Tirzah matches the spacious, hazy intimacy of Levi's often distorted creations with unself-conscious melodies, as if singing in her sleep, finding beauty in imperfection and transience. [Nov 2023, p.90]

Overall, one mighty, magnificent trip. [Nov 2023, p.84]

Stylistic Easter eggs confound and delight. [Oct 2023, p.86]

It's the emotional, cathartic journey of the chief protagonist that captivates the most. [Oct 2023, p.86]

Organic, evergreen loveliness. [Oct 2023, p.88]

A "rumination on life and death," which suitably chimed with earth's current 'end times' vibe, from sorrow to rage, elevated by post-rock's most luminescent guitars. [Oct 2023, p.88]

The music, which is characterised by extraordinary switches in style, reflects the diversity of the archive, morphing from bleepy electronic and futuristic R&B to churning garage rock with distorted megaphone vocals. [Oct 2023, p.81]

With these songs, though, Cilker is building a beautiful place of her own. [Oct 2023, p.86]

Fairbairn's side-of-mouth playing is extraordinary bucking the universal post-millennial effort to out-blast Coltrane, in favour of beautifully gentle explorations which are both intrepid and sublimely calming. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Accompanied by electronic and acoustic instruments, Brett's baritone sounds less sombre on this album, more rich, relaxed, even crooning on Strawberry Moon - a perfect foil ro Rennie's vision of a world full of blood and ghosts. [Oct 2023, p.83]

Mitski has long stared at happiness and wondered what comes next; here, she spies it, smiles and then shrugs, the smart band beneath glowing like some warmth hearth on a cold Los Angeles Night. [Oct 2023, p.85]

While Linkous’s tendencies to smudge and collapse his songs are apparent – not least the atmospheric disturbance of antique hymn O Child – so too is his generosity of songwriting spirit, positioning the bleakest sentiments in dynamic, questioning music.

This album is as artistically varied as can be. Best of the faithful versions are Margo Price's rousing Stranger In A Strange Land and Monica Martin's intimate A Song For You. [Oct 2023, p.83]

Sea Of Mirrors stands up without the set dressing. It ends with a brief reprise of the opening track, gently lighting the aisles to the exits; you might well find yourself staying put in the dark, ready to let it run back to the start and play out again. [Oct 2023, p.76]

Hard-won optimism, as ever, from this troubled heroine. [Oct 2023, p.78]

Ultimately, Mid Air is an ecstatic love letter to love, but also the queer clubs where Romy found validation and her soundtrack to liberation. [Oct 2023, p.88]

Fade is a tease that she could do out-and-out pop if the mood were ever to take her, but there are too many strange and good ideas for anything quite so prosaic. [Oct 2023, p.81]

In places it verges on doodling, as if Barnett is endlessly tuning her guitar, but tracks such as Intro or Tiver sound darkly majestic, like deep, drifting hollowed-out Americana. [Oct 2023, p.78]

Hearing this in its entirety 45 years on, it really is up there with Young's greats. [Oct 2023, p.97]

Top-drawer tunes throughout. [Oct 2023, p.78]

Empire State Bastard make you feel like you've been in a cage fight with Mike Tyson. [Oct 2023, p.82]

Deliver[s] more surreal, neon-psych country rock, in sweet harmonies and super-crunchy six-string riffs. [Oct 2023, p.89]

All told: here's blues, raw'n'alive. [Sep 2023, p.83]

Finds her super-brassy, minimally-tooled groove machine in peak form. [Oct 2023, p.97]

Evocative rather than vivid in a way that evokes Faith-era Cure's greyscale atmospheres, Everything IS Alive is the sound of Slowdive still holding their impressive earthly form. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Surely Relentless is how Chrissie Hynde always wanted the Pretenders to sound. [Oct 2023, p.79]

A slinky, soulful, witty, mid-paced affair. [Oct 2023, p.81]

Georgas's blend of vintage new wave with quirky ethereality includes touching haikus and lullabies, but it's the pissed-off frankness that wins out. .... Gorgeously cathartic. [Oct 2023, p.81]

A sobering adventure close o something like home. [Oct 2023, p.86]

Road is a hugely enjoyable hoot. [Oct 2023, p.82]

The songs are wonderfully non-toxic, obsessed in only the best possible way, a refreshing take on country love and lust. [Sep 2023, p.82]

What's new, though, is how Taylor has pushed his music's most rousing dimensions to the fore. [Oct 2023, p.84]

Inevitably flawed yet fascinating, it's respectful without being reverent, less myth-making tribute, more robust embrace. [Aug 2023, p.81]

Appaloosa Bones is prime Isakov. [Oct 2023, p.81]

They've just turned their hazy daze up to 11. [Sep 2023, p.89]

