Packed with lovely, unusual and attention-grabbing intros. ... Less heartening are his lyrics. ... Much of the record consists of its maker bragging about his sexual conquests with a dead-eyed disdain. [May 2020, p.106]

It's another masterwork from a group of no peers. [Sep 2020, p.113]

Their juggernaut third album is the sound of a band becoming ever more defiantly themselves. [Sep 2020, p.104]

The trajectory remains far-out, each track a space station on Deradoorian's exhilarating trip. [Jul 2020, p.106]

The instrumentals stay restlessly creative too, this time absorbing hip-hop cadences, wistful fiddles and dreamy post-punk. [Sep 2020, p.108]

Compelling and masterful. [Sep 2020, p.113]

This is heavy, yes, but it's never leaden. ... With The Universal Want - sad, wary, yet still alert to life's thwarted beauty - Doves are in the right place, the right time. [Sep 2020, p.106]

McKenna's charisma and melodic sense ensure it's a delight nonetheless. [Sep 2020, p.113]

A triumph. [Aug 2020, p.111]

[2018's debut's] Rousing tunes and harmony-rich arrangements marked them out as contenders. This second outing delivers on that promise. [Sep 2020, p.110]

Even when Energy takes a ruminative turn towards the end, there's not an ounce of fat. [Sep 2020, p.108]

Fado is a harder sell, a stronger taste. Still, Lina's voice has an irresistible dramatic heft, and combined with the smudgy ambient arrangements, all dark wood and bitter coffee, she and Refree could fill a gap that non-believers might not know they had. [Apr 2020, p.111]

Occasionally the vocals soften the edges, but on a record that feels as if it's trying to catch the moment of changing states - geological and mental - it's dynamism always powers through. [Summer 2020, p.104]

While it's not always clear what's on offer amid the density, there's always a sweetener on top to keep you coming back. [Sep 2020, p.111]

Play With Fire is the perfect length: straight in and straight out, leaving you wondering just where that knife wound came from. [Sep 2020, p.109]

Elevated throughout by Garcia's immaculate phrasing, this is music that fuses he tradition and modern with real purpose. [Sep 2020, p.110]

What stops it from feeling like an exercise in arch, vintage chic fancy dress is the warmth of their tunes and the lively untidiness if the execution. [Sep 2020, p.109]

Smart audio trickery and intriguing atmospheres draw the listener in and, overall, it's a real beauty. [Sep 2020, p.111]

A superbly restorative tonic for troubled times. [Sep 2020, p.108]

Beneath the hazy romance, California sunshine and chamber-pop sheen lies something less blithe and breezy. ... Quite the trip. [Sep 2020, p.108]

It's a record that draws you in, first with its story, and then with its songs. [Aug 2020, p.106]

The production here recalls all those beautifully arranged, rich-sounding Americana records from the '70s, a style to which Healey's mellifluous baritone is well suited. The songwriting, meanwhile, is a large leap forward from his earlier EPs. [Sep 2020, p.108]

Reminders of a great talent lost, and what might have been. [Sep 2020, p.111]

The nostalgia would be overwhelming were it not for Bayley's ability to offset it with woozy, elastic beats. [Aug 2020, p.102]

These crafted confessionals are a reminder that Murphy couldn't write a bad song if he tried. [Aug 2020, p.109]

Withering, in all the right ways. [Aug 2020, p.105]

With A Celebration of Endings, Biffy Clyro prove beyond doubt that they've got the idiosyncratic sewn up. [Sep 2020, p.112]

The way Blumberg expands and contracts the title track four times over the record, or filters a warped background shriek into Silence Breaker, underlines his experimental drives, his desire to push through sound barriers. [Sep 2020, p.107]

Creeper may lack originality, but they make up for it with ambition and sheer cheek. [Aug 2020, p.105]

This is a compelling debut throughout. [Sep 2020, p.113]

Comfortably their finest outing since 1982's Forever Now. [Sep 2020, p.113]

Bobby Gillespie murmurs over Minimal's slinky pop, while Silenced and Kuzurenai toy with space, R&B dynamics and even more tunes. [Sep 2020, p.107]

