With enough disco detonators aboard for three Top 5 albums, here's the feel-good hit album of 2022. [May 2022, p.95]

With most cuts clocking in under five minutes, Sonancy's austere precision carries right through to its auteur's Chrome-esque robo voicing. [Apr 2022, p.80]

On paper it might sound like a filler - nine songs, none of them original, some newly recorded, some not - but to listen to it's wonderful. [May 2022, p.94]

Nancy Andersen sings like a chillwave Sade, her understated poise more histrionic vocalists couldn't access. [Apr 2022, p.89]

[An] Extraordinary album. [Apr 2022, p.92]

Labyrinthitis is another tantalising Destroyer album, one that resists being clutched too tight or loved too hard as it roams its peculiar world. [Apr 2022, p.86]

On first listen, warm Chris is les obviously immediate than Designer, though the songs don't take long t worm their way into the mind. [Apr 2022, p.78]

It's a pity Parton has retreated into much safer and predictable territory. [May 2022, p.86]

Here and there you can hear a touch of JJ Cale breeziness and, on Ballad Of An Unknown, urban cowboy noir with socio-political lyrics. [Apr 2022, p.85]

His own poetic, empathetic songs have a knack of turning modern ills into careworn country classicism. [May 2022, p.96]

Mehldau takes the listener on a memorable musical journey. [May 2022, p.92]

The thrill lies in eavesdropping on experiments-in-progress, ad as much in the quest itself as in the flashes of genius that occasionally arise. [May 2022, p.106]

The resulting ruminations on loss prove both playful and deep. [Apr 2022, p.89]

Despite omitting anything from FFS, their career re-booting alliance with Sparks, this is as good as introductions get. [Apr 2022, p.95]

There's little commerciality, although It came back gallops along cheerily, but there is the sense of a man doing as he pleases and guessing - correctly - he'll take his audience with him. [Apr 2022, p.85]

You might struggle to identify where their influences end and begin, but Mattiel's charisma - and solid gold tunes, in the form of Lighthouse and the darkly gothic Blood In the yolk - ultimately win out. [Apr 2022, p.89]

bare-knuckled rhymes and eerie sing-song hooks deliver the trademark thrills, though Muggs' lysergic touch is often missed. [Apr 2022, p.89]

It's good: at times dreamily pensive, at others a kind of psychedelic prog, layered, sophisticated and melodic. [Apr 2022, p.83]

Great that they are back on their own label, on their own terms, but some of these "democratically produced" recordings want for a more ruthless arbitrator. [Apr 2022, p.80]

Molly Hamilton's languorous, seductive vocals further elevate simple Velvets-meets-The-Cowboy-Junkies arrangements, guitar foil Robert Earl Thomas entices with wobbly curlicue riffs and minimalist twang and psych-flute motifs on While You Wait keep things fresh. [Apr 2022, p.87]

Contrasting extremes on emotionally literate, indie rock evocations. [Mar 2022, p.90]

The albums most evoked are the mid'90s brace, Charade and Misère. The Monochrome Set remain unmistakeably themselves. [Apr 2022, p.82]

The Mysterines' raw, gothic debut crawls under the listener's skin, thanks to singer Lia Metcalfe's impressive vocal range. [Apr 2022, p.88]

Much of Everything Was Beautiful has a vital, thundering pulse. ... Utterly beautiful, as advertised. [Mar 2022, p.80]

He's embraced a lush, harmony-drenched sound akin to late-period Fleetwood Mac or even the outer reaches of yacht rock. Yet, it's underpinned by biting, literate lyrics and mostly crestfallen characters. [Apr 2022, p.83]

Under Hval's microscope, the seemingly straightforward is anything but. [Apr 2022, p.83]

The songs have a sort of likeable innocence; humanistic and quirky. ... Nothing not to like here. [Apr 2022, p.84]

Five minutes in her personal company would likely be exhausting, but for this album's duration her brain salad music is fantastical. [Apr 2022, p.82]

Thirty-five albums in, incredibly, GBV are still scaling new heights. [Apr 2022, p.80]

[Still Life] finally moves her on from being just "one to watch" to the woman of the moment. [Apr 2022, p.81]

Achieves optimum velocity from the off, and barely settles for less than a vigorous simmer throughout. [Apr 2022, p.85]

A companion piece, maybe, but these songs can stand alone. [Apr 2022, p.84]

After nine songs averaging under four minutes, Moore closes with The Realization, 10 minutes of converging light and dark, and one of the finest piece of music that he has put his name to. [Apr 2022, p.84]

