It's back-to-basics good fun garage rock, and while it's familiar territory it's undeniable that the band know their way around a hook. [Sep 2023, p.28]

If the production lacks the stark immediacy of their finest work, this is still music filled with hooks, abrasion and their signature swagger. Cynthia Sley is in particularly fine voice. [Sep 2023, p.24]

The best tracks gently slip their moorings, as with the sour fuzzed guitar and damaged lyrics of "Got The Fear", and hazy warp and alchemical concerns of the insinuatingly additcive "Green". [Jul 2023, p.33]

Loving You is a poignant last statement, rich with nuance and personality. [Sep 2023, p.34]

It's a calming, beatific experience. [Aug 2023, p.34]

The best bits mash up the retro influences, like the krautrock-meets-Motown collision of the title track, the glam grunge of "The Best Is Yet To come" or the Weller-ish ballad "Scared Of Love". [Sep 2023, p.31]

Epic eight-minute closer "Give Me Your Love" produced by Hot Chip's Al Doyle and Joe Goddard, will keep you dancing until dawn. [Sep 2023, p.27]

Here it's his "Story Of An Artist", delivered with a disarming simplicity. With contributions from regular collaborators Jim James and Neko Case, the other eight songs are striking originals. [Aug 2023, p.38]

The whole album, across a wildly varied and genuinely unique 18 tracks, feels like tuning in to some kind of revolutionary post-apocalyptic radio station. [Sep 2023, p.31]

The purposeful "Fast Asleep" or swirling "Dirtmouth" - featuring labelmate/saxophonist James Brandon Lewis - might loosely suit Parker's Chicago collective too. But "Solanin" with Brandee Younger, boasts a lush Cinematic Orchestra elegance, while Daedalus lends "(If You Don't Leave) The City Will Kill You" an irresistibly propulsive energy. [Sep 2023, p.27]

It's fair to say that Mitchell rarely does the heavy lifting here. Her role onstage is a fluid one: muse-goddess, North Star, shredder, comic foil and sometimes singer. The playing by her fellow artists is stellar and the backing vocals, in particular, ooze class. [Aug 2023, p.22]

The group confidently flits between low-key funk, lush symphonic Philly soul and the more punchy post-Motown dance grooves of Chairman Of The Board, the constant being Rowland's powerfully assured vocal delivery of his mea culpa confessionals. [Aug 2023, p.28]

Throughout all nine songs, Glenn-Copeland's voice seems to exist on the eternal plane, powerful and vulnerable in equal measure, an elder sharing his knowledge in stirring sonic form. [Sep 2023, p.26]

through his efforts to convey a profound experience of loss in a long-gone summer, these songs offer an uncommonly generous wealth of grace and beauty. [Aug 2023, p.32]

Georgia's also able to fuse a few different eras of electro-pop to create songs whose high sheen doesn't impede their intimacy or immediacy. [Sep 2023, p.27]

While lyrics like "this is the hottest summer I can ever remember 'cause the world is on fire" leave little to the imagination, the final product is hard to dislike. [Aug 2023, p.26]

A confident record that picks up where her recent DJ Kicks set left off. [Sep 2023, p.31]

Love's Holiday still kicks against the pricks, particularly on raging single "Icy White & Crystalline", but the primary themes here seem to be love and loss. [Sep 2023, p.34]

It's more fully formed than his solo work but gathers the same sense of melody and arhythmic quirk on a series of Zappa-esque jazz-infused avant-pop songs, interspersed by the sunshine burst of lo-fi boppers. [Aug 2023, p.29]

Clarke is both perpetuating and recontextualising the music of the mid-20th century. [Sep 2023, p.24]

Even a recreation of the harmonica sound from "When The Levee Breaks" on "The Falling Sky" and the same song's famous cavernous beat on "Sacred The Thread" can't help either song stick in the memory. [Sep 2023, p.27]

Had Lofgren trusted his considerable gifts to carry these earnest songs, Mountains would've been a more satisfying album. [Aug 2023, p.34]

80 minutes of astonishingly powerful and beautifully preserved music. [Sep 2023, p.43]

These nostalgic confessionals stray into navel-gazing at times, but in a way that feels authentically adolescent. [Sep 2023, p.34]

Singing in Spanish in a deep baritone over the ringing tones of his tres guitar, the Cuban rhythms sway as enticingly as you'd want. [Aug 2023, p.36]

Delivers intimately detailed tales set to hushed arrangements. [Sep 2023, p.37]

A hugely enjoyable, idiosyncratic ride. [Sep 2023, p.37]