An incredible album. [Sep 2020, p.111]

Younge and Muhammad give Ayers a crisp edge that achieves the unlikely feat of dragging jazz-funk into the modern world. [Sep 2020, p.107]

Rather than succumb to difficult second album syndrome, Fontaines D.C. have emerged frontrunners in an already crowded field of vital, important young bands. A Hero's Death is a resounding victory. [Aug 2020, p.100]

A poignant revisiting of Whitsun Dance catches the profound power of this richly arranged album. [Aug 2020, p.105]

There are also welcome flashes of their own identity. ... At 14 songs, however, that saccharine sheen starts to grate a little. [Aug 2020, p.102]

It's with the good-foot funk of Save Me and slow-lane soul of Hold On that Williams's vision really pulls into focus. [Aug 2020, p.113]

Her observations possess a nuance that blasts away old cliches, but are also related with a pleasing simplicity. [Aug 2020, p.107]

All The Time is cool and compelling dance-pop. [Aug 2020, p.108]

An enthralling, multi-layered listen. [Aug 2020, p.109]

This is rock'n'roll at its most direct, fun and stupid-yet-deadly-serious. [Aug 2020, p.105]

Thick, claggy basslines anchor them alongside The Fall a their most pulverising. .... The debut's best moments, however, are when they push against what a post-punk band should be. [Aug 2020, p.109]

The work of a man kitted out with a full array of emotional surveillance equipment, its expansive space-rock and cosmic lyrics zooming in and out on humanity in all its rich chaos. [Jun 2020, p.92]

Ultimate Success Today is convulsed by End Times thoughts of collapse and an American dream eating itself. [Aug 2020, p.111]

With its bright shiny sonics buffed by Blur/Smiths producer Stephen Street, it ranks up there with the best of the early Pretenders albums. [Aug 2020, p.111]

There's a wobbly quality to La Havas's toplines that means they can get lost in the more densely instrumented tracks, yet the sparser finger-picked guitar numbers give her songwriting space to shine. [Aug 2020, p.108]

It's a uniformly lovely if melodically insubstantial mode. [Summer 2020, p.105]

The star of the show remains the Brummie Everygeezer and his droll, unceremoniously-delivered bars. [Summer 2020, p.100]

This is a record that opens up the time and space to think, picking up echoes, melting them down into something new. [Aug 2020, p.102]

DMA's aspirations here are elite-class: Life Is A Game Of Changing channels New Order circa Republic, while Silver evokes peak-period Verve's reassuringly expensive shuffle. [Aug 2020, p.107]

For all the finely crafted, impeccably produced numbers there are enough stripped-back torch song moments to remind us of the simple power of Wainwright's talent. [Aug 2020, p.113]

Often ludicrous, Pure Luxury is a brilliant escape. [Aug 2020, p.108]

The business can feel overwhelming at times - more straightforwardly enjoyable are the pared-back tunes that leave enough room for Moore's slightly husky and hugely characterful voice to shine. [Aug 2020, p.109]

She's still very much the real deal. [Aug 2020, p.111]

Provides a stirring reminder of how cross-cultural encounters spark new musical forms. [Aug 2020, p.107]

Dream Wife may borrow from the best, but are indefatigably joyfully their own. [Aug 2020, p.113]

It might feel too in thrall to their heroes at times. ... But Bdrmm's world of noise is so artfully constructed it's hard to not find yourself lost within it. [Aug 2020, p.102]

The world isn't short of observational singer-songwriters, but when the work is of this calibre it's pretty hard to resist. [Aug 2020, p.107]

This is the sound of RTJ staking their claim as one of the all-time great hip-hop duos. [Aug 2020, p.112]

While it lacks the sheer otherworldliness of his heyday, it is still a startling successful marriage of old and new. [Aug 2020, p.102]

Redoubled his grime values: scene loyalty via scathing wit and wildly entertaining chutzpah. [Aug 2020, p.104]

The melodic flow of Alchemist;s beats perfectly offsets his partner's raw, unfiltered delivery. [Aug 2020, p.107]

They're less assured on the more experimental numbers. [Aug 2020, p.109]

Her multiple selves clash more often than they connect. [Aug 2020, p.110]

