The oddball duo of Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez rage in a noise-rock playground, sometimes using instruments handmade in Sanchez's workshop. Amid the racket, Dyer's yearning gives political screeds the intimacy of a lover's spat. [Feb 2019, p.108]

A typically quirky commentary on contemporary culture's transient nature that's also attuned to the shifting moods of modern club sounds. [Feb 2019, p.116]

This is music that's lived life and doesn't stay in the same spot for long. It's a revelation. [Feb 2019, p.109]

While these tracks have definitely been soaked in the dour euphoria that The Cure specialise in, The Twilight Sad are very much their own band. [Feb 2019, p.116]

It never sounds over-considered or a grab for mainstream success, but rather the joy of an artist relishing new territory. [Feb 2019, p.106]

This thoughtfully constructed and often enchanting record manages to mark itself out from the crowd. [Feb 2019, p.110]

No new ground is broken here, but Tallies map their well-worn journey with a sure sense of direction, songwriting skills cutting through the dreamy fog. [Feb 2019, p.116]

It's well worth the wait. ... Boone's smoky vocals fit the desperation of Vlautin's mini-dramas perfectly, the band's country-soul swing evocatively solid. [Feb 2019, p.111]

It is their poppiest, most direct album yet, with a '60s swing permeating throughout its 10 tracks, but Cox has never sounded so disconnected from the world. ... It is a lean and often brilliant album. [Feb 2019, p.110]

Not a bad record, just one that needs to get out more. [Feb 2019, p.116]

It's claustrophobic at best, and, after a while, a little tiring. [Feb 2019, p.108]

In spite of an occasional sense of deja vu, this is a spacious, raw record that sees Tonra trying something new while holding on to the core that's propelled her thus far. [Feb 2019, p.111]

It's a strange, sometimes excellent record. [Feb 2019, p.119]

What Is Love? is a superior compilation, but it's held together by Clean Bandit's winning way with a catchy, wistful tune. [Feb 2019, p.111]

Completely unexpected, utterly brilliant. [Feb 2019, p.116]

Her solo incarnation is finer-framed, a collection of country-dusted ballads and Laurel canyon laments run through a Kurt Vile filter. [Feb 2019, p.115]

Forty albums into his career, Morrison might just be summoning a new creative burst. [Feb 2019, p.115]

A more approachable set that engulfs his melodramatic grumble with dizzy synths and sax from Chicago extraordinaire Mantana Roberts. [Feb 2019, p.115]

This is a refreshingly dark take on a tired format. [Feb 2019, p.112]

Melnyk's compositions wobble and hesitate, as if embarrassed by their beauty. Brief moments of optimism strike a philosophical tone, his notes dancing around an equilibrium that never quite arrives. [Feb 2019, p.112]

What gives the routine anew life is Knox's very modern talent for hiding barbed insults under lovely orchestration. [Feb 2019, p.112]

It works best when these elements are brought to the fore--the shadowy-voyage-into-the-unknown atmosphere of opener Rising or Rain's floating, dream-like synths--creating an eerie, retro-futurist soundworld to get lost in. [Feb 2019, p.112]

It's splendid listening, probably best appreciated horizontally. [Feb 2019, p.111]

Overall it's too stodgy to soar. [Feb 2019, p.108]

This 20-track spread, ending on caustic wig-out You're On Your Own, would make a worthy farewell. [Feb 2019, p.108]

Amor's debut is a collaborative exercise that plays to each memeber's individual strengths. [Jan 2019, p.106]

This is a soul-baring and lovely record. [Dec 2018, p.108]

Ora shines brightest on the album's calmer moments. [Jan 2019, p.113]

The hypnotic techno loop of Dicker's Dream provides forward momentum, though it's the more contemplative moments, from No Reflection's sparkle to Moon In Water's limpid ambience, which shine brightest. [Jan 2019, p.113]

Ultimately Sola's muse remains rooted in the nocturnal. [Jan 2019, p.113]

Best skip Stray Cat Blues though, a track so problematic it's a wonder Operation Yewtree haven't opened a file on it. [Jan 2019, p.117]