POTR's most playful outing, Stick And Stones comes off like a bracing exhalation of post-pandemic relief. [Sep 2023, p.32]

Spanning just 32 minutes, The Art Of Pleasure feels slight and light. Even so, the warm glow of liberated self-love on sparkly standouts like "Float", "Phenomenal" and "Haute" is infectious. [Sep 2023, p.32]

A sumptuous feast. [Sep 2023, p.24]

Kate NV's urge to pixelate manically - see recent album Wow - is reined in by ex-dirty Projector Deradoorian's cool krautrocking. [Sep 2023, p.24]

90s alt.rock influences proudly displayed. [Sep 2023, p.24]

This is a ceaselessly unpredictable and eclectic record that manages to sound as traditional as it does experimental. [Sep 2023, p.23]

All expertly tied together by Tuttle's rare gift for nuance and colour. [Aug 2023, p.28]

Better than simply a personal or a confessional album, The Ballad of Darren is clever in what it does and doesn't say about its creator's life. [Sep 2023, p.16]

Kempner's lyrics are visceral and specific. [Aug 2023, p.36]

The material here moves in the jazzier vein of Zappa's early '70s LPs. [Aug 2023, p.51]

Great-uh. [Jun 2023, p.31]

An LP that's cluttered, incoherent and frequently quite brilliant. [Jul 2023, p.34]

Finds itself caught between emulating the original's enviable qualities and overhauling its almost four-decade habits. [Aug 2023, p.36]

In a single sitting it can tend toward the soporific, but there's unforced sweetness in this groovy drifting off. [Aug 2023, p.34]

Younge and his horn octet create some fine pastiche of Fela Kuti's Egypt 90 band around Allen's beats. [Aug 2023, p.23]

There's a sense these weren't quite good enough for the main event - alternate versions - but even off-cuts "Memory Leak" and "Math Of You" swirl and swoon with a euphoric giddiness that comes with discovering new zones of pleasure. [Aug 2023, p.25]

Just about every song's a banger, but pay particular attention to the jagged metal shredding of "Persuasion Architect"; then contrast with the outstanding country rocker "Twins". [Aug 2023, p.29]

Here are profound expressions of timeless love, nostalgic memories of relationships past, reflections on fulfillment, grief, desire, belonging and habitual non-belonging. [Aug 2023, p.35]

A stunning record. [Aug 2023, p.23]

His songs' unruffled, hushed intimacy is an effective tonic. [Aug 2023, p.26]

The result is consistently thrilling and uncompromising music. [Aug 2023, p.28]

It's this mix of songwriting voices as well as the tight thematic concept of The Dirty South that makes this such a strong LP, and the new songs don't diminish that. [Jul 2023, p.44]

Hark! I Inside the Old Year Dying is a singular thing. [Aug 2023, p.18]

Each song plays like a breath exhaled. Steve Shelley's production, too, is wonderfully sympathetic. [May 2023, p.36]

Ayers duets with Simonon in Spanish and English on a set of quirky compositions oozing the kind of playful charm her dad was so known for. [Jun 2023, p.29]

Entirely irresistible. [Aug 2023, p.33]

The more menacing "Fuzzbuster #09" could almost be an interlude on Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex. A few other discoveries are equally astonishing. [Jul 2023, p.48]

A fine album that suggests more pleasure to come. [Jul 2023, p.23]

Smartly enlisted esteemed producer Dave Fridmann, who illuminates their loose-limbed, self-assured character on kickass Stones-y opener "If I Try To Leave" and the cowbell-powered "Forgiving Ties," with its hooky Harrisonian central riff. [Aug 2023, p.28]

There's always been a hazy and reflective feel to her songs, but despite the title, her fourth is Power's most resolute set yet. [Jul 2023, p.22]

bdrmm have expanded their sound, retaining that youthful energy and combining it with ambition and impressive marshalling of dynamics that creates a strangely serene album. [Aug 2023, p.25]

On Chaos For The Fly, Chatten is able to chase down a succession of personal demons, while broadening his emotional, musical and vocal range. [Aug 2023, p.24]

There's little on her 16th album to suggest it's anything other than business as usual. [Jul 2023, p.36]

He too, has become more of what he always was. And somehow he's achieved that by paring his music down t its rawest essence. [Jul 2023, p.26]

The set offers power-pop gems like "Darlin'", a prospective Strokes classic in "818", and the closing surprise "Alright Tomorrow" a disco burner sung by actress/vocalist Rainsford. [Jul 2023, p.27]

Ornery eloquence. [Aug 2023, p.34]