A poised, inventive record, designed to catch you out. [Aug 2020, p.111]

Ellis taps the pulse of his surroundings in manner akin to Massive Attack's Mezzanine. [Aug 2020, p.111]

A record lyrically concerned with trying to find inner peace and a sense of community within a troubled wider world. Perfect sounds and sentiments for these times, then. [Summer 2020, p.98]

Direct, alert, questing, it's a record that powerfully refuses to settle down. [Summer 2020, p.107]

The album's joy lies in being whisked seat-of-pants through moods, styles and tempos by a band always with pop glory in their sights. [Summer 2020, p.105]

The whole set is sumptuously produced and is the trio's most fully realised sonic adventure yet. [Summer 2020, p.98]

While she could let her hair down a little more, this record finds plenty of sweet spots between melancholy and euphoria. [Summer 2020, p.107]

This zeitgeist-friendly genre-hopping proves the trio are moving with the times, but it's satisfying to note that when they return to their starkly simple, powerful melodic trademark sound on closer Hallelujah, Haim remain in a league of their own. [Jun 2020, p.94]

Startisha is a marriage that nods to the old while leaning on the new, where results are more mixed. [Summer 2020, p.103]

Love, Death & Dancing finds Garratt charged with a new, bright energy. [Summer 2020, p.100]

The likes of Once and Now That I Found You suit the stripped-back aesthetic perfectly but it's the strings-assisted version of Sad Song that is the real showstopper here. [Jun 2020, p.100]

22 miniatures serving up sliced funk, jazz and soul with all the dexterity and precision of a sushi chef. [Jun 2020, p.102]

At its core On Sunset is the sound of someone genuinely excited about all the glorious possibilities the world of music has to offer. [Jul 2020, p.96]

It's an enchanting and quietly moving new chapter. [Jul 2020, p.104]

These songs' surfaces are fastidiously arranged - but in his delicate vocals and allusive, nervy lyrics, Westerman still stirs up darker, less elegantly curated depths. [Summer 2020, p.107]

Fittingly complex. [Summer 2020, p.107]

A couple of tracks featuring Kember's spoken word are skippable, but elsewhere such druggily joyous songs as Just A Little Piece Of Me and the triptastic I Can See Light Bend induce pleasant daydream states. [Summer 2020, p.105]

He's better when he approaches modern life from more oblique angles. [Summer 2020, p.104]

This is the sound of a band perfectly balanced and creatively ablaze. [Summer 2020, p.104]

The record's second half feels a little dreary after the spectacular opening, but the combination of doleful beauty and violent emotion that makes Hadreas's work extraordinary is never hard to find. [Summer 2020, p.104]

With strings, brass and a great deal of drama on his side, it's a beautiful escalation. [Summer 2020, p.103]

A record that pulls you in slowly over repeated listens. [Summer 2020, p.103]

There are funk-pop uplifts too, but it's when he slows the pace down that Eastgate really comes into his own. [Summer 2020, p.101]

It's wilfully rough around the edges. [Summer 2020, p.101]

Hypnotic stuff. [Summer 2020, p.100]

The connective sense of an on-the-hoof holiday from the day job, plus emotionally deep and humorous lyrics, make this a winner. [Summer 2020, p.98]

A masterpiece in mood setting, the apocalyptic Punisher aches with sadness, but Bridgers doesn't wallow. ... The end of the world rarely sounds this good. [Summer 2020, p.106]

Everything here sounds how Jehnny Beth is meant to sound, making To Love Is To Live a record as masterful as its creator is complicated. [Summer 2020, p.99]

While the ringtone-catchy Alive and fuzzed-up Stressy are obvious standouts, it's the reckless try-anything funk of Leader that holds best claim to being Flight's spirit guide. [Jul 2020, p.106]

Music of the mid-00s is undergoing a revival. London-based Sports Team are the fresh case. [Jun 2020, p.107]

It can occasionally cloy, but on The Prettiest Curse, Hinds are on fighting form. [Jun 2020, p.100]

A sublime tonic. [Jul 2020, p.113]

Mature, classy and a hard-earnedtriumph. [Jul 2020, p.105]