A thrilling 90-minute swansong. [Oct 2023, p.93]

Much of IM is thrillingly intense, then; a rabbit punch with pop-prog interludes and Devo-like hooks. [Sep 2023, p.88]

Hozier's audacity can feel outsized and overbearing, but his tandem of earnestness and eccentricity here is more winning than not. [Sep 2023, p.91]

Well-crafted and unfussy. [Sep 2023, p.92]

Its dozen tunes about finding love, rejecting losers, and criticising corrupt systems are a patchwork of assorted American pops. [Sep 2023, p.83]

A cathartic wrestle with identity, Deliverance will sit well with fans of the original Some Bizarre roster. [Sep 2023, p.91]

An undeniably enjoyable career-twilight collection. [Sep 2023, p.82]

Volcano continues where 2021's Loving In Stereo left off. [Sep 2023, p.86]

Has a spare, homespun feel with its simple folk guitar. [Sep 2023, p.82]

Expansive, restless, subtly volatile, Radio red is intriguing enough to keep it locked. [Sep 2023, p.84]

Over 12 mostly blueprint-hugging songs returns diminish, but scuzzy beat-box disco outrider What Did I Ever To You is great. [Sep 2023, p.86]

Stylistic touchstones veer toward the William Blake's 7 weird of Julia Holter, Henry Cow and Julie Tippetts' prog-jazz outlier Sunset Glow. Incomprehensible/irresistible. [Sep 2023, p.87]

The revivified Bush Tetras prove No Wave's not dead. [Sep 2023, p.86]

Sure, the age is clear in the voices of Matt Piucci and Steven Roback, but so is the honesty inside songs that mine lost brothers, opportunities, and time. [Jul 2023, p.86]

It's absorbing stuff, even shorn of the images. [Aug 2023, p.87]

If there isn't a great leap forward, there is progression on assorted fronts, so The Best Is Yet To Come embraces all-out rock, but Scared Of Love suggests acoustic ballads could be an alternative way ahead. [Sep 2023, p.88]

Aqueous groove Up tackles mid-romance feelings of inadequacy, while coldwave-y Begging You Now infers a darker supplication. Ever-infectious, however, and rarely short of good fun, this one should substantially further the threesome's upward trajectory. [Sep 2023, p.91]

Supernatural Thing makes a strong case for keeping that odd flame alive. [Aug 2023, p.82]

The years don’t fall away – you feel every one – but this recording shows just what a beautiful thing that can be.

This pared-back sonic trip sings with freshness and immediacy. [Sep 2023, p.89]

Fluid, cultured, but never wilfully indulgent, Days In The Desert refuses to sit still. [Sep 2023, p.89]

Welshpool Frillies maintains the high standard GBV since he reunited them six years ago. [Sep 2023, p.82]

The second half - "a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret" - will undoubtedly lose a few fans, yet Rowland still manages to pull a gem out of the fire with the touching My Submission. [Aug 2023, p.78]

Warbling soul, classical lieder, No Other's stage-musical rapture, the title track's echo of Copeland's 1986 New-Age-synth album Keyboard Fantasies - all united by his seemingly unshakeable belief in humanity. [Aug 2023, p.84]

Interspersed with scored interludes and fragments of poetry read by Jessica Griffin of Would-Be-Goods, the effect is one of benign diffusion, the hazy avenues of MacLean's impressionistic lyrics running through the music as if the songs themselves now inhabit that hypnopompic state of consciousness where the centre cannot hold. [Aug 2023, p.86]

Over time, however, it can feel like Clarke has excised the excitement along with the Extraneous matter, his balefully lovelorn tenor, now right out front without distracting clutter, often too reedy to carry the show. [Sep 2023, p.84]

Fate Of The faithful is ostensibly No Quarter, Meeting The Master is Thank You, and The Falling Sky cribs a Robert Plant-style harp solo so perfectly that GVF can likely taste his spit. Be in no doubt, however, that frontman Josh Kiszka's Olympian wail can part the waves of cynicism and make the scales fall from your eyes. [Sep 2023, p.88]

While Django Django's eclectic impulses roam wild - Krautrock, house, techno, acid rave and electronica - on this sprawling set, they're anchored by duets. [Sep 2023, p.92]

A profoundly satisfying album, unreservedly recommended. [Sep 2023, p.86]

For all these disturbances, this grappling with difficult stuff of life and death, there is lovely, graceful ease to The Ballad Of Darren. This isn't the sound of a band trying to react against their past, or challenge their Britpop audience with US noise, or justify their existence - it's Blur simply showing what they do best. [Sep 2023, p.80]

Blackwell remains an inveterate magpie of all things psychedelic. [Sep 2023, p.84]

He and his guests have history, but the second half of Mountains might have benefited from fewer backing singers - however good, they over-egg the songs. [Sep 2023, p.86]

