It's all expertly arranged to maximise the unbrushed bohemian intensity. [Aug 2022, p.86]

His singing, always restrained, is so low-key that it risks losing the listener's attention, but the playing supplies the feeling. [Aug 2022, p.95]

Occasionally, the joke is pushed too far (the feigned English accents and campy synth-pop of Muscles). Mostly, however, McBean's native gift for riff and songcraft transcend any conceptual archness. [Aug 2022, p.92]

It's when Spektor is less showy and more direct that her songs are most affecting. [Aug 2022, p.86]

This trick of balancing heavy and light serves Mercury well. [Jul 2022, p.88]

It's a beguiling mix for the most part, even if they have overly sacrificed melody on the altar of rhythm. [Jul 2022, p.93]

These opaque, often uneasy sounding songs conjure nature's unpredictability and vulnerability as well as its beauty. [Jul 2022, p.89]

O'Brien prowls around angular guitar and drums. Imagine a Kim Gordon-fronted PiL. [Jul 2022, p.97]

The follow-up to 2020's When We Stay Alive continues that LP's fragile introspection. [Jul 2022, p.97]

A few numbers tread too similar a beat; but then there's the gumshoe monologue of Brexit At Tiffany's and The Sergio Leone mash-up of Saint Michael - which is windswept, stately and might, just might be hopeful. [Jun 2022, p.91]

Dana Margolin isn't just reckoning with a break-up, but a near-total collapse in its wake. ... Yet the prettiness somehow makes listening feel more voyeuristic. [Jul 2022, p.92]

There are moments of real beauty, and Air may well prick up the ears of film producers looking for new scoring talent, but as a listening experience in itself, it's often heavy-going. [Jul 2022, p.90]

The melodies and fire return in Baby I'm Coming Home, but held up against their past triumphs, Dropout Boogie often sounds half-cooked. [Jun 2022, p.84]

It builds a new stoic eloquence into her vulnerability, even if the stark, birdsong-imbued Darkish drips with Radiohead-like ennui. [Jun 2022, p.84]

Side two, however, veers into arch Euro-pop (I Don't Have Control Sometimes) and moody balladry (Stand By Me), and Sunflower Bean's new-found confection begins to set one's teeth on edge. [Jun 2022, p.87]

On one hand, there are well written songs here, served up on a bed of country tunes via Jack White's rarefied, obsessively aesthetic Third Man label. But then there's the cheap, digitised sound, with all the charm of a Hallmark Country Christmas album dropping an '80s home organ down the stairs at Nashville airport. [Jun 2022, p.86]

Wen It Comes is a mood piece on which Gavanski appears to chronicle living through a waking dream. [Jun 2022, p.89]

Singer Ann's third solo LP is her most Heart-like, cruising between drivetime and blues-rock. [Jun 2022, p.89]

Break Me open doesn't stray too far from his day job. ... When his music rises to match the power of his words - the strings-and-horn-laden crescendo of Crestfallen - the results are stirring. [May 2022, p.90]

BP retain a youthful fixation with personal drama, biting lyrics and angular guitars, laced with keyboards. [Jun 2022, p.94]

The best moments - Where The Water Clears The illusion's untethered vocals, for example - come with an edge of unease, pushing Prochet onwards, upwards, and out of her beautifully suspended animation. [May 2022, p.86]

At its best, it harkens to long-lost, dense-sounding riff grinders such as Breaking Circus or Earth, but there's light as well as shade too and Broken Sugar positively twinkles. [Jun 2022, p.87]

Holds together as a coherent statement, offering - like its predecessor, 2015's Right On! - a more modest, bare-bones vision of the spectral, goth-adjacent dark pop of her day job. [Jun 2022, p.86]

Weighty subtexts and a consistent mood of restrained portent haven't entirely banished the aforementioned arpeggiated banality here, however, which is a shame, because in places Heather gives rein to an otherwise repressed idiosyncrasy. [May 2022, p.94]

Solid and dependable rather than spectacular. [Jun 2022, p.91]

The rest can't quite compete [with the 18-minute The Dripping Tap], and is at its best on the contrasting Magenta mountain and Presumptous. [Jun 2022, p.84]

The combination of piano and the string ensemble Scoring Berlin has some overlap with sonic contemplations of Max Richter and Arvo Part. But Eno has a distinctive style and picks just the right chord change or string colouration. [May 2022, p.88]

Mahal and Cooder are giving back here like so often before. [May 2022, p.92]