Like any new city, this album may take some getting used to--there's beauty everywhere, but the streets are far from a neat grid. But as you walk them, Holter's genius as a sonic town planner reveals itself. [Sep 2013, p.96]

A work of lyricism and maturity, this is one of Veirs' finest yet. [Sep 2013, p.97]

He left an enormous amount of music in those 10 years, the bulk of it gathered in this much-needed career overview of the forgotten solipsistic genius of rock’s golden age, in which the strike-outs turn out to be as fascinating as the home runs.

This record has all the earmarks of Vernon's next big thing. [Oct 2013, p.69]

On The Worse Things Get, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet. [Oct 2013, p.76]

Dream River [is] among Callahan's very best. [Oct 2013, p.63]

Epic in scale, World Boogie Is Coming is an extraordinary amalgam of envelope-pushing studio manipulation and DNA-fuelled deep gut grooves. [Dec 2013, p.71]

It's an impressively strong set of songs, diverse in both lyrical themes and musical styles, and delivered with a confident range of drama and empathy by a "heritage" act resolutely refusing to rest on his laurels. [Oct 2013, p.66]

Kings of Leon zeroed in on their gifts for visceral rock grooves and soaring hooks--lifting standout tracks on their sixth album to a Springsteen-like level of gritty grandeur. [Oct 2013, p.70]

Their first album in almost two decades, David Roback and Hope Sandoval are on stunning form. [Oct 2013, p.71]

A magnificent comeback. [Oct 2013, p.57]

The official line on In Utero is that it's a raw uncomfortable document of a band in turmoil and a songwriter on the edge. That's partly true, but it's also cathartic, invigorating, full of terrific, scabrous pop songs, and a good laugh to boot. [Nov 2013, p.86]

[Fuzz is] eight glorious tracks of heavy, frantic and, yes, extremely fuzzy, proto-metal. [Nov 2013, p.71]

Hoodoo is spellbinding stuff, a new high mark in a delightful late-career renaissance. [Oct 2013, p.64]

The quartet concentrated on developing more pleasurable lines, and on well-structured songs rather than open-ended jamming. [Dec 2013, p.59]

An unusual taste that's well worth acquiring. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Matangi is her most exhilarating and mulch-faceted album. [Jan 2014, p.75]

If there’s any justice, Mug Museum should break Le Bon out of her current cult status. [Dec 2013]

These 11 tracks, recorded at various locations, also confirm he's more than a neo-classical specialist. [Dec 2013, p.68]

As a whole, it's brilliant. [Dec 2013, p.68]

There's a sombre edge to almost all these songs, even when the Hammond organ is wailing and the backbeat is a mile wide.... Morello's presence is crucial to the tone of the album. [Feb 2014, p.65]

A Major new British talent is born in William Doyle's solo debut, which sounds like the great lost album that Brian Wilson, Eno and Bjork should have made together. [Feb 2014, p.75]

As a representative trawl through Lanegan's solo albums, Has God Seen My Shadow? gets it very right indeed. [Feb 2014, p.94]

Gone are the stark acoustics of his noughties output, replaced instead by a layered warmth and gorgeous, semi-orchestral settings that make him sound like a spiritual descendant of early '70s Laurel Canyon. [Feb 2014, p.77]

In short--a monumental album.

It's an extraordinary set. [Feb 2014, p.92]

With hindsight, the Rough Trade album with its seamless mix of folk, blues country, cajun and rock can be seen as the album that launched the phenomenon we would come to know as alt.country. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Benji is brutally sad, which may prove a deal-breaker for anyone who appreciated the comparatively light Among the Leaves, but it never feels gratuitous or exploitative. [Mar 2014, p.84]

Ellis' purist, even traditionalist, voice is the perfect vessel for his sanguine portraits of ordinary people, battered and bruised but never without hope. [Mar 2014, p.72]

For the fourth album in a row, they've moved the goalposts, challenging themselves to apply their whooping idiosyncrasies to a new aesthetic framework. [Mar 2014, p.70]

Small Town Heroes is the band's fifth and best album. [May 2014, p.68]

This is a tremendously assured album, beautifully paced and full of great rockers. [Apr 2014, p.77]

While English Oceans carries its quota of Truckers staples, there's also much that sets this fantastic 10th studio album apart from its predecessors. [Apr 2014, p.82]

An album that feels joyously cathartic as well as musically stunning. [May 2014, p.76]

An exemplary set. [Feb 2014, p.76]