A Brief Inquiry... feel not just hugely entertaining and moving, but necessary. [Jan 2019, p.104]

Every one [of the songs on] here is a gem. [Jan 2019, p.107]

A minor work from a mighty band. [Jan 2019, p.110]

It's an album that shows the breadth of Harcourt's talent, certainly, but you can't help but miss the warm burr of his voice. [Jan 2019, p.109]

A bastion of control and quaking vulnerability that strikes a match against its sombre surrounds. [Jan 2019, p.113]

It's a journey that's wildly eclectic, hard to endure through every tangled turn, but impossible not to love. [Jan 2019, p.117]

It's not completely without merit--Brave New World has a certain swagger--nut this does stray bafflingly close to tribute band territory. [Jan 2019, p.114]

Hideously wrong, fantastically right. [Jan 2019, p.114]

It might not herald a return to the glory days but it does mean his recent creative slump has been definitively arrested. [Jan 2019, p.114]

High drama in every molecule. [Jan 2019, p.114]

Powerhouse is a string statement: galvanised, streamlined, charged emotionally until sparks fly. [Jan 2019, p.113]

A confident step on from 2015's Contradictions. [Jan 2019, p.113]

There's only 22 minutes of material here, including skits--but his edge has never been sharper. [Jan 2019, p.113]

Niggling familiarity is a recurring issue here. [Jan 2019, p.111]

It follows the million-dollar formula laid down on 2017's Evolve a little too closely. ... But as emotional Trojan Horses go, few do it better. [Jan 2019, p.110]

Every song here is an exquisitely constructed, shimmering pop gem, and jam-packed with Folick's unique perspective and clarion voice. A special thing. [Jan 2019, p.109]

Cantaloupe Island, for instance, hit the target, even if it's no match for the Herbie Hancock original. But with more cabaret material such as Me And My Shadow's louche duet with Sarah Silverman, you really wish you'd been there first time around. [Jan 2019, p.109]

Delta reveals layers few would have thought they had. Often though, these moments of interest get flattened by a wave of arena-ready bombast. [Jan 2019, p.108]

The first section--an intoxicating invocation of sea voyages and Bacchanalian rites--is richly instrumental, the second an otherworldly swirl of chants and ecstatic song that couldn't have been made by anyone but them. [Jan 2019, p.106]

It's as an articulation of grief that this record speaks most powerfully. [Jan 2019, p.106]

You get the feeling even the band think the joke's wearing a bit thin. [Jan 2019, p.106]

It's a quietly bewitching LP, storied and subtle and sweet. [Dec 2018, p.107]

It can ramble, but their landscape is so compelling, the scenic route is no punishment. [Dec 2018, p.108]

No great leap forward, then, just a solidly impressive album. [Dec 2018, p.111]

Merrie Land works best when these sounds and visions come together in an impressionistic haze. [Dec 2018, p.109]

A pleasure, of course. [Dec 2018, p.104]

There are moments of glorious burning distortion on Solara and Marchin' On, but its real riches are much more subtle. [Dec 2018, p.115]

The studio out-takes are where the real action is: a strummy Julia sounds like it could have been on Rubber Soul, the Take 17 version of Helter Skelter is thrillingly raw and there's a spectral early take of While My Guitar... he Beatles were clearly having a ball here. [Dec 2018, p.117]

Bought To Rot is, then, something of a palette cleanser: both wider in scope and lighter in tone. [Dec 2018, p.108]

He can take his more laid-back approach too far, however, sounding as if he might be about to nod off during Web So Dense, Yet the moments of genuine loveliness more than compensate for the occasional bouts of narcolepsy. [Dec 2018, p.111]

Forever isn't a huge creative leap forward, but at its best--particularly on dancefloor-friendly laments such as Beautiful Wreck--there are moments that hint at brilliance. [Nov 2018, p.109]

Ling's unhinged bluestocking vocals lift strange images out of the volatile electronica. [Dec 2018, p.104]

Although comprised of offcuts, it amounts to a great fourth and final record. [Dec 2018, p.104]

By turns eerie and enthralling, it's the kind of experiment [John] Cage would surely applaud. [Dec 2018, p.111]

