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]

In its Thatcher-ite commitment to pop perfection, it turns the art of the album into a sausage factory of hit making. Alexander's Years & Years sounds like a ragbag of contemporary influences rather than possessing a distinct sound of its own. [Mar 2022, p.85]

An accomplished study in post-punk boom, synth whoosh and creepy-crawl vocals. [Mar 2022, p.90]

It feels like Palace's first significant work. [Feb 2021, p.85]

The nine tracks sound pleasingly out of step with contemporary norms. [Feb 2022, p.91]

Though the album's polished backdrops are a far cry from the raw Delta blues records that inspired Keb' Mo' at the dawn of his career, there's no doubting the authenticity of the deep feeling he [ours into his vocal performances. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Easily Band Of horses' best LP in over a decade. [Feb 2022, p.86]

She further unleashes her psyche in a voice of throaty, Diamanda Galas-style intesity. [Jan 2022, p.88]

An exhilarating record by a band not only thriving under pressure but already finding new ways to adapt to its force. [Feb 2022, p.80]

Soundtrack to Mona Fastvold's story of love amid tough rural landscapes has similar mood contrasts. [Feb 2022, p.92]

It's not all folkie freak-out - on Djinn Pulse or Cupa Cupa they decelerate to conjure hypnotic beauty. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Their shortest statement yet, offering seven songs in 34 minutes, with a stripped-down, countrified focus. [Feb 2022, p.91]

A little more sonic danger may have roughed-up the pristine veneer that dampens the fun. [Dec 2021, p.89]

The most energised performance Costello has committed to record in a long time and - despite his protestations that The Imposters are an entirely different band - his most classic Attractions-like album since 1994's Brutal Youth. [Feb 2022, p.83]

Bruland has build her formative P.J. Harvey influences with a blurrier, chillier mix of guitars and electronics, landing somewhere bewitching between Broadcast, My Bloody Valentine and Lush. [Jan 2022, p.87]

Blind Date Party is intriguing enough to be more than a one-night thing. [Jan 2022, p.82]

A richly downcast experience, his deft arrangements recalling the powerful, orchestrated cloudbursts of Curtis Mayfield's solo debut. [Feb 2022, p.82]

This album again showcases Marshall's exceptional ability to burrow right into the marrow of a song. [Feb 2022, p.82]

Its class is unmistakable, surpassing even the low-slung gait of 1995's previous career milestone Smokers delight. [Dec 2021, p.89]

A delight of many layers. [Aug 2021, p.83]

Among wild wanderings, Trees Speak frequently snap back to a crisp, jazzy bassline groove, making their whole far-out adventure hard to resist. [Feb 2022, p.87]

While Mollestad is at her most formal, this album's power and deep cultural roots bring a resonance akin to that of the work of Nordheim. [Jan 2022, p.88]

Built around minimalist synth sequences that are slow-building and tense, with agitated pin-prick rhythms and pulsing stabs evoking a vastness of space and associated emotional states. [Jan 2022, p.87]

His voice surprises. [Jan 2022, p.88]

Springtime has two approaches, one more methodical, like the intense needling Will To Power. ... The other is rooted in improv. [Jan 2022, p.84]

A series of musical shocks driven by Marcal's powerful vocals. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Musca is far more than filler. Opening with the crunching sweep of two Doors, Herbert sets sail on a (wonky-ish) 4/4 course. Hypnotised is moody, throbbing house with a UK garage skip. [Nov 2021, p.91]

12 solo guitar pieces conjure spatial evocations. [Jan 2022, p.91]

The whole of Open Arms is much larger than the sum of its parts. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Genre-curious in its sparkle and allure, and most certainly not for everyone. [Feb 2022, p.102]

Moves from a first LP of monumental pinguid hypo-groovers to a second of fried-amp creepy-crawl sludge and crude-oil ghost harmonics. [Dec 2021, p.86]

As with all such improvised projects, Gong Splat is as much about the journey as the destination, but there's little meandering to Dwyer's questing. [Feb 2022, p.87]

A liberating 73-minute sprawl, constantly blurring the lines between euphony and cacophony. [Dec 2021, p.89]

These 11 songs sound like they've been here forever. [Jan 2022, p.82]

Can's high-wire spontaneous creation sustains over 90 mind-bending minutes at the highest pitch. [Jan 2022, p.101]

Subtitled "Ghana Music Power House", a fitting epitaph for Dick Essilfie-Bondize. ... Highlight: the blissful whirl Yeaba by CK Mann's Carousel. [Feb 2022, p.103]

The 50th-anniversary edition affirms the underrated triumph in Cahoots. [Feb 2022, p.97]

The more gothic the song (Girl In Amber; Red Right Hand) the better the interpretation. [Feb 2022, p.92]

He digs deep on guileless rock and soul with bold flourishes, ala Lowell George or Randy Newman. [Feb 2022, p.92]

The highs of Fade, Queens and Better Love variously recall Arcade Fire and The Flaming Lips in euphoria mode, while the lows plumb eerie depths akin to Big Star's Third. [Feb 2022, p.89]

There are moments where the charts could bear being much edgier, and the guest spots are variable. ... In the midst of it, Weller himself sails regally on, in fine-grained voice, and the songs are happily, bomb(ast)-proof. [Feb 2022, p.87]

