When the singing’s done the guitar returns, its tone so stretched and distorted that you can’t quite tell whether it’s purging or celebrating the lyric’s outcome. Are the voice and guitar together or not? It’s complicated.

Gat is a gnarly and thoroughly exciting guitarist, and somehow Universalists is aberrantly gorgeous and totally fried. [Aug 2018, p.68]

“Stir The Sea” coasts on a choice yowly blues metal riff, but teased out slow jams like “Arcurlarius – Burke” are equally their forte. The vocal resemblance of Brian Markham and Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood helps crystallise a bubbling under comparison with the latter, although Dommengang aren’t in The Puppets’ league when it comes to ingenuity or, frankly, personality. [Aug 2019, p.64]

Balancing the 31 minute title song is “Heart And Soul” – another surprise, in that it’s contemplative and piano based, written by former bassist Derek Spaldo, who, for geographical reasons, has largely taken his leave of the band to make way for Andy Cush. It’s the epic title track that carries the whole thing though, making One Step Behind another step beyond for these Peoples. [Oct 2019, p.52]

“Simon Says” and “Pimpin’” prove she works well with Juicy J as long as he stays away from the mic. But “Hood Rat Shit” is the real highlight, a moment where for all the gory details her glee is more Dennis The Menace than Lil Kim. [Aug 2019, p.68]

The band’s template has barely changed over those years but that isn’t to suggest a lack of artistic growth. “How Deep It Goes”, the opening track from their tenth album Let It All In, is a prime example of their peculiar progression as it exudes the reassuring warmth of California songsmiths of yesteryear yet still somehow manages to wedge a wash of icy interplay between Huemann’s guitar and Matthew Pierce’s synths smack dab in the middle of the track. [May 2020, p.48]

From the bottom of a spring-reverb well, Harris strums mournful, incoherent songs like "Vital" and "being Her Shadow," but intersperses them with creepy textural mood pieces. [Feb 2013, p.50]

Sometimes the album feels more like a document of studio experiments than a collection of fully realised, narrative-driven compositions, but they remain remarkably effective at imposing similarly conflicting emotions on the listener as on Herndon's avatar.[Dec 2012, p.65]

Protect Your Light, recorded at the late Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey, is the group’s warmest work yet. [Sep 2023, p.57]

Along with the usual guitar/bass/drums/vocals, the group have added vibraphone, theremin and back-up singers, a move that has significantly enhanced their sound and bolstered the sci-fi boogie that rolls through the songs. [Nov 2022, p.70]

The duo fashion a collection of bright funny and often extremely beautiful songs that bristle with invention. [Aug 2010, p.58]

In the best way, Barber and Pearson distil their knowledge and experimentation into something which sounds like the raw essence of a musical personality [Aug 2008]

Where the jazz content is foregrounded however, the music is less convincing. ... Garcia’s tone bears more than a passing resemblance to Kamasi Washington’s, with a similar paucity of harmonic complexity and grandstanding solos conveying an earnest seriousness that mistakes widescreen emoting for genuine emotional content. [Sep 2020, p.52]

McCartney’s infamous whimsy tempered by his refreshed penchant for odd sonic detail (the spectral guitar tangles that trail through “Find My Way” for instance) and an aged voice whose natural erosion is more feature than fault. [Feb 2021, p.58]

Almost every track has a fearsome radiance to its high end and even in those parts without drums or squared off structures, the surges of sound recall collective dancefloor ecstasies. [Dec 2015, p.44]

Spellbinding throughout, this music may invite you to check out of the world, but only long enough to help you recover and face it again. [May 2019, p.48]

Though some of the genre mixing does feel abrupt rather than fully integrated – for all its charms, “Asha The First” is a bit overstuffed – the album largely works, unified by Washington’s unwavering vision and exploratory spirit. [May 2024, p.58]

As it is, it's a new Godspeed album and it's a good one, but when you have set your standards as high as they have, it can only seem like a failure. [Nov 2012, p.59]

So many groups enthused by punk's initial promise have done little more than dance around in its corpse. Sleaford Mods have managed to animate its ghost. [Jul 2015, p.52]

Like Portishead, this album may very well achieve background ubiquity, but that should not be allowed to obscure the strangeness and currency of this record. [Mar 2011, p.46]

