While the overt campiness on display in Laibach’s The Sound Of Music has been toned down here, the choice to pepper the set with familiar German showtunes (“Flieger, Grüß Mir Die Sonne” and “Das Lied Vom Einsamen Mädchen”) feels ominous when paired with the stomach-turning paintings by Gottfried Helnwein on the cover. [May 2022, p.48]

A collection of grungy, haunting songs that sound and feel timeless. Led by Hersh’s velvety grunts, this is the sort of rock that borrows the best from all the music’s variations to create something familiar yet surprisingly fresh. [May 2022, p.56]

On the opening “Asynchronous Intervals”, Golding’s beautifully burnished tenor tone – sumptuously recorded here – plays against free drums that gradually morph into a slowly burning groove. On “ActiveMultiple-Fetish-Overlord”, that tone is broken up against Luthert’s palpitating, roiling low end work. “After The Machine Settles” is muscular jazz rock; “Because Because” with multitracked/echoing soprano, is a stirring conclusion. [May 2022, p.58]

The precision and control and grand guignol gothery are all still in place – but there’s also surprise (check the startlingly clean and gorgeous nine minute odyssey of “They Move Below”) and a palpable energy the band haven’t shown in years. [May 2022, p.55]

The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

The album primarily features solo guitar, harmonica and lap steel, all cloaked in gauzy atmospheres, and often conjuring mental images of a sprawling, rural America. The most compelling moments on the album make a hazy blend of guitar twang and swirling electronics, as on “Outskirts, Dreamlit” whose nostalgic melody tumbles almost without a sense of time. [May 2022, p.52]

Marc’s production skills are impressive; he layers beautifully recorded organic instruments with synths and sampled vinyl crackle, adding just enough reverb and bass boom to bring it all to vivid life. [May 2022, p.50]

He remains a fascinating and fearless artist. But one can’t help but miss the outre experiments of Terror Management, where he bombed away over noise rock flurries and sepulchral beat loops alike. [May 2022, p.54]

Balance[d] between the exquisite – lines aching with elegant age and restraint, chords feeling bruised and heavy with knowing (“Hymn”, “An Intimate Distance”) – and the slightly underdeveloped (“Bells”, “Innocence”). ... The Turning Year is calming and often very beautiful. [May 2022, p.44]

If takes on his own catalogue feel lazy on paper, it’d need a heart of stone to resist something like 1977’s “Materialist” which in this version is probably the dubbiest and most typically Sherwood moment on here. Most importantly, perhaps, that voice has lost none of its storied opulence. [Apr 2022, p.42]

Valentine has gotten undeniably skilled at being slick; even at its weirdest, this record is quite easy on the ears. ... A welcome tonic. [Apr 2022, p.51]

Continuance is one of the better examples of their prodigiousness, its delights ranging from the piano glissando of “Reese’s Cup” to the fuzzy jazz fusion keyboards of “Kool & The Gang”. [Apr 2022, p.59]

Even beyond this shared ending/beginning, the new material flows like a continuation of the previous album, but with a more progressive and tenser edge to it. [Apr 2022, p.56]

Guerilla Toss’s music is now disarming in its earnest post-digital exuberance and cutesy directness, while a fragile thematic framework holds it all together. In the process of getting here, they traded their convulsive rock progressions for slowly decaying walls of texture and Kassie Carlson’s Auto-Tuned vocals. The effervescent bangers “Live Exponential” and “Mermaid Airplane” are especially awesome. [Apr 2022, p.56]

Raum is the sound of a band who have figured out how to write their future while simultaneously holding meaningfully to their traditions. [Apr 2022, p.50]

Limbs feels more emotionally erratic than its predecessor, and even more compelling for it, teetering between interiority and connection. [Apr 2022, p.45]

Screen Time is comprised of ambient guitar music, more often than not disinterested in rhythm and more focused on creating a feel and vibe that’s both haunting and cinematic. [Mar 2022, p.52]

The six loose, expansive tracks on this collection offer a glimpse into the more convivial domestic recording scenario the band were enmeshed in at that time. Free from the need to shape these ideas into conventional structures you hear the band at their most Can-like. [Mar 2022, p.52]

What makes this Johnson’s most compelling album to date is its unexpected emotive clout. In submerging the melodic substance of the songs in rolling drones, it is able to approach almost undetected and slink away with guile. [Mar 2022, p.50]

For this album to be worthwhile, Hampson has to do more than revisit his old, gold moments. At the same time, this incarnation of Loop functions partly as a reassessment of what made the sound they landed on so glorious in the first place. Both notions can coexist, and for the most part they do, with loud, laudable abandon. [Mar 2022, p.48]

Much of the album feels like this – danceable songs with lyrics that urge thought about the state of the world and your own place within it. The most engaging moments are those where Hval lets herself escape into the pure fun of making jams. ... On a quarantine album, a little bit of escapism feels right. Hval continues to ponder philosophy in her writing, but throughout Classic Objects she brings light to her fears and memories too. [Mar 2022, p.48]

She’s an astonishing live performer, but this is the next best thing and most likely a shoo-in for the best concert recording of 2022. [Mar 2022, p.46]

The album is consistently fast-paced, a simple but effective trick to amp up its pop thrills. [Mar 2022, p.46]

A few of these ten songs burble with easy rhythms – “Lye” rocks with crunchy, prog rock horns looped by The Alchemist. But overall, the tone of SICK! feels contemplative, slowly unfurling with repeated listens even as Earl crams over 20 minutes of thoughts into the work, with no hooks to leaven the intensity. [Mar 2022, p.43]

While several guests appear on the album – Tool’s drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor, among others – Krüller feels gorgeously desolate, befitting a world in a dire state. [Mar 2022, p.42]

Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting and vocals have never been more inclusive yet forebodingly sui generis, sealing that simultaneous conviviality and strangeness that makes Big Thief’s music so addictive, and the band have got tighter and warmer from the years of touring that preceded the album’s creation. [Mar 2022, p.42]

The music is sungura, an upbeat modern pop relative of chimurenga, but the Gonora Sounds take on the style is somewhat more rugged that most. Isaac’s drumming is a downpour of rolls and patters, while his father’s guitar drips cascades of fireflies. [Feb 2022, p.60]

He hits every track as if he’s smashing an Idaho potato. [Apr 2022, p.59]