It may make for a rollercoaster musical ride, but it's utterly thrilling. [Mar 2024, p.88]

After the initial shock, the pair's songwriting smarts cuts through persuasively, alongside strong messaging about acknowledging your needs and vulnerabilities. [Feb 2024, p.88]

This double LP has sonic coherence across 65 minutes of taut, sinewy but ever-unpredictable compositions, with a subtly altered sound palette. [Feb 2024, p.86]

Rhys’s melodies stay with you, and his wordplay is as pleasingly idiosyncratic as ever. [Feb 2024, p.89]

The resulting sound is high-contrast, with graceful melodic resolutions, slippery pitch-bends and experiments with form. Curios that hit at once, but can also withstand lengthy unravelling. [Mar 2024, p.91]

Lurching guitar, chiming piano and stabs of overdubbed choral harmony are combined with vocals that swing from sweetly intimate to dry and flippant. [Mar 2024, p.89]

There's no doubt Mackenzie Scott never stops moving here, switching between gothic sway, grungy stomp and electro-pop gyration, but it can make it hard to catch her eye in a meaningful way. [Mar 2024, p.86]

Green Day are admirably assured, honest, and funny on Saviors. [Mar 2024, p.82]

Beneath the Day-Glo surface, Chemtrails rage away. [Jan 2024, p.89]

New ground is not broken, but happily, neither are they. [Jan 2024, p.86]

All in all, less immediate and traditionally melodic than A Light…, Wall Of Eyes is one for the heads, revealing its many charms and details only upon repeated listens. [Mar 2024, p.83]

Little Rope carves space for the well-worn mind, offering sharp perspective on moments when everything seems blunted. [Feb 2024, p.84]

The LP is a treat, like listening to an oracle from the depths of a digital cave. [Feb 2024, p.86]

The former Bedales pupil's steely vocals and ear for a big melody amidst the intricacy offer a unifying and satisfying undertow. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Iechyd Da documents a period of intense anguish with careful understatement and smart musical references. [Feb 2024, p.87]

From Ireland's proliferating alt-guitar pack, these intense runners could go the distance. [Feb 2024, p.89]

Nau isn't especially original, but he is especially beguiling. These are songs to luxuriate in. [Feb 2024, p.89]

The "low tide" hinted at on side one submerges the second half, but delivers some of Brown's deepest, most affecting work. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Nelson's trademark rough vocal edges suit the rustic vibes of this Southern folk music and yet the ensemble also ventures into more experimental newgrass turf. [Feb 2024, p.88]

It's an impressively elegant and expressive one. [Feb 2024, p.87]

Gazelle Twin masterfully keeps us in suspense, incorporating strongly evocative sonic components. Around track eight the tension subsides, yet this doesn't affect the overall consistency. [Feb 2024, p.86]

Zietsch's music upholds the sparse, haunted tone set by Lana Del Ray, the minimalism so acute that each chord change often lasts for just one stroke of the strings or ivories. [Jan 2024, p.88]

Where the stage show had the intimacy of Young's between-song chats, the intimacy here comes from the sensation that you're listening in on his thoughts as one song drifts, like memories do, from one tome to another. [Jan 2024, p.90]

From top to bottom, what a joy it is. [Jan 2024, p.88]

What did we get for our 20-year wait? Something substantive, something deeply considered. [Jan 2024, p.87]

Progressive conceptual art, underpinned with profound personal resonances. [Jan 2024, p.87[

A brave, stand-alone release that lays her talent bare, it's a beautiful unreal entrancement you'll find hard to stop listening to again and again. [Dec 2023, p.91]

Into his eighth decade of unblinkered creativity, Hayward continues to thrill. [Dec 2023, p.93]

The necessary and sustaining art-yin to their live knees-ups’ yang, with Theatre Of The Absurd… Madness have made an album that is among their absolute best. [Jan 2024, p.90]

The heavy-breathing White Rabbit and Scarper comes with a prickle of John Carpenter Menance, while Last Transmission or Imminent are hyper-vigilant Tangerine Dream. There are times when a less obviously doctored emotion bleeds through, though. [Jan 2024, p.94]

This edition adds a 1999 concert. .... It's R.E.M. at their sweetest. [Jan 2023, p.99]

The Complete Budokan 1978 is a richer picture of this restless nerve at work. [Jan 2024, p.101]

Grace For Saints And Ramblers, from 2013's Ghost On host, is delivered with nonchalant Lou Reed rhythm; 2017's About A Bruise displays a freewheeling agility, while The Trapeze Swingers plus right into Beam's storytelling mode. [Jan 2024, p.91]

When his sturdy tunes do hit the jackpot, one wonders why Kirsty MacColl's hit with A New England is such a rare cover. .... Like all political songsmiths, Bragg seeks to transcend the didactic and stir the blood, and largely succeeds. [Dec 2023, p.101]

Unlikely to soundtrack your next dinner party, but it's hard not to marvel at Matmos's cut-and-paste mastery. [Jan 2023, p.93]