It's as if the quintet has not yet achieved lift-off velocity. As such, the most fascinating tracks here are the older standards. [Sep 2023, p.94]

The spartan structure makes for an intimate if one-paced experience and Potter's singing us more spoken in Marianne Faithfull style, with a hint of Weimar, but she's a beguiling storyteller. [Sep 2023, p.83]

There's also a cameo by Ruben Blades on the lively Pajarito Volo, but Ochoa remains the undoubted star of the show. [Sep 2023, p.82]

At times City Of Gold may sound a little hungover after the euphoric heights of 2022, but Tuttle shows every sign of pushing through. [Aug 2023, p.78]

This opens with rocking electric blues guitar, rolling piano and a singalong chorus. The warm, barroom feel continues in Alcohallelujah. [Aug 2023, p.80]

Discs two and three mostly consist of unedited or alternate takes of material on the main disc. A full-length Transylvania Boogie, previously released in edited form, turns out to have been mostly a long, meandering shuffle with a drum solo. Hitherto undocumented titles Halos And Arrows and Moldred turn out to be, respectively, an exploratory guitar overdub piece (all that’s missing is Joni Mitchell at the mike) and a brief Tommy/Vincent composite with added bass. [Aug 2023, p.90]

...Bolgatanga is easily AHC's most accessible, vivid approximation of Brian Eno's fabled "vision of a psychedelic Africa". [Aug 2023, p.78]

Welcome echoes include Bramah's sinister, cogent non sequiturs and the contorted, sharp-edged rock sounds, and the urgent to interpret everything as a reference to MES becomes flesh with the spectral/beefy Harlequin Duke. [Jul 2023, p.85]

While all but a handful of the songs from the 13 track Angels & Queens have already been drip-fed via a series of singles, EPs and last year's seven-track mini-album, Gabriels' desire to take their time with the making of their long-awaited debut album has certainly paid off. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Signs of life: abundant. [Aug 2023, p.82]

Coming in at just 28 minutes. .... But the grand old man of Afrobeat is on fine form throughout, challenging the horns and bass to follow his lead. [Aug 2023, p.83]

Stands as both love letter and elegy and encompasses the deeply held emotions of both. [Aug 2023, p.86]

It's a record of fierce seriousness, a demand for engagement as inescapable and immediate as somebody shaking you by the shoulders. [Aug 2023, p.82]

Augustine's fourth is celestially good, his own fevered vision. [Aug 2023, p.78]

Extraordinary. [Aug 2023, p.88]

I Inside the Old Year Dying holds itself at the biting point between old and new, re-evaluation and revelation. What lies on the other side, only Polly Harvey knows, but this is a record she was born to make. [Aug 2023, p.76]

It's a coherent entity which should be heard as a whole. [May 2023, p.89]

Ayers is a lovely singer in both English and Spanish; he rather less so on the London homage It's Another Night or the gently barbed I've Never Had A Good Time.... In Paris. When they harmonise on Room At The Top, though, they're a joy. [Jun 2023, p.89]

A left-field jazz date transversing elation and sadness, and electronic weirdness peaking on off-radar standout Gecko Sound. [Aug 2023, p.88]

His rueful lyrics are mostly about relationship woes, although Florida Man is more serious, dealing with racism. [Aug 2023, p.82]

Even Russell's most intimate recordings could make him feel like a phantom; as details are filled in, the phantom expands. [Aug 2023, p.94]

Sure, these blues are familiar, but at least these friends make 'em fun. [Aug 2023, p.82]

Reorderd, with three more excellent songs, copious sleevenotes, and some remixing and updated vocals that never detract from the authenticity of the project. [Aug 2023, p.93]

Deer Tick impress with their pop nous and sheer verve. [Aug 2023, p.81]

A beguiling sigh in itself. [Aug 2023, p.81]

She might feel her work-life balance is out of whack, but Power's creative scales are perfectly aligned. [Aug 2023, p.80]

bdrmm's murky spider play tugs at the listener's emotions in unanticipated ways. [Aug 2023, p.87]

The self-analysis is elevated by Chatten's scowling poetry and producer Dan Carey's bright detailing. [Aug 2023, p.80]

As it swivels between rock hymns like the Boss-backed New York comeback and country laments like Jukebox, it becomes a primer for newcomers, not a unified statement on a par with 2020's raw Good Souls Better Angels or the landmark Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Still, it is a triumph that this exists at all. [Aug 2023, p.80]

It's exquisitely crafted and the backing vocals on North Country Ride are beyond beautiful, but a little more colour in their palette wouldn't go amiss. [Aug 2023, p.78]

A richly detailed synth-pop LP of admirable sophistication. [Jul 2023, p.82]