It is a track or two too long. ... But that aside, Why Me? Why Not. is a triumph, one that proves As You Were was no fluke and that Lia Gallagher is well and truly back on track. [Oct 2019, p.104]

Gloominess is nothing new in traditional American music, but Wolfe layers the sorrow with a compelling sense of urgency. [Oct 2019, p114]

An interesting stopover on a journey marked by constant curiosity. [Oct 2019, p.110]

Devendra Banhart's singular world remains as intoxicating as ever on the earthy, analogue-sounding Ma. [Oct 2019, p.106]

The thumping drums and syncopated string throughout still channel the 1980s, while Good News (Ya-Ya Song) harks back to the summer of 1999, all clipped guitar and MTV beats. [Oct 2019, p.114]

This narrative of self-empowerment might be superficially uplifting but it can also be rather inane, recalling the tween-friendly messages of positivity spread by pop powerhouses like Little Mix. That lightweight lyricism is in contrast to Mahalia's sophisticated sonic palate. [Oct 2019, p.109]

Sorrowful dance and defiant house beats wind throughout, bringing unity to the scattered sounds. [Oct 2019, p.109]

Tinariwen's most intoxicating record yet. [Oct 2019, p.113]

Imperfect but never less than interesting. [Oct 2019, p.110]

This late-period curio isn't one for the purists. ... A patchy affair. [Oct 2019, p.117]

Her innate spikiness keeps the schmaltz in check. [Oct 2019, p.108]

Although at times Lost Girls' nostalgia feels slightly generic, the record does benefit from Khan's ability to weave nuanced emotional portraits--something that imbues an overused retro aesthetic with intrigue once more. [Oct 2019, p.109]

Olsen's approach often defies logic, but the result is a dizzying leap into the unknown. [Oct 2019, p.110]

While preachiness rarely flatters battle-trained MCs, roller-coaster wordplay here makes the 34-year-old's sermons fun to untangle, even on harrowing subjects. [Oct 2019, p.107]

Retro, sure, but all the better for it. [Oct 2019, p.109]

None of it will scare the horses, but it's certainly the right side of unexpected. [Oct 2019, p.113]

Forever Turned Around shares the warm textures that made its predecessor so endearing, but finds the band's fortunes looking up. [Oct 2019, p.114]

Beautiful and inscrutable, it runs very deep indeed. [Sep 2019, p.117]

There's more than enough for a killer accompaniment to his book, but as a standalone album, Let love needs a tougher edit. [Oct 2019, p.106]

A bright, bold new talent just got bolder. [Oct 2019, p.106]

Highlights here include the disorientated '60s pop of I Can Recall It All and the snappy, Troggs-like title track. [Oct 2019, p.106]

Each of its 11 songs luxuriating in an unhurried, pillow-soft airiness that draws you in, as opposed to giving up secrets too willingly. Free of expectation, Shura's found her own pace. [Oct 2019, p.108]

Vernon is an expert curator of his emotions, even if i,i needs to let a little more air in under the glass at times. [Oct 2019, p.110]

A dark album for darker times--at 53, Saadiq is still ahead of the curve. [Oct 2019, p.110]

It won't bring down the establishment, but it does light a bonfire under their arses. [Oct 2019, p.113]

It's an impressive feat of engineering, but one that anyone other than ardent fans will struggle to find a way into. [Oct 2019, p.114]

With the group fermenting a heady stew of gnarled psych rock, the result is as droll as it is challenging. [Oct 2019, p.114]

eXquire has charisma to burn and the beats are engagingly woozy. But the contrast between eight-minute epic Nothing's What It Seems: Short Film and the sex raps of FCK Boy! and I Love Hoes show that some things never change. [Sep 2019, p.115]

Twelve Nudes is a deliriously fun, seriously thought-provoking record that manages to gratify on every level. [Sep 2019, p.113]

Set the controls for the heart of somewhere very uneasy, but rather beautiful. [Sep 2019, p.112]

It's a seductive, refreshing but gratifyingly purposeless ride. [Sep 2019, p.1110]

There's a lightness of touch from Turner and his band (and producer Catherine Marks) that makes No Man's Land a welcome diversion. [Sep 2019, p.116]

It's an impressive return. [Sep 2019, p.111]

Despite the title's hint at unruly emotion, the surface of Aalegra's music stays as polished as her voice. [Sep 2019, p.108]