The larger-than-life Elton of the live stage gets a workout on "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and "Benny And The Jets," pounding rockers on the most impressively diverse collection in his catalogued. [Apr 2014, p.91]

These are songs to be treasured. [Apr 2014, p.73]

An entirely ravishing aesthetic experience. [Jun 2014, p.76]

A complete rethink has resulted in the most uninhibited and visceral album of her career. [Jun 2014, p.78]

Are We There's subtler songs point to a painfully well-honed understanding of what drives and degrades long-term love. [Jun 2014, p.70]

Nightclubbing is the album that came to define Jones as the complete performer, in her own way, as singer, muse, actress, alien and androgyne. [Jun 2014, p.90]

Runaway's Diary is a record with hugely impressive depth and emotional range. [Jun 2014, p.79]

So while Lazaretto may sometimes appear to be a more nakedly emotional collection of songs than we've come to expect from its creator, the contents also rate among his wittiest and his wildest efforts to date. [Jul 2014, p.63]

Emma Jean is mellower, mournful and unimpeachably authentic.... A magnificent piece of work. [Jun 2014, p.76]

Musically, this is probably the richest collection of songs Vlautin has written.

The results are spectacular. [Jul 2014, p.66]

Lewis conducts what navel-gazing there is on The Voyager with her characteristic mordant wit, and she has shed none of her way with an irresistible, deadpan pop melody. [Aug 2014, p.75]

Soul Mining is arguably Johnson's defining work: ambitious, strange, exciting. And, 30-odd years on, remarkably fresh. [Aug 2014, p.86]

Beyond the clever production and judicious musical blend is a sensibility and a voice and songs that find Plant still on his quest, still grappling with the intricacies of love, still seduced by distant, misty mountains. His Uniqueness has never been more apparent. [Oct 2014, p.61]

An album of great depth and richness, Sukierae finds Tweedy at his most dignified, addressing life-changing events across all aspects of the full emotional spectrum. [Oct 2014, p.64]

While there's nothing as pop as "Windowlicker" here, it's still thrilling to hear him romp deliriously through all manner of styles in the key of Apex for the bulk of these dozen tracks. [Nov 2014, p.71]

There is more raw drama here, a prevailing starkness. [Nov 2014, p.65]

Snaith has perfected his recipe for bite-sized psychedelia. [Nov 2014, p.71]

This reissue eschews context and explanation to let their catalogue stand as its won defiant rock monolith, And as it should. [Dec 2014, p.93]

This set is a good primer for Cooder’s soundtrack work.

In terms of unreleased material, the motherlode is the two-disc Live at The Matrix set, recorded on November 26 and 27, 1968 at the San Francisco venue. Of the 18 songs here, 10 are previously unreleased.... All are comprehensively bested by the 36-minute version of "Sister Ray." [Jan 2015, p.81]

This fine reissue includes remarkably fully formed demos of the entire LP. [Dec 2014, p.89]

Far greater than the sum of it's parts, Vulnicura can be a challenge but, once immersed, it's hard to tear yourself away. [Apr 2015, p.85]

As a celebration of classic songcraft, it is as sincere as any of Dylan's many forays into traditional American roots idioms. [Mar 2015, p.65]

It's yet another display of excellence from an artist in consummate control of his art. [Feb 2015, p.82]

This is a melancholic album, but a determined, thoughtful one. [Mar 2015, p.80]

McMurtry's flair for the cinematic shines brighter than ever. [Apr 2015, p.78]

[A] flat-out sensational album. [May 2015, p.77]

This set combines recordings from a number of indie EPs, and while the ensemble always combines a bemused, tongue-in-cheek quality with a rock'n'roll fanatic's mindset, Dungeon Golds spinning out smart, graceful pop hooks and hard, Dukes-Of-Stratosphear-type psych--gazes hard at mortality. [Apr 2015, p.80]

A genuine 2015 classic. [Jun 2015, p.77]

A kaleidoscopic trawl through formative memories, cascading with melody and intimate reminiscence. [Apr 2015, p.83]

Primrose Green is disorientating, casting new light on modes you thought you knew well. [Apr 2015, p.65]

Evocative, but with plenty of open spaces. [Mar 2015, p.75]

Ba Power feels like another dramatic leap forward and a further landmark in the integration of African tribal rhythms and western rock'n'roll. [May 2015, p.85]