IDLSIDGO is monumental in its willingness to just be a great rap album. [May 2015, p.59]

He has the knack of E-40, of Slick Rick, of George Clinton, for whipping up ugly shit with infantile rhyme to make it taste like candyfloss. On “Outside!”, he turns “Who want to die” into a sprightly singalong. The cheer proves to be a cover for both an experimental edge more disruptive than that of Some Rap Songs and a hefty impact when Vince does finally start to crumble. [Feb 2019, p.56]

What on the record might be the magnified pop of dust and surface scratch, here could represent imperfections on a cosmic scale--the debris of space and time, swallowed and digested. Where Basinski succeeds is the tone he adopts; rather than the heavy dread of inevitable supermassive doom, these sections are somehow wide-eyed and full of slowly drifting wonder. [Mar 2019, p.49]

One can’t help but be in awe of the production mastery on display and the confidence with which Matmos have turned a man’s creative remains into a freshly expressive musical instrument. [Jun 2022, p.51]

Armed with limited instrumentation and Knapp’s understated vocal, the album’s seven tracks take on a form of storytelling, made alive with synthesized fluttering bat wings, bouts of sax squall and sinewy electronic backbeats. [Jul 2022, p.53]

Only time will tell which albums will ring out as genuine artefacts and which will be revealed as little more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. [Apr 2017, p.46]

Rampen feels more expansive than much recent output – it’s certainly longer, but its panoramic character is neither purely durational nor new for the band. Their affinity for a kind of psych folk balladry has been clear since at least as early as their covers of Lee Hazlewood’s “Sand” (1985) and Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew” (1987). Rampen calls both to mind, but the work it’s most consistent with is 1996’s Ende Neu, an album of latent possibilities in the pit of a creative block. [Jun 2024, p.48]

Lie Down In The Light is arguably the most various of the records since the own-songs covers album, but it illustrates one of the perversities of Oldham's songwriting. [July 2008, p.45]

Sunny Border Blue marks a return to a less considered, rawer style, and to lyrics which are nakedly confessional, mercilessly exposing her own and other people's weaknesses. [#206, p.67]

Obviously this is well-trodden ground, but even on the brink of corniness, the crunchy satisfaction of Sqürl’s sound makes them extremely listenable. [Jun 2023, p.60]

This set represents a powerful statement on multiculturalism without any need for proselytising. [Jun 2017, p.74]

The undulating, snarling “Black Transit Of Jupiter’s Third Satellite” is a bubbling 12 minute antimatter expanse, the pot of black gold at the end of this particular rainbow. The journey to get there is ravishingly bleak and massaging. [Jan 2020, p.58]

This album will be warmly welcomed by On-U Sound and reggae fans everywhere. [Oct 2023, p.57]

Such excursions don’t amount to the group reinventing their personal wheel, but at just over an hour, this album is about the length of an average Necks performance, and at least as exploratory. [May 2020, p.58]

The album retains a taste for annihilation. [Dec 2015, p.56]

Carter has created a complete work that simultaneously looks back over its shoulder and glares straight into the eye of the future. [Apr 2018, p.50]

He's come up with a debut album that combines vaulting ambition, real musicality and a deceptive deftness of touch. [Jun 2008, p.47]

Their debut album is even more extreme. [May 2012, p.57]

It isn't always the role of political music to come up with solutions. But nothing could be more urgent than the questions SLeaford Mods pose. [Apr 2014, p.58]

Earl has delivered a remarkably clear and impressive record. [Sep 2016, p.52]

Packed with energy and furious with ideas. [#269, p.45]

It’s gorgeous stuff, but whether the future she imagines is entropic or hopeful, it’s hard to say. [Mar 2024, p.57]

Cinematic, otherworldy landscapes and expert playing aside, there's something else to the album. Anderson flips expectations of where refrains or rhythms might go. [Jul 2016, p.46]

A slice of otherworldly frolics that does both of its inspirations credit. [Dec 2021, p.61]

The result is an album which will satisfy fans of all the band’s distinct phases without necessarily ingratiating itself to anyone. [Oct 2017, p.61]

The delicacy and lightness of the album is underpinned by mesmerising, rich textures, constantly buzzing and clunking away beneath the surface. [Jan 2019, p.70]