Moving into attack mode suits the band, most strikingly on the monolithic Superbug and the effects-laden boogie of Mars For The Rich. [Sep 2019, p.112]

Face Stabber finds him in cosmic wigout mode, double majoring in late-'60s psychedelia and early-'70s Krautrock. [Sep 2019, p.115]

A debut album of rare potency. [Sep 2019, p.115]

It roars with confidence and vigour. [Sep 2019, p.106]

Despite the pluming black-metal geyser of Death Drop, it doesn't have the evil heft of 2017 predecessor World Eater. [Sep 2019, p.108]

At 10 songs and 35 minutes, Cala doesn't over stay its welcome, making its hypnotic pull all the greater. [Sep 2019, p.116]

It might well be their best album yet. [Sep 2019, p.116]

It mixes experimental sketches and DIY electronica with Animal Collective-like Peel Free's meditation on a life quixotic. At times Aokohio plays like a TV randomly switching channels. [Sep 2019, p.116]

We Are Not Your Kind marks a supremely confident reassertion of their capacity to pulverise. [Sep 2019, p.116]

Their first LP in five years falls well short of greatness, reheating past ideas to the point of cliche. [Sep 2019, p.111]

By simultaneously preserving the intimacy and honesty that made her initial work so striking, Any Human Friend sees Hackman wholly uncensored, and al the better for it. [Sep 2019, p.111]

It never tries to blow the house down. Rather, the soloists take turns to dance around each other, creating a supple and mellifluous air. [Sep 2019, p.115]

A pretty but very conventional collection of love song. [Sep 2019, p.112]

A highly polished R&B-pop collection about every millennial issue from empowerment and self-love to mental health. [Sep 2019, p.112]

Epton On Broadway Part 1, delivers elastic electro-funk with a knowing Italo-inspired wink. It's a winning formula they never stray far from. [Aug 2019, p.112]

It's gorgeous, summery, dreamy pop. [Sep 2019, p.108]

First Taste is a record exploding with ideas and interesting twists. [Sep 2019, p.109]

A couple of other tracks veer too close to pastiche, but taken as a whole, this is a rich, brave, eloquent piece of work. [Sep 2019, p.108]

What could've been an album of self-pity is transformed into a record of optimism and hope. [Sep 2019, p.111]

Making soaring beauty out of the disarray of her life. [Sep 2019, p.112]

It all ads up to an unlikely, if not unlovable nostalgia trip to a less fraught time. [Sep 2019, p.112]

A mix of '70s art-rock, hipster funk and sleek DeLorean pop. ... Shuman's loss is our gain. [Sep 2019, p.112]

Throughout the songs share a similar colour palette, but vary in tone, texture, technique. It's the sound of a band enjoying the discovery of their sound. [Sep 2019, p.115]

Turn Off The News captures his talents in full bloom. [Sep 2019, p.115]

All in all, the treatment effectively lights these already great songs from fresh angles, revealing hidden depths and added poignancy to what was already a strikingly powerful set of songs. [Sep 2019, p.116]

This splurge of hits and misses is a pure energy infusion. [Aug 2019, p.119]

Fever Dream is a dizzying rush of exuberance and emotion. [Aug 2019, p.115]

Perfectly encapsulate what Astronaut Buzz Aldrin described as space's "magnificent desolation." Includes new LP, All Mankind, making it truly indispensable. [Aug 2019, p.119]

Eerie yet often enthralling electronica. [Aug 2019, p.108]

[The] dub deconstruction of second LP Con Todo El Mundo illustrates the trio's virtuosity at sculpting pleasingly languorous, stripped-down soundscapes. [Aug 2019, p.113]

The projects most diverse and entertaining recording so far. [Aug 2019, p.109]

It's a record that turned out exactly as Hutchison intended. [Aug 2019, p.111]

Kokoko! are far more ramshackle affair than Mbongwana's dub-drenched African Funk, with "instruments" all but salvaged from junkyards. The effect is deliriously infectious--Gruff, chanted vocals, wandering basslines and often woozy FX that can render the whole disorientating and dreamlike. [Aug 2019, p.112]

The curiously carved music is a perfect frame. Another peak. [Aug 2019, p.115]

Although III doesn't offer anything to rival [2014's Beggin For Thread] in songwriting stakes, it does manage to mine thrills from an adventurous production. [Aug 2019, p.108]

