An unmitigated success. [Summer 2019, p.108]

He's smart to pair Angel Olsen with a beat from the understated end of Queen's playbook, but it doesn't always work with Camila Cabello sounding oddly generic on Find U Again. [Summer 2019, p.116]

A Bath Full of Ecstasy feels like a glorious concentration of Hot Chip's skills. [Summer 2019, p.111]

Destroyer attempts to shoehorn more incongruous elements into an already busy mix. [Summer 2019, p.108]

Quietly, and confidently, Two Door Cinema Club march on. [Summer 2019, p.116]

Scott's energy and enthusiasm burns as brightly as ever. [Summer 2019, p.116]

Transience finally give its long-serving creator the option of stepping off the road and retiring on a high. [Summer 2019, p.116]

Atlanta Millionaires Club radiates a warm Muscle Shoals glow. ... Yet there's the unmistakable shape of '90s R&B and gloopy modern-day hip-hop moving beneath the more classicist surface. [Summer 2019, p.116]

A solid, rather than remarkable record. [Summer 2019, p.115]

Its gorgeousness isn't always matched by a real statement of intent. [Summer 2019, p.112]

There's nothing transformative enough to make this more than a placeholder and plenty that is kitsch. [Summer 2019, p.112]

This debut full-length channels abrasive energy akin to early SoundCloud rap. [Summer 2016, p.111]

You can take the boy out of the working man's club but yo can;t take the working man's club out of the boy. [Summer 2019, p.111]

The album is so cacophonous that it borders on the unpleasant. Yet there are redemptive moments. [Summer 2019, p.111]

An album overflowing with ambition and ideas. [Summer 2019, p.109]

Even when they do go a bit hippy-dippy, it's rarely at the expense of something you can hum along to. [Summer 2019, p.115]

A clever marriage of weighty words and sonic delight. [Summer 2019, p.115]

Help Us Stranger is Jack White and Brendan Benson's love letter to classic rock. [Summer 2019, p.114]

Rakei's gently wistful tone fits the general mood, though it's something of a relief when he shifts gears. [Summer 2019, p.115]

A classy return. [Summer 2019, p.108]

At times, it's too mellow. [Summer 2019, p.108]

These 20 songs unfold with mostly spartan acoustic guitar and voice arrangements, near-segueing from one to the other But the cumulative emotional impact is profound. [Summer 2019, p.117]

It's an excellent record that both hits immediately and gets better with repeated listens. [Summer 2019, p.112]

The production values here exceed most of the finished works: not so much blueprints as purpleprints. [Summer 2019, p.118]

A true master in career-best form. [Summer 2019, p.112]

Three Demons finds Guadalupe Plata fully charged and on devilishly good form. [Summer 2019, p.111]

Rogers remains her forcefully idiosyncratic self throughout, endlessly impressive in her ability to draw on electro-pop history yet not be beholden to its past. [Summer 201, p.115]

Theirs is a cerebral electronica, characterised by slippery time signatures, off-kilter drum patterns and baroque flourishes. Their 10th album, Polymer, distills all these traits. [Summer 2019, p.115]

It's the beeping, whirring creations that shine most, signalling that Hannon and his trademark wit and empathy are still there. [Summer 2019, p.108]

The results range from extraordinary to bemused but they are never dull. [Summer 2019, p.111]

If the delivery mechanism is different, the payload is pure Bruce. [Summer 2019, p.106]

This is Madonna on top of the world, looking down on creation, God complex at cruising attitude. [Summer 2019, p.110]

This is not a document to be eaten all at one, maybe, but it brilliantly records Dylan's skill for interpreting his own songs. [Summer 2019, p.118]

It takes a while for these hushed, subtle songs to change the mood of a room, but when they do, it's as striking as sun through the blinds. [Summer 2019, p.108]

A glorious reminder of Perry's unique musical gifts and unhinged imagination. [Jul 2019, p.115]

It makes for a meditative, transportive listening experience, exemplified best on the elegiac piano and swelling strings of opener Haar. [Jul 2019, p.109]

Marigold and Paradise Drive show they aren't short of thrills, but Levitation's title track, which despite its seven minutes and two parts, never achieves the promised lift-off, and encapsulates Flamingods's shortcomings. [Jul 2019, p.110]

It's a restrained record that doesn't suffocate its epic songs with epic instrumentation. [Jul 2019, p.114]

Exhilarating debut album. Its 11 breathless tracks bottle the barely-controlled explosion of energy that masquerades as their live show, then sprays it all out again like cheap lager. [Jul 2019, p.111]

Musically, it's still dense and intense, with funk, jazz and electronics rubbing up against bumpy hip-hop. But the heavyweight line-up brings with it a welcome focus on songs. [Jul 2019, p.110]

It's undoubtedly a sad voice she presents on Reward, but one that is unlike anyone else's. [Jul 2019, p.107]

Fredo does little to soften the edges of his rough-cut persona for this solo debut album. [Mar 2019, p.115]

Staples's fire is undiminished. [Jul 2019, p.114]

From start to finish, an impressive piece of work. [Jul 2019, p.114]

It does thrillingly refine the group's electric explorations of numinous spaces both minuscule and gigantic. [Jul 2019, p.114]

A long and winding and faithfully atmospheric cover of Pink Floyd's Echoes that closes the album is perhaps the main attraction here, but too much of what precedes it tends to waft away into the ether. [Jul 2019, p.114]

Fever Breaks is sharp and lean. [Jul 2019, p.114]

These songs sparkle with a gentle joy, their warm softness as alluring as a swimming pool on a hot afternoon. [Jul 2019, p.109]