Ultimately, Innerstanding finds Harrison marking out his own territory, sustaining a brooding musical atmosphere and filling it with sterling melodies. [Jan 2024, p.88]

Pro-synth voluntaries like Znaniya (Falkor) can jar, but the highlights foreground Atwood-Ferguson as a widescreen visionary in the David Axelrod and Charles Stepney tradition, with a Rolodex of jazz hitters to call on. [Dec 2023, p.89]

While the collection's title acknowledges the scary presence of three Misfits songs. As for "Mistakes", however, there really are none. [Dec 2023, p.105]

Hatfield eschews radical reinventions, but her peeling away of the more finessed layers surrounding Lynne's indestructible melodies/chord sequences works a treat on Can't Get It out Of My head, Strange Magic and Telephone Line. [Nov 2023, p.92]

Even if there are moments when Rockstar seems under-amped, you have to admire her chutzpah. [Jan 2024, p.89]

"It's not too late to find where you are," he sings on The Tern; Hadsel seems to tremble on the brink of that revelation. [Dec 2023, p.88]

If the crackle of original Dylan electrifies Marshall's voice, she finds her own phrasing, both robust and reverent, as she ringmasters Ballad Of A Thin Man's mystic forces, or brings a limpid empathy to Like A Rolling Stone. [Dec 2023, p.92]

Reminiscent of early Nathaniel Rateliff and John Moreland, and prime John Prine, there's no reason here to doubt Martin might one day eclipse them all. [Dec 2023, p.88]

If life's what you make it, here Anderson makes it sound very beautiful indeed. [Dec 2023, p.92]

The quieter moments work best, like the moody, organ-led reworking of Shakin' All Over, which lesser bands have thrashed into the ground over the years but really shines here. [Dec 2023, p.86]

Though Anderson buries his voice and words in the maelstrom, his declared (if not immediately) apparent) theme of a constantly thwarted search for "true love" seems right at home in shoegazing's characteristic marriage of bliss and anxiety. [Dec 2023, p.93]

Los Angeles already feels like a destination record, Lee, Tolhurst and Budgie putting their decades of world-building expertise to excellent use. If the world they have built is on the brink of collapse, it only adds to the thrill. [Dec 2023, p.85]

A queasy heat seeps into the Sonic Youth hiss and clang of My Little Tony, Jelsy's Bad Seeds metallic thrum and Shoo's slow, high plains drift. [Dec 2023, p.94]

They are spare but complete, as rich as old letters or photographs. [Dec 2023, p.86]

This new box set offers a ton of unreleased tracks (47 in total). Ranging from the ropey – Schoolyard sees him at the age of 32 singing about losing his virginity at 16 to, erk, a 14-year-old girl; Horny Pony features a toe-curling rap – to the bafflingly binned, they nonetheless provide real insight into Prince’s creative mind. Highlights include ghetto chronicle The Voice, jazz instrumental tribute Letter 4 Miles (recorded two days after his friend Davis’s death) and, best of all, the gently trippy Alice Through The Looking Glass. [Dec 2023, p.105]

This is an intimate portrait painted in bold strokes. [Dec 2023, p.90]

Bauhaus Staircase shows OMD thriving as much as surviving. [Dec 2023, p.91]

The production ideas and songs, however smart, won't change the world; they will, however, prompt large swathes to sing along. [Dec 2024, p.84]

Even when further adrift from the lost funk sampledelia that made his name, Shadow's production brilliance shines through. [Dec 2023, p.90]

No new ground is broken, but everyone emerges unscathed. [Dec 2023, p.86]

The emphasis on experiment and process means there are fewer newly-excavated compositions - Like Veils Said Lorraine, a For The Roses orphan; the modal guitar reveries Sunshine Raga and Bonderia, the former with tabla and free-form trilling - but no less in the way of surprises. [Dec 2023, p.96]

The story arc LeBlanc has stitched into the songs never get in the way of sheer enjoyment of the tunes he's created. Grand concepts are a tricky move for any artist, but LaBlanc pulls it off with plomb. [Dec 2023, p.91]

Ultimately, the thrills on The Silver Cord are intermittent, but you have to admire Gizzard's relentless pursuit of the next high. [Dec 2023, p.87]

Black Bayou is surely the album Finley was put on Earth to create, filled with stories only he could tell. [Dec 2023, p.82]

Sun-scorched Californian jams. [Dec 2023, p.87]

Variously evoking a gnarlier early R.E.M., The Hold Steady, and, yes, Springsteen, other songs here occasionally suffer from over-telegraphed choruses, but Fallon's fervour and gift for an apposite metaphor - "I'm a weatherman watching the skies, trying to read you" - are evident. [Nov 2023, p.86]

A masterclass in sound design, Bolted creeps up slowly then engulfs you. [Dec 2023, p.91]

Ozarker is both sentimental and hard-nosed, nostalgic about a past without ignoring the modern world's gritty reality. [Dec 2023, p.93]

Although only nine tracks, it's a sprawling affair revisiting just about every road he's previously travelled, but somehow tying them all together for the first time. [Dec 2023, p.92]

