Even though the album comes in at nearly 80 minutes, surprisingly it doesn’t feel too long. This is largely because it doesn’t get stuck in an Afrobeat rut.

It’s business as usual, only with a lusher production than expected and a tad too much emphasis on Western rock’s tired tropes in some of the licks.

Lovely album from a true one-off.

Back to Forever moves things into the 1980s--all fist-pumping verses and “Kids-in-America”-like big choruses.

One Breath draws on choppy emotions--grief, depression, anxiety--but Calvi commands the tides with the imperious authority of Barbara Stanwyck leading her posse in Sam Fuller's wild western Forty Guns.

There’s less barn-floor stomp than on previous albums, but Country Mile is still rousing, with trumpet, fiddle and much--occasionally dicey--harmonising.

This album shimmers.

The set list's rather obvious and the interstitial chat goes on a bit, but the heart of the man is there to be heard.

Ageing is a war they can’t win, but by facing it head-on, the Manics have found the spur to move forwards.

There’s something artificial and experimental in the project’s very DNA, but that need not be a bad thing, and it isn’t.

Though his appeal remains frustratingly specialist, with each release it becomes clearer that Callahan is the natural successor to Leonard Cohen.

It's his best group for eons.

Tales of Us has a stately pace and woozy beauty, with cinematic orchestration of swaying strings over acoustic guitar or mossy cello.

Expect more straightforward, big-vocal, soul-funk numbers, and fewer immediate hits. But compared with most R&B records, Monae is still lightyears ahead.

A sassy self-overhaul, AM issues lubricious R&B come-ons over a self-assured narrative arc with personality and open potential cannily spliced.

In spirit, their third album takes them back to their origins as an independent group from Glasgow making defiantly direct music in an age of detachment.

Brilliant, frustrating, thrilling and irritating. In other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from an Edward Sharpe album.

As an 19-track collection of rarities from the period 2003-present, TTEC is necessarily a mixed bag of styles and qualities.

There’s singing going on, all right, it sounds lovely, but little is conveyed other than loveliness. However, there’s no arguing with their authenticity or technical excellence.

After an average third LP and a four-year hiatus, the art-rockers are once again all kinds of excellent.

Honest, soulful, happy-sad, warm and welcoming.

Their self-titled debut, aptly enough, is one of the most bitterly anti-romantic albums this side of the third PiL offering.

Fluent melodies, nature metaphors, and expressive settings are the robust ties that bind these reveries.

“Organic moonshine music” she calls it, and no one could argue with that.

Funny, sad, perfect.

While the presiding atmosphere is retro, the Avila brothers' production keeps things properly real.

See You There revisits his classics as well as finding room for one new track and a beauty of an alternate version of "What I Wouldn't Give."

White Lies have just enough elegance and intrigue beneath the bluster to carry it off.