There are less arresting moments--the pensive The Silence In Between, for example--but they are the eye of an impressive electronic storm. [Jul 2019, p.110]

There are suggestions of better directions not taken. [Jul 2019, p.113]

Very much an album of two halves. [Jul 2019, p.113]

A beguiling, constantly surprising record. [Jul 2019, p.113]

There's enough deviation from Lowe's fastidiously tasteful norm to prevent YU descending into dullness. [Jul 2019, p.113]

Here they lean too heavily on space-age boogie-rock. [Jul 2019, p.110]

Though probably not the best place for the uninitiated to start exploring the work of this often brilliant and evocative musician, at the same time, songs such as the aching South rank up there with his best. [Jul 2019, p.110]

A true leap forward for an artist maybe only just coming into his own after 25 years. [Jul 2019, p.110]

Mostly their ebullient sixth LP is clever and kooky enough to be cherished on its own terms. [Jul 2019, p.110]

Too much feels half-baked. While the songs aren't without charm, they're torpedoed by Doherty's distracted, sloppy performance. [Jul 2019, p.109]

Throughout, Fields's gutsy vocals are utterly undimmed by age. [Jul 2019, p.109]

A fitting send-off. [Jul 2019, p.109]

While their third third album won't win any prizes for innovation, it's pumped full of the kind of GM-modified anthems expressly tooled for both sticky-floored clubs and gigantic arenas. [Jul 2019, p.109]

May be his most sad-eyed collection, but it's also his best yet. [Jul 2019, p.109]

PROTO sometimes hews close to well-worn dystopian tropes, and the child narrator and see-sawing breath sounds of Extreme Love are undeniably annoying. But Herndon's creative restlessness and textural mastery sustain interest across 45 minutes. [Jul 2019, p.108]

Ribbons feels almost like a homecoming. [Jul 2019, p.106]

A tripwire-taut production from pop magus Cam Blackwood ensures these bleak but brilliant punk confessions grip like a vice, even as you fear for Carter's mental health. [Jul 2019, p.106]

A record whose combination of chirpy choruses and sharp, dark lyricism is difficult to resist. [Jul 2019, p.106]

These songs might waver and stumble, but they still feel like a successful step forward. [Jul 2019, p.106]

[It takes a while] for the songs to emerge out of the mist. When they do, they stand among the band's best work. [Jul 2019, p.104]

It's remarkably poised, a level gaze that could give a little more away. [May 2019, p.111]

This is pop music with a pint in its hand and joy in its heart. [Jun 2019, p.112]

Thrilling and vital sounding stuff. [May 2019, p.111]

Highly eccentric and blisteringly beautiful--a record destined to worm its way deep under the skin. [Jun 2019, p.117]

Morby's songs move from the grandiose to hushed confessionals and by the time it ends with Dylan-like O Behold the entire journey feels like a revelation. [Jun 2019, p.115]

On this excellent record, she maps a route forward. [Jun 2019, p.109]

Longer, looser, less eager to impress, and more American than its predecessors ... Vampire Weekend's prettiest album is also their weightiest. [June 2019, p.106]

So much here seems big and bright, but underneath there's a greyer area to explore. [June 2019, p.116]

This latest installment unearths yet more rare and diverse dancefloor gems. [June 2019, p.119]

It's a mode that has little time for novelty or subtlety but plenty of potential to crowd-please on both sides of the pond. [June 2019, p. 108]

Short on visceral thrills, but long on soul and dexterity. [May 2019, p.108]

Historic recreation pop, yes, but it presents beautifully. [June 2019, p.111]

While it doesn't measure up to such great break-up albums as Beck's Sea Change or Blur's 13, Social Cues still possesses emotional heft. [June 2019, p.108]

The distance from here to early triumphs Entertainment! and Solid Gold seems like a long one. [Jun 2019, p.112]

Treading the line between artful and emotive, it's a quiet riot. [May 2019, p.112]

Simons and Rowlands are making music that has the dizzying plasticity of their best work. [Jun 2019, p.113]

Beautiful stuff. [Jun 2019, p.116]

Whereas on record the songs tended towards the delicate, here they're fleshed out, with a richer sound that evokes The Zombies or Love. More vital, is how the set-up re-imagines earlier material. [Jun 2019, p.116]

The net result is an album that hangs suspended between Earth and the stars. [Jun 2019, p.116]

A thrilling record of an artist in his element. [Jun 2019, p.115]

What A Boost sounds like somebody trying to make a confusing world slot together in a way that ultimately makes sense. [Jun 2019, p.115]

Her dark theatrics dominate 68 Screen, evoking '70s punks X-Ray Spex with a call-and-response about women's commodified bodies. [Jun 2019, p.115]

Rarely has a band justified the attention put upon them so beautifully. [Jun 2019, p.112]

Touching and thoughtful, these 16 tracks are tended with the same care Clark brought to his beautiful storytelling. [Jun 2019, p.111]

The threadbare production which previously stretched ideas to breaking point has been bolstered, adding a warmth to the jangly 626 Bedford Avenue and cocooning the break-up ballad My Japs in plucked acoustics and distant percussion. [Jun 2019, p.111]

This surprising, haunting album will speak powerfully both to her peers and to anyone who remembers how youth can sometimes feel like an overwhelming weight. [Jun 2019, p.110]

Psychodrama is a bold statement from a rapper unafraid to ask tough questions of himself--and the often unforgiving world around him. [Jun 2019, p.108]

A sense of will-this-do? hangs over proceedings, from its terse 10-track running time to the soporific delivery. [Jun 2019, p.108]

Even if diverse moods elude them, they channel disenchantment superbly. [Jun 2019, p.108]

Both enticing and disorientating in equal measure. [Jun 2019, p.116]