Merrick's smoke-ring vocals rarely become agitated; the lyrics are unforced, unadorned, conversational to the point of artlessness. ... Yet there is tension here, lurking in the disconnect between Merrick's nonchalant vocals and the simmering volatility of the music. [Apr 2022, p.82]

It's unashamedly nostalgic, but her voice remains pure and true. [Apr 2022, p.84]

Stark, resolute songs. [Apr 2022, p.85]

Boasts duets between Esperanza Spalding ab=nd Q-Tip, Musiq Soulchild and posdnuos and a deep-voiced rap from Meshell Ndegeocello that perfectly marries H.E.R.'s downcast balladeering. Much of the rest, however, is little more than showy, slick and generic R&B, with Glasper becoming virtually untraceable. [Apr 2022, p.89]

Though the percussive, struck guitar strings interlude Zilch is perhaps an inquiry too far, caroline's flair for conjuring the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness frequently enchants. [Apr 2022, p.89]

One or two numbers have too many twiddles; but then there's the waltz-like Are You In Love?, no longer a teen crush but adult, gently humorous and intoxicating. [Mar 2022, p.85]

The record's well-meaning earnestness is a little overwhelming, but it's the stuffed-crust arrangements that really grate, everything happening at once, and often for too long. [Apr 2022, p.81]

Packed with urgency, edge and scope, it's light years ahead of the competition. [Apr 2022, p.89]

The album's 12 intimate essays, described as "elegies as much as songs," feel like ghostly, poignant testaments to our times. [Mar 2022, p.86]

The result is Proustian, the 18 tracks an overwhelming rush of joy. [Apr 2022, p.82]

While tracks like The Whirl, Receiver, Sensory Street and Human are among Marr's most impressive, Fever Dream is too long, uniform and persistent to enjoy in one sitting. Perhaps best, then, to take your time and discover its sparkling delirium in its 4 x 12-inch singles form. [Apr 2022, p.81]

For all Wild Loneliness's concerns about our ailing world, it's unmistakably a tonic. It's also a life-affirming thank-you note for what we have left. [Apr 2022, p.87]

Trentemøller deftness in balancing light and shade and a multi-layered approach are key to its allure. [Mar 2022, p.87]

Ocean Child achieves its aim - emphasising the vibrant depth of Yoko Ono's (approximately) infinite universe. [Apr 2022, p.83]

The more chances Tears For Fears take, the more they thrive, and they take chances here: seems like a new album was a good idea after all. [Apr 2022, p.88]

Nas's fifteenth is a heap of comfort food for old-school rap fans. [Apr 2022, p.90]

A wholly unsanitised vision, where screeching white noise guitars eclipse thundering beats in a reverb dungeon far from prissy "Health & Safety" regulation. [Apr 2022, p.80]

Throughout, Earthling toys with classic radio-rock clichés, only to cleanse them of jadedness via Vedder's trademark wholehearted investment, a trick which still charms. [Apr 2022, p.88]

Small World suffers from sonic conservatism: The Tame Impala-lite of I Lost My Mind is undercooked, while It's Good To Be Back's tracly synths are a touch self-parodic. [Apr 2022, p.88]

Sinewy. ... Lines brings a clear echo of mid-period Pink Floyd to the table. [Mar 2022, p83]

There's a lot of it, nearly five hours' worth, but you don't need to have a working knowledge of the inside of a Lambretta to enjoy the sharp-suited sounds here. [Mar 2022, p.98]

Life On Earth is a compassionate, humane record at a time when it can only be a gift. [Mar 2022, p.78]

Modern country-funk jams packed with slick guitar licks, springy basslines and endless hooks. [Mar 2022, p.90]

Donaldson keeps refining what is essentially one song. ... Fortunately, Donaldson's undeniable homage is exquisitely on the nose, one comforting swoon after another. [Mar 2022, p.86]

Lighten Up takes its sometimes melancholy frown, turns it upside down and delivers an infectious beam of musical sunshine. [Mar 2022, p.82]

The Philadelphia quartet's second has a deep warmth emanating from it. [Mar 2022, p.82]

It's Beach House's grandest vision yet. [Mar 2022, p.83]

Wonderfully immersive stuff. [Mar 2022, p.85]

The DLO3 serve up a decidedly old school-sounding platter whose feel-good vibe is infectious. [Mar 2022, p.86]

The sextet returning to their complex basics. ... They still struggle for hooks, though. [Mar 2022, p.83]

The most natural sounding album of his career. [Mar 2022, p.83]