Weller's 12th solo album is characterised by cut-ups and sound collages, built around riffs and grooves. There are fadeouts and fade-ins mid-song, vocals come heavily treated, instruments are strafed with sound effects. Essentially, Weller is making a virtue of his processes. [Jun 2015, p.65]

Platform is not a manifesto, but it feels like a galvanising challenge to Herndon's peers to embolden their ideas, broaden their horizons and push on into an undiscovered continent of sound. [Jun 2015, p.70]

Containing only nine lithe and varied songs, Multi-Love is anything but a whimsical indulgence. [Jun 2015, p.79]

In the china shop of his last five years' work, this LP is the bull. [Jul 2015, p.70]

It's not only Jones' most absorbing album since 1997's beats-drenched Ghostyhead, but a record that crowns her career, not as an end but as a culmination. [Jul 2015, p.85]

Something More Than Free finds Isbell sounding surer of himself, as a songwriter and a man. [Aug 2015, p.79]

The Most Lamentable Tragedy feels like a quintessentially modern album, a scintillating examination of mania and neurosis that uses the history of rock'n'roll as mere stage dressing for its bravura performance. [Sep 2015, p.65]

With Have You In My Wilderness her songs feel brighter, more pop, yet they're also just as lush, as considered and as quietly experimental. [Oct 2015, p.77]

Strikingly immediate, yet also rewarding repeated immersion, the 10 tracks here are, just as Forster intended, amusing, infectious and relaxed. [Oct 2015, p.65]

This crisp new full-album remix merely enhances the brilliance. [Nov 2015, p.93]

Fading Frontier strikes the most satisfying balance between menacing mantric grooves of 2006's Cryptograms and the pop melodicism that emerged on 2010's Halcyon Digest. [Nov 2015, p.82]

Divers feels like her most comfortable, charming album. [Nov 2015, p.80]

Diehard Moggers fans may bemoan the omission of obscure personal faves, but the belters title is well-deserved. [Nov 2015, p.95]

The fifth album to feature Kentucky's Joan Shelley has an immensely welcoming ease that was absent in 2014 anxious solo breakthrough, Electric Ursa.... A major talent. [Oct 2015, p.83]

Joining the fun are pals such as Ethan Miller, Stephen Malkmus and Cass McCombs, who add to the sense of chaos, but do not diminish the cohesion that make these diverse jams so stupidly, thrillingly rewarding. [Dec 2015, p.79]

If the songwriting at times falls into cliche, the performances--passionate, eloquent, spilling over with regal harmonies--are anything but. [Jul 2015, p.72]

It's comforting and surprising, full of trad sounds electrified by the off-kilter vision of an artist whose recognition as one of Americana's finest voices is long overdue. [Feb 2016, p.67]

Due to Joe Dilworth's propulsive drumming and Holger Zaf's synth work, these 12 tracks never stray into stuffiness. [Mar 2016, p.71]

It's a more poignant epitaph to their fine career than the dour and sometimes impenetrable The High Country. [Apr 2016, p.77]

It's a telling indication of the degree of daring and sophistication at hand that artistic gestures which might have seemed contrived or ill-conceived in other contexts--like say, transforming Nirvana's "In Bloom" into a majestic country-souul ballad worthy of Charley Pride-yield some of the most startling results. [May 2016, p.63]

Suffused in both the dread mortality inspires and the peace that comes with accepting its inevitability, it simultaneously addresses the effects that the passing of years has on one's relationships and the compromises these demand. [May 2016, p.66]

Superb third album. ... The album is beautifully structured like this, with narrative threads and recurring thoughts picked up and passed from song to song. It's also self-referential but, crucially, never arch. [May 2016, p.68]

Never short on vocal confidence, here, she trades divadom for arresting, unconventional shapes. [Jul 2016, p.69]

There's a lighter, more hopeful bent to the musical settings, which perfectly balance the more dissonant leanings of The King Of Limbs with a sumptuousness and gentleness they've rarely sought since OK Computer. [Aug 2016, p.81]

These are nuclear-grade pop hits that don't sacrifice on adult emotional complexity: a rare power. [Jul 2016, p.81]

On this inspired album, jittery characters sketches alternate with introspective ballads bearing echoes of Simon & Garfunkel, astride variations on the exotic rhythms that have propelled his music since Graceland. [Jul 2016, p.79]

An unqualified triumph. [Jul 2016, p.73]

The breadth, scope and sheer suppleness of black SUMMERS'night makes one wish Maxwell worked a whole lot faster. [Sep 2016, p.76]

[A] hugely satisfying album. [Jul 2016, p.66]