He cameos his way through an album of star-studded but largely by-numbers major label rap/R&B without breaking sweat. Yet jewels lurk amid the imitation pearls. [Feb 2022, p.82]

A reminder that Green Day's songwriting is far more nuanced than they're often given credit for. [Feb 2022, p.96]

This is the sound of 19 different keyboards imagining a parallel world where the test record in every '70s hi-fi home was Wendy C micro-Mooging her way through the Sun ra spaceways. The combination highlights the innocence and beauty of both styles, like forgotten '70s TV themes soundtracking scientific experiments or lonely IBM computers hymning their own obsolescence. [Jan 2022, p.86]

Her best songs - cinematic anthem Lost Woman's Prayer and highly charged Every Day In Faith - sound like well-established country classics. [Jan 2022, p.89]

For all its neo-classical leanings, Frahm's music engages emotion as much as intellect, these sketches and fragments offering a meditative respite from a world far more chaotic than this music. [Jan 2022, p.83]

A sturdy enough vehicle for Young's polemics, Crazy Horse are an even stronger conduit for the metaphysics of their union. ... But when you want it dark, no one does dark like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. [Jan 2022, p.80]

Drily recorded and subtle to a fault. in places, Island Of Noise becomes so evanescent it threatens to disappear altogether. [Dec 2021, p.92]

Skirls of noise are layered like mille-feuille, bass drops hit with the muscular impact of a piledriver, and a cloud hangs heavy over the entirety of proceedings. [Jan 2022, p.87]

Caravan sound reinvigorated and energised here on their best album in, let's say, quite some time. [Nov 2021, p.93]

Immersive and entrancing. [Jan 2022, p.90]

It's a daunting but ultimately rewarding listen. [Jan 2022, p.92]

It routinely achieves a perfect fusion of forma nd content. [Dec 2021, p.87]

[Body/Erase's] opening six minutes resemble an accidental recording made inside an overcoat pocket before mediated snatches of feedback further hint towards this maverick tape manipulator's dark art. [Jan 2022, p.82]

It's a vivid glimpse of a phenomenon on the cusp of mega-fame. [Jan 2022, p.100]

A beguiling outing, cinematic in scope and ambition. [Jan 2022, p.86]

The Bridge is Sting at his most-Sting like. [Jan 2022, p.82]

Aoba's hushed voice makes for an immersive meld of indie-folk, classical and jazz. [Jan 2022, p.91]

One for the fans delighted he's still here and fascinated by how such classic songs started out. [Jan 2022, p.82]

A sensual, hallucinatory delight. [Jan 2022, p.86]

Georgia Blue's diversity of Georgia sounds sits well with its campaign for inclusivity. [Jan 2022, p.86]

The sixth full-length is a more modest affair, but also one of their finest. [Nov 2021, p.88]

The finest track is Lukas's high tenor take on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, a hymn to wisdom and humility its timelessness reinforced as a country song. [Jan 2022, p.82]

Makaya McCraven's alchemical abilities and subliminal technical savvy offer both a sensitive update of the Blue Note label's depth-charged catalogue and a welcome pathfinder for the uninitiated. [Jan 2022, p.83]

A collaboration where each sulphurous element perfectly complements the others. [Jan 2022, p.90]

Roots-rock Zelig with a punk past, the New Yorker's double long-player has Roots Rock and Radical discs. [Nov 2021, p.94]

The remarkably unhurried, hermetic vibe of her intimate chamber-folk remains unchanged. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Out There, but inclusive too. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Garvey's lyricism is elevated by the subtle complexity of the music, clarinets, choral voices and churchy keyboards whispering through the vents of these sons, causing a quiet stir. [Dec 2021, p.86]

Things could have easily slipped into a kitsch pastiche by this stage, yet La Luz continue to find fresh avenues to explore. [Jan 2022, p.85]

While there's nothing here that immediately screams to be considered in the front rank of their input, the more you listen, the more it feels like being reunited with some long-lost, missing-presumed-dead relatives. ... Voyage is just as good as you expect. [Jan 2022, p.84]

Imposter, if not essential, always ring true. [Jan 2022, p.83]

A lyrically strong album. [Jan 2022, p.82]

The formula still works a treat. [Dec 2021, p.86]

It's the way these sessions are gracefully processed into digitalia that makes the whole thing so cohesive. [Dec 2021 p.87]

Grand, unsettling, and a fitting finale that propels The Upsetter to a higher plain. [Dec 2021, p.91]

His solos still dazzle and the riff to Notches could move mountains, but too much of Time Clocks suggests Bonamassa by numbers. [Dec 2021, p.91]

Ultimately, it's the push and pull between Duncan Bellamy's mantric hang-drums and Jack Wyllie's floating sax lines that ensure these widescreen creations feel so vividly full of life. [Dec 2021, p.89]

An auspicious new singer-songwriter, not afraid to broaden her Horizons. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Ian Devaney's tremulous tones and Michael Sue-Poi's melodic bass lines cutting deep on heartbroken ballads. [Dec 2021, p.94]

Idles are finding new directions home: the hallmark of a great band. [Dec 2021, p.85]

It's music that's soothing as transportive. [Dec 2021, p.87]

Blom's buoyant indie-rock - a perfect vehicle for the everyday anxieties that power her songs - quickly proves hard to resist. [Nov 2021, p.84]