Lahai is less introspective and far from lonely, its persuasive positivity carried by a contained riot of euphoric synths, swelling violins, Chic guitars and skittering percussion. [Dec 2023, p.90]

Pearlies has more the feel of a wistful autumnal folk record than any kind of'90s throwback. [Dec 2023, p.92]

Although partially undone by some same filler, Crosses' opaque longing peaks on Girls Float + Boys Cry. [Dec 2023, p.88]

Skinner's grown-up musings are more twisty and cryptic than his rascally early work, but no less incisive or well-wrought. Inimitable, humane, flawed, it's good to have him back. [Dec 2023, p.86]

Hackney Diamonds feels like a self-aware, historically mindful party, Jagger’s remarkable vocal thrust utterly unimpaired.

There's almost too much to bask in. [Nov 2023, p.91]

Wood's most accessible set to date is also her most ambitious, for its Byzantine approach to its concept, but also for her honesty and openness. [Nov 2023, p.88]

Via radio hiss and cut-glass samples of the long dead, worlds beyond are accessed. [Oct 2023, p.89]

Ultimately, Afternoon X finds its strength in contrast: while the mostly languid pace suggests meditation, the lyrics reveal a theme of carpe diem. [Nov 2023, p.92]

Occasionally they get lost in their own jams - the meandering Tripping In The Graveyard definitely overstays its welcome. By contrast, Impermanence And Death captures the at their best. [Nov 2023, p.90]

Hyper-melancholic, ultra-vivid, CrazyMad, For Me showcases Thompson's off-beam pop skills, a distinctive voice in every way. [Nov 2023, p.86]

Traces lines to both Bill Callahan's downbeat philosophising and Jonathan Richman's crafted wit and primal rock'n'roll chug. [Nov 2023, p.94]

A wonderfully upbeat, Sherwood-produced comeback. [Nov 2023, p.89]

They're all done pretty straight, but then of course eh throws in his trademark "more is More" soloing, all Bluesbreakers-to-Cream-era Eric Clapton-style muscle and intensity. [Nov 2023, p.93]

The new focus on these songs' lyrics proves deeply powerful, a different and profound kind of high. Consequently, The Dark Side OF The Moon Redux is wholly valid, the unnerving, stirring adjunct Waters was aiming for. [Nov 2023, p.87]

Who's Next may not have been Pete Townshend's chose destination, but it encapsulates The Who better than anything before or since. It's the art=school provocateur, the bare-chested rock god and their virtuoso, brandy-soaked rhythm section at their peak. [Nov 2023, p.96]

Rodgers wears his now mellower, less macho persona well on Coming Home and Photo Shooter, but the writing input of an Andy Fraser or a Mick Ralphs, say, is sometimes missed. [Nov 2023, p.86]

Still adept at spectacular, if somewhat opaque intimacy, he enchants on My Red Little Fox, with its baroque recorders. [Nov 2023, p.85]

No Fixed Point In Space is as on point as it is off grid. [Nov 2023, p.92]

A joy. [Nov 2023, p.89]

Stasium's work put a spotlight beneath these 11 songs, brightening hidden corners until Bastards Of Young, Left Of The Dial and Kiss On The Bus sparkle like unworn jewels. [Nov 2023, p.103]

His bristling, unexpected arrangements draw new complexities from songs as familiar as Wade In The Water and Swing Low. [Nov 2023, p.87]

Smith often finds herself stuck in a musical straitjacket of tired R&B tropes, rarely able to break out of a narrow comfort zone. [Nov 2023, p.88]

The themes - anxiety, longing and dislocation - are familiar, but here Blonde redhead address their potent heartaches with renewed grace and strength. [Nov 2023, p.93]

Ultimately, it's Woods and Elucid who provide the intense, erudite, funny through-line. [Nov 2023, p.93]

Songs like the Breeders-worthy single Doubt reveal serious song-writing smarts. [Nov 2023, p.94]

It possesses a charm and innocence that's genuinely disarming. [Oct 2023, p.88]

Clever, involving, vital addition to one of the strongest discographies of the last 30 years. [Nov 2023, p.82]

To Bolero-riffed beat-pop, Soul Capturer beautifully exorcises today's digi-overload, while 22-minute Defeat finds hope in an entrancing oceanic ebb-and-flow, with all the child-like discovery of late'90s Mercury Rev. [Nov 2023, p.86]

Her jazziest yet, expressive alto-sax and hypnotic spoken words ladle emotional gravitas onto its fevered meditations and splintered storytelling. [Nov 2023, p.94]

High-end reference points for a record that spectacularly reconciles micro-detailed improv with deep-listening ambience. [Nov 2023, p.90]

A triumph of healing and connection, experimentalism balanced out by emotional heft. [Nov 2023, p.89]

The years have proven that the deceptive simplicity of their music only increases its potency, working hand-in-hand with their long commitment to the healing powers of brotherhood and melody.

Intimate, ambitious and just occasionally misfiring. [Oct 2023, p.82]