s possibly good and potentially terrible. [Mar 2024, p.84]

[Producer Daniel Boyle] strikes a crisp specious groove somewhere between dubstep and '90s digi-dub, for Perry to voice croakily alongside co-vocalists. [Mar 2024, p.82]

There's a full band, a string section Swarmatron and brass. Reassuringly, the songs are strong enough to carry the new load. [Mar 2024, p.85]

It's an LP of insight and empathy. [Mar 2024, p.82]

It may make for a rollercoaster musical ride, but it's utterly thrilling. [Mar 2024, p.88]

This double LP has sonic coherence across 65 minutes of taut, sinewy but ever-unpredictable compositions, with a subtly altered sound palette. [Feb 2024, p.86]

Rhys’s melodies stay with you, and his wordplay is as pleasingly idiosyncratic as ever. [Feb 2024, p.89]

The resulting sound is high-contrast, with graceful melodic resolutions, slippery pitch-bends and experiments with form. Curios that hit at once, but can also withstand lengthy unravelling. [Mar 2024, p.91]

Lurching guitar, chiming piano and stabs of overdubbed choral harmony are combined with vocals that swing from sweetly intimate to dry and flippant. [Mar 2024, p.89]

Green Day are admirably assured, honest, and funny on Saviors. [Mar 2024, p.82]

Beneath the Day-Glo surface, Chemtrails rage away. [Jan 2024, p.89]

All in all, less immediate and traditionally melodic than A Light…, Wall Of Eyes is one for the heads, revealing its many charms and details only upon repeated listens. [Mar 2024, p.83]

Little Rope carves space for the well-worn mind, offering sharp perspective on moments when everything seems blunted. [Feb 2024, p.84]

The LP is a treat, like listening to an oracle from the depths of a digital cave. [Feb 2024, p.86]

The former Bedales pupil's steely vocals and ear for a big melody amidst the intricacy offer a unifying and satisfying undertow. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Iechyd Da documents a period of intense anguish with careful understatement and smart musical references. [Feb 2024, p.87]

From Ireland's proliferating alt-guitar pack, these intense runners could go the distance. [Feb 2024, p.89]

Nau isn't especially original, but he is especially beguiling. These are songs to luxuriate in. [Feb 2024, p.89]

The "low tide" hinted at on side one submerges the second half, but delivers some of Brown's deepest, most affecting work. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Nelson's trademark rough vocal edges suit the rustic vibes of this Southern folk music and yet the ensemble also ventures into more experimental newgrass turf. [Feb 2024, p.88]

It's an impressively elegant and expressive one. [Feb 2024, p.87]

Gazelle Twin masterfully keeps us in suspense, incorporating strongly evocative sonic components. Around track eight the tension subsides, yet this doesn't affect the overall consistency. [Feb 2024, p.86]

Where the stage show had the intimacy of Young's between-song chats, the intimacy here comes from the sensation that you're listening in on his thoughts as one song drifts, like memories do, from one tome to another. [Jan 2024, p.90]