[Tony] Rice would have loved it. [Feb 2022, p.86]

With a voice that perfectly balances grit and sugar, Daniel and band tread their indie/rock tightrope with flair. [Mar 2022, p.85]

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is both an album of admirable ambition and a mantra worth repeating until its mysteries are revealed. [Mar 2022, p.81]

A proper fire-starter. [Mar 2022, p.88]

The 7th Hand embodies contemporary jazz at its most thrilling. [Feb 2022, p.91]

It's not all strum und drang though. The beatless despair of Källans Återuppståndelse shows the harmonic subtleties at play within Von Hausswolff's bewitching repertoire of dissonance and drama. [Feb 2022, p.87]

The tunes are still naggingly memorable, but often less convivial, more melancholy. [Feb 2022, p.86]

The edges of 2019's Candy Colored Doom have sharpened: her voice and guitar sheer off into abrasion on Metal Bird. [Feb 2022, p.85]

This is as perfect as any album can be. [Mar 2022, p.98]

The corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's songwriting so expertly exerts. [Mar 2022, p.80]

Ants... represents a substantial step forward for them. [Mar 2022, p.84]

Her balance of mesmerising, confessional intensity with sculpted pop instincts remains an unfailing pleasure throughout. [Mar 2022, p.85]

The sisters soar even higher here. [Feb 2022, p.91]

Shimmering debut. [Mar 2022, p.90]

A succession of haunting story songs. ... Closing track After The Rain, meanwhile, is a hymnal balm. Less happily, he's made a part return to his original calling as a spoken word poet. [Feb 2022, p.89]

1991's indie strivers and success stories, over three nugget-selected discs. [Mar 2022, p.98]

Imarhan's 11 songs come wrapped in a soundscape; a surround-sound version would have the guitars and vocal central, but dust devils and translucent scorpions in the corners of your room, a sweet tea bubbling away and, after dark, the shuffling of a hyena behind the settee. the music expands to fill the space. [Mar 2022, p.82]

There's not much here to rival very top Tull but then nothing that sullies the venerable brand either. [Feb 2022, p.83]

Her songs sound simultaneously safe and familiar, yet strange and unknowable. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Apart from the upbeat soul of Never Want To Be Kissed, featuring Stax veteran William bell on vocals, Set Sail stumbles and squints through its nine other tracks, although on Bumpin' they at least rouse themselves long enough to sound like Tony Joe White imitating Sly Stone. [Mar 2022, p.86]

The musical density doesn't quite complement the elegiac lyrical flow, and a change of pace might have meant another way forward, but there's tenderness to spare. [Feb 2022, p.90]

Hall explores his anger and depression through mostly downbeat but frequently beautiful ballads. [Feb 2022, p.87]

If the forward-looking, ever exploratory production just occasionally outguns the songwriting, Daft Punk-ish floor-filler The Last Dance is unimpeachable, a defiant shimmy toward the apocalypse. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Deceptively simple, the result is a lovely thing. [Feb 2022, p.86]

This hour-long excerpt inevitably loses that multimedia narrative heft, yet its marriage of dronescape synths and Chinese libretto - voices alternatively soaring, skittering and sorrowful - still casts an otherworldly spell. [Feb 2022, p.84]

There's a new directness, a more linear approach to melody, and, most unexpectedly, the overt presence of synthesizers. [Mar 2022, p.86]

While Time Skiffs sounds deeply, existentially scattered, every atom is in its rightful place. [Mar 2022, p.87]

Tackling eight traditional songs, he plays Just A Close Walk With Thee and Old Rugged Cross relatively straight, but turns the likes of We Shall Rise and Are You Washed In Blood? into glorious Southern boogie, replete with screaming guitar solos. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Part happy break-up LP, part honest look in the mirror, Extreme Witchcraft works magic. [Feb 2022, p.82]

This is a record of delicately sculped nuages, all wispily sung by guitarist/keyboard-player Wata. [Mar 2022, p.80]

It's hard not to wonder whether Aksnes has been crowded-out on her own album [Mar 2022, p.83]

He's pushed his sound forwards into more mature, less swaggering territory and recruited non-threatening guests Paul O'Grady and Corinne Bailey Rae. [Mar 2022, p.83]

It's on hypnotic original compositions such as Excess Success or reworked pieces like La Jetee that Parker's true genius shines through, an ability to create entire new sonic worlds from the tiniest of elements. [Mar 2022, p.88]

While opener Der Lange Marsh 1 sways like a marram grass in the breeze, there's a relentlessness to the album's overall progress. [Mar 2022, p.87]