This is gold for fans. Worth the £18 for the definitive version of lost classic Lift alone. [Aug 2019, p.119]

Wiggy, long-sought after 1976 LP utilises the trills, parps and hums of the pre-digital modular synthesizer to walk the circuit board between easy listening and ambient weirdness. [Aug 2019, p.119]

An album made for--and from--these times. [Aug 2019, p.112]

The shock of the new is gone, but they've rediscovered the art of surprise. [Aug 2019, p.111]

Sounds like the work of a band reinvigorated. [Aug 2019, p.117]

It struggles to impart much buoyant energy, with individual songs tending to sink into soporific mass of breathy vocals and mellow riffs. [Aug 2019, p.116]

Brilliant debut, splicing rock, modern pop and EDM. [Aug 2019, p.116]

Magician's Success and the Can-does-The-Normal bleep of Backstroke could be missing soundtracks to some experimental Cold War animation. [Aug 2019, p.116]

There are curveballs along the way--an unexpected bagpipe riff on Hey Ma, for instance--but largely this is a fast, furious record that sounds startlingly vital in these worrisome times. [Aug 2019, p.116]

I Love You. It's A Fever Dream is hardly cluttered, but it's those little details that really lift his fifth LP as The Tallest Man On Earth. [Aug 2019, p.116]

When it stumbles it can dissolve into musical Esperanto. But when the balance is right--as on Everybody's nod to original diversity icons Sly And The Family Stone--Depayse makes for scintillating listening. [Aug 2019, p.116]

Their songwriting doesn't always soar like their Hall of Fame inspirations, but the intense, super-saturated atmosphere is every bit as evocative as that advertised on the neon-lit cover. [Aug 2019, p.116]

Many of the early tracks feel over-packed with ideas, musical styles , thrusts of synth, bongos, spoken word and chemtrails of jazz. Later, though, when he settles into sparser ballad territory, there is a sense of him drawing into focus as an artist. [Aug 2019, p.116]

It's a winningly fluid mix of on-trend beats, intriguing cameos and subtle, Eastern-influenced melodies. [Aug 2019, p.113]

Birgy is a rare talent who, a decade into her career, might just be due her moment. [Aug 2019, p.112]

Amid the dominant electronics, the regular injections of big, sonorous basslines, clattering percussion and discordant jazz tones make for a thrilling ride that pulses with energy and adventure. [Aug 2019, p.112]

Heightened emotions stop Keepsake's soft-focus textures from slipping into the background. [Aug 2019, p.111]

Welcoming in the wider world as Goldlink's laid-back delivery flows with deceptive ease over Joke Ting's sinuous, tropical R&B, the Afrobeats-like bounce of Zulu Screams and Yard's captivating Caribbean riddim. [Aug 2019, p.111]

Not all of the dream-influenced Gold Past Life is sharp enough around the edges to propel Johnson away from cultdom, but the high-definition poignancy of Drawn Away and the title track's aggressive Bee Gees pastiche show him decisively pushing at the walls. [Aug 2019, p.111]

Possibly The Flaming Lips' most upliftingly utopian work since Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. [Aug 2019, p.111]

As haunting as it is enchanting. [Aug 2019, p.111]

An album that is very much more than the sum of its parts. [Aug 2019, p.108]

Transcends its hackneyed backstory on account of its sheer quality. [Aug 2019, p.108]

Stellar fifth album is a determined attempt to push back the genre's long-established boundaries, folding in everything from glitchy electronica and lysergic Americana to gnarled pop into their full-frontal noise. [Aug 2019, p.108]

It would be easy for Exiled to come across as a lame pastiche. That it's quite the opposite is testament to the quality of the songs--most notably C.S.A.M.'s anti-imperialism tirade and Brave New Church's attack on facism's resurgence--and the ferocious delivery. [Aug 2019, p.108]

It's an excellent album born out of modern dread. He's in his element. [Aug 2019, p.106]

There may be a lack of tub-thumping choruses, but he has an unerring ability to craft a warm, welcoming atmosphere. [Jun 2019, p.111]

Not an experience to be rushed, but it makes for quite a trip. [Summer 2019, p.112]

Yet for all the walks-ons, this remains a two-man show that celebrates the MC/producer relationship at the heart of hip-hop--and allows both talents to shine at their brightest levels. [Summer 2019, p.113]