Across these tracks, the searching spirit of Virginia Wing is often challenged, its questions far from being answered – but the album feels more true to life because of it. [Feb 2021, p.56]

This is jazz that’s best heard at maximum volume. [Apr 2018, p.62]

Both totally entertaining and instantly accessible to both avant rap devotees and curious passers-by. [#246, p.66]

The trio’s interpretation of the material is highly sophisticated, with the freshness and spontaneity of a newly minted band. [Aug 2022, p.56]

No sound is extraneous, every lick is needed, a minimalist musicianship that focuses you on Jeff Tweedy’s heartbreaking words. Their best in ages. [Jan 2020, p.71]

This is a remarkably rich and complex achievement. [#267, p.52]

Masculin Féminin documents a youthful band impulsively pouring noise into rock, free of machismo or the urge to ape what was then hip. [Oct 2016, p.61]

As half-familiar figures and distorted memories of long forgotten acid mood jams drift in and out of view, one is reminded that sometimes the most exotic species are those living in our own minds. [Sep 2016, p.50]

Supple openendedness of texture and the cyclic reoccurrence become one and the same as the music goes on and on – liberating words in time, rather than setting them in stone. [Sep 2020, p.46]

A combination of versatility (Lucas is both singer and multiinstrumentalist) and judicious use of the recording studio makes Vanishing Twin’s fourth artist album devoid of voids. It’s perhaps their best release to date. [Dec 2023, p.52]

One of 2021’s most impressive and poignant examples of progressive rock? Damn the torpedoes, let’s go with that. [Nov 2021, p.62]

While visually hereditary is fatally flawed by its failure to frighten, sonically it is as scary as hell. [Sep 2018, p.61]

An unpretentious work of Romanticism - that holds space for the infinite experience imbued in a poem, a song, or a voice. [May 2021, p.55]

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

Diehard metalheads will continue to grumble, but Opeth are never going back to their old sound, and with Sorceress they’ve proved the wisdom of their choice. [Oct 2016, p.57]

The only drawback to this semi-collage approach is that many tracks are too brief. [#256, p.51]

Double Figure is as good as anything they have done. [#207, p.65]

It's the most vibrant and vital he's sounded in a long while. [Nov 2014, p.64]

It's not just Hertz's technical nous that makes Flatland so compelling, but his commitment to forging something lucid, plastic and expressive, music that blurs the line between hyper reality and the topsy-turvy world of imagination. [Dec 2014, p.51]

Rich and resonant. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Washington can flirt with bombast and kitsch, but his commitment is undeniable and the tunes are great. [Oct 2017, p.68]

Where Tuttle takes a more detached standpoint he’s less successful. Perhaps attempting to mimic corporate blandness, “Cambridge Drive Shopping Centre” mixes field recording of shoppers with a dogged guitar motif to fast diminishing effect. For the most part however he keeps cynicism at bay, a welcoming guide to his kingdom of everyday beauty. [Jul 2020, p.53]

A remarkable turn in the road for a remarkable composer. [Mar 2021, p.55]

Where NO was extreme in its attack, W opts to let the group dream, as a more acoustic angle is explored – with Wata’s ephemeral vocal being an ever present guiding spirit force that trails like incense smoke through the songs. Things eventually kick off, however, with “The Fallen”, a time-tested metal guitar dirge with an electronic sting in its tail that effortlessly reverts back to Boris at their amplifier worshipping best. [Feb 2022, p.58]

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]

Smith and Unthank magnetise throughout with their combined vocals, even on unaccompanied songs such as “Captain Bover” (the story of Tyneside press gangs), melodically entwined, but contrasting soft and rugged. [Feb 2023, p.59]

Thankfully it offers something much more than the sum of its parts and references. It speaks to our present moment with a yearning generosity and the kind of deep knowing that only comes with age. [Mar 2023, p.51]

Lines like “History repeating itself” and “She never lost hope/When life was so hard” feel a bit generalised – the sentiment might have benefitted from a more nuanced or poetic approach. Overall however the decision to give the heroic and celebratory a wide berth is a sound one, making way for something much darker and more unsettling – a reminder that doing the right thing in times of widespread fear and conflict is seldom easy. [May 2024, p.49]