It's hard to begrudge the Boos this sunny, mellifluous midlife comeback. [Aug 2023, p.25]

Demonstrates that PSB are without peer as exponents of the pop single. [Aug 2023, p.50]

If Segovia had gone electric, one could imagine the results might have sounded something like this. [Aug 2023, p.34]

Pure musical alchemy. [Aug 2023, p.29]

Amiably gentle but uplifting follow-up. [Aug 2023, p.25]

Their sixth sees the band hitting a peak of airy, classic modernism, marked by elegant polyphony, smart dynamics and Kate Stables' thoughtful lyrics. [Aug 2023, p.38]

Setting out their stall with mannered glitch-pop and sardonic art-rock, both usually entangled. [Aug 2023, p.38]

Margaret's melodies are often submerged, but her approach is not entirely ambient. [Aug 2023, p.34]

The drama can recall Florence + The Machine more than their dream-pop origins, but the mood - lacerating self-doubt becoming decay-defying euphoria - is Lanterns On The Lake's own. [Aug 2023, p.33]

It takes up where 2019's Infest The Rats' Nest left off, though was pieced together from improv jams. [Aug 2023, p.33]

A potent, heavy distillation of everything the group have done. [Aug 2023, p.30]

The Foos album closest to Nirvana. [Aug 2023, p.29]

Infectious. [Aug 2023, p.26]

Hardly groundbreaking, but bursting with charm. [Aug 2023, p.26]

The songs' sense of drive and drama demonstrates RVG's growing confidence. [Jul 2023, p.33]

What sometimes seems like attrition - "Paradise Is Mine's" relentless hammering, "Ebbing's" pounding 11 minutes - can, nevertheless, deliver ritualistic euphoria. [Jul 2023, p.34]

LaVette remains at the peak of her considerable powers at the age of 77. [Jul 2023, p.37]

On first hearing it's a little underwhelming, but its subtle charms certainly grows. [Jul 2023, p.30]

As autobiographies go, it's fairly oblique but no less intriguing for it. [Jul 2023, p.36]

While the length of the album is a little exhausting, there's no denying that this is the band's most accomplished and ambitious record to date. [Jul 2023, p.27]

The LP plays like the soundtrack to a pedal-to-the-metal road trip between Willaimson's LA base and her native Texas, desert air whipping through the open windows. [Jul 2023, p.36]

That Jarak Qaribak manages to combine that respect - for the songs, the singers and their various cultures - with a free-flowing, light sense of exploration that feels joyfully current, is its triumph. [Jul 2023, p.31]

Highlights include the distinctly Davis-ish "Apples And Oranges", the spectral soul of "Giddy Up", and the country trundle of "A Puppy & A truck". [Jul 2023, p.30]

Supremely satisfying comeback album. [Jul 2023, p.36]

O Monolith channels the shapeshifting patterns of Steve Reich and late-period Radiohead to fashion a kind of lush English pastoral that seethes and shimmers at every turn. [Jul 2023, p.34]

The Lemonheads' sixth album is looser and shaggier than its predecessor; his purpose beginning to waver, though essentially Dando is continually saved nu his songwriting gifts. [Jun 2023, p.47]

Ultimately it's a record that happily exists in something of a fog - wilfully embracing hazy, almost groggy textures. [Jul 2023, p.30]

Weathervanes is another imperious demonstration of Isbell's signature ability to simultaneously project confidence and vulnerability, both musically and lyrically. [Jul 2023, p.32]

It's indie rock like Mum used to make, and comfortingly invigorating as such. [Jul 2023, p.23]

Following the pattern of 2020's Ultimate Success Today, this is more expansive and less claustrophobic than previous Protomartyr releases, but no less intense. [Jul 2023, p.33]

Here “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has a lovely jug-band lurch, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” loses its country lilt but sounds as if was always destined to be mated with the taut riff from Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right”, and “Queen Jane Approximately”, hung against a latticework of accordion and finger-picked guitars, is almost unbearably tender. [Aug 2023, p.46]

Every moment shimmers with atmosphere, as the rippling melodies and contoured choruses enclose Payseur's knotty ruminations in sun-dappled serenity. [Jul 2023, p.23]

A vibrant record that is a self-deprecating yet poignant reflection on a complicated and chaotic upbringing. [Jul 2023, p.27]

He puts a uniquely Rufus twist on the likes of "Shenandoah" and "Wild Mountain Thyme" of course, singing them in his best operatic tenor with a touch of John Jacob Niles. [Jul 2023, p.36]

Some of the group's most personal work. [Jul 2023, p.24]