It's a stunningly assured, deeply romantic and already one of the year's best. [Dec 2018, p.113]

Much of what follows sounds like he's set his overdriven synths to autopilot with vocalists Keith Flint and Maxim Reality reduced to the odd irate interjection. [Dec 2018, p.113]

Television Themes is entertaining on every count. [Nov 2018, p.102]

Hers is a mode that doesn't stray far from the pop status quo, but Glynne should still be applauded for mastering such a feelgood formula. [Nov 2018, p.106]

The Gypsy Faerie Queen, co-written and performed with Cave, and the Lanegan-scored They Come At Night, addressing the attack on the Bataclan, are among the LP's finest moments, but it's Born To Live, a tribute to the late Anita Pallenberg, that proves its most stirring. [Dec 2018, p.107]

More often than not, the discordant swamp of cacophony Leonard has long brought to his work threatens to overwhelm the freeform joy of his compositions. [Dec 2018, p.111]

He's sounding like a contender again, something only Borrell himself would have ever betted on. [Dec 2018, p.113]

What it lacks in earworms--with even the catchiest refrains served with a side of introspection--it makes up for it in its intoxicating portrait of desire. [Dec 2018, p.107]

What could be desperate instead dazzles, thanks to a combination of shiny pop smarts, hands-aloft anthemics and, in the case of Freddie Mercury-alike singer Luke Spiller, the kind of unembarrassable charisma they rarely manufacture any more. [Dec 2018, p.114]

At its best you're reminded of Yorke's eminent skill: a fluency in dark, otherworldly romance that makes the alien sound familiar. [Dec 2018, p.106]

A deconstruction of heartbreak pulling out all the emotional cogs and catches with the precision of a watchmaker. [Dec 2018, p.110]

Saturn isn't afraid to show her playful side. [Dec 2018, p.105]

A curio, for sure, but worth saddling up for. [Dec 2018, p.114]

It's not always easy, but it is frequently brilliant. [Dec 2018, p.108]

Here If You Listen evokes CSN&Y Deja Vu than a Croz solo LP. [Dec 2018, p.107]

A record that twists in thrilling shapes but rarely gets tangled. [Dec 2018, p.111]

If a tad skronky in parts and slight at 28 minutes, the deep grooves of IC-01 pull you in. [Dec 2018, p.114]

The propulsive Fast Forward proves there's still a shard of emo in their hearts, but mostly this feels like a bold reboot. [Dec 2018, p.114]

It all points towards an altogether shinier future. [Dec 2018, p.114]

Krell's exploration into inner space working best when opening the door wide enough to let a little light in. [Dec 2018, p.108]

An expansive journey into a singular imagination. [Dec 2018, p.107]

It's full of compact songs that steal your heart and leave. [Dec 2018, p.107]

The radio sessions on this nine-disc set show that their most anthemic songs could just be as captivating in an intimate setting, but it's the live sets here that really illustrate their story. [Dec 2018, p.117]

There is a danger it might all drift away in a haze of gossamer-light stylishness if it weren't for the interesting places they nudge these gentle songs. [Nov 2018, p.112]

These songs might not defeat Fu Manchu, but they're a fine addition to Richard Ashcroft's hand. [Nov 2018, p.100]

The music is stripped-back but always eclectic. [Nov 2018, p.104]

Left to her own devices, she radically strips back her earlier material and it works. [Nov 2018, p.111]

The definition of a mixed bag. [Nov 2018, p.109]

A brace of new collaborations with Canadian duo Tegan And Sara, whose pop sparkle illuminates Bad Ones' nocturnal tech-house, reveal yet another facet to Dear's ever-changing modes. [Nov 2018, p.105]

This inventive debut mixtape continues the journey with no previously released tracks but much ammo for his claim to the capital's diasporic underground. [Nov 2018, p.111]

His seventh album sees Vile cement his place as an artist following his own lead. [Nov 2018, p.103]

Fabulously vivid fourth solo album. [Nov 2018, p.106]

Blackly comedic, this is a great debut. [Nov 2018, p.112]