Sounds as if it could have been recorded in the city 50 years ago with a hotshot producer like Bones Howe or Curt Boettcher at the helm. ... “If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will” might be the best example of this delicate balance, with the track “Fools” being the second; even though that song sometimes leans into mid-1970s schlock territory best left to Boz Scaggs or Andrew Gold. [Jun 2019, p.65]

A further cover from that era, Corrosion Of Conformity’s “Loss For Words”, features alongside three previously unheard songs by the teenage group: “Methematics” stands out as a twisty prog-thrasher with shades of Voivod. It still amounts to a bit of a frippery, and one doesn’t have to look far to find a fan of the band cheesed off at Mr Bungle doing this rather than writing a follow-up to 1999’s California, but they don’t owe anyone anything. [Dec 2020, p.52]

It builds on themes and ideas introduced earlier in a clear and discernible way. ... No Era Sólida is more organic and less definable. [Sep 2020, p.49]

Their second album offers something new and exciting. Their music is intricate and complex but also intense and fierce with bold, contrasting sections. [Aug 2021, p.55]

This is the first music that feels genuinely post-referendum. [Jan 2015, p.68]

Armed Courage, while enjoyable, isn't really a record anyone's gotta hear. [Sep 2013, p.50]

Dense, frustrating, perplexing and fun on record, Demdike's sound works best when bleeding osmotically into strange visuals. [Jan 2017, p.63]

Written on a piano and organ instead of guitar and featuring a 24-piece ensemble of strings, winds and brass, -io is the purest realisation of Fohr’s pop sensibilities. [Nov 2021, p.50]

Volume 3, produced by Ben Frost, shades closer to songwriting in places, as Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and other guest on harmony vocals. [Apr 2013, p.57]

Never merely texture, just noise or dumb repetition, but always, instead, living and intelligent music. [Nov 2011, p.63]

The Caretaker's music works best as a static pattern amidst digital flux. [Feb 2012, p.56]

Borders is Emptyset’s Fury Road--both heavier and cleverer than the trilogy it follows. [Feb 2017, p.47]

Somehow the music manages to be deeply exotic and familiar at the same time. [Jun 2014, p.50]

Bachman probably spent more of Almanac Behind’s production time processing sounds than strumming strings. [Jan 2023, p.61]

As Quelle Chris reverts to esoteric form on Deathfame, one can’t help but miss the sustained melancholy of Innocent Country 2. But there are plenty of delights here. [Jul 2022, p.53]

Where the previous two explore themes around rebirth and grief, Trappes’s vocal fills Penelope Three full of redemption and hope. On “Red Yellow”, synth lines swoop and sink despondently into the mix, but Trappes’s vocal is ascendant and bold. In places, this ability to draw striking emotional clout from delicate shoegaze-y soundscapes recalls Sophia Liozou’s 2020 album Untold. [Jul 2021, p.69]

The methods of its creation are the most interesting thing about Melk En Honing, but the music has impact and staying power. [Aug 2015, p.48]

A terrifically engaging collage of incompletion and one of the most blazing returns of 2021. [Dec 2021, p.59]

Big Joanie have developed immeasurably since their debut and it’s a joy to see them, if not quite reaching their full potential, then imparting a genuine sense of what that fulfillment might entail. [Jan 2023, p.62]

A perfectly pleasant pop record that at its best recalls the likes of Glassjaw (“FKA World”) and Hurl. [Oct 2023, p.56]

It is psychedelic in the best sense of the word, evoking constant movement, but a motion that is always interior, burrowing deep into the psyche of listener and player alike. [Mar 2017, p.52]

When the beats are sparse he shines, but the album bloats in its middle with too many R&B assisted dramatic gestures and not enough dead eyed and cracked crack music. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Just as these wise, bittersweet, intimate and wry songs and poems about love and the everyday have a life of their own beyond being haunted by the Nick Drake legacy, so too The Unthanks’ quietly scholarly interpretation of Molly Drake has a distinctive and nuanced self-assuredness. [Jul 2017, p.54]

By the time you’re through to the end of the album, Negro’s precise refusal to have bullied you with his ideas means you’re happy to return to the beginning and let that sunlight in again. Central heating for kids. Lovely. [Mar 2019, p.57]