The sound is gothically cavernous and frames her seized phrasing with tasteful restraint.

Though some of the good-girl-gone-bad shtick has been sacrificed on the altar of go-for-it jangly pop, she's still as good as it gets when she finally opens her pipes on "Dallas".

Just simple, old-fashioned talent and charm.

It marries a downbeat songcraft to an expansive sound courtesy of producers Guy Garvey and Craig Potter.

It may be a bit rushed--too sickly sweet for one sitting, while their youthful lyrics will ripen yet--but the hit rate is nonetheless impressively high.

How you respond will depend on how you react to such gubbins being brought to bear on Merritt's A-to-B-and-back melodic sense. No doubting its realness, though.

The songs? Melodically flat, feel-driven jive from the hip.

All of it frothed up into an accomplished brew and delivered with good-timey vim but without a whole lot of charisma, especially in the vocal department. Snake oil, in other words. Good fun snake oil.

While newer tracks “My Song 5” and “Let Me Go” snag by throwing surprisingly moody shapes, Martika-esque closer “Running if You Call My Name” sounds like something smoothed for A-list romcom duties.

The second studio album from the experimental New York trio oozes colour.

Danilova's commanding tones evoking nameless terrors over wonderful doom-laden synth-rock.

Bradley, a 62-year-old ex-plumber and James Brown impersonator, has a raspy, infinitely pained voice but there doesn't appear to be any real interaction between him and the band.

While nothing grates, all it really achieves is to make you want to hear Hank sing them.

IOH is their most emotional release yet and also their most philosophical.

Precocious, certainly, exhilarating, at times, Lorde’s debut album is almost but not quite as good as it thinks it is.

Redemption by plucked string. Buddy Miller produces analogically.

Two non-trad covers (Anais Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac) remind you that he's earnt the right to do what the hell he wants.

Not for the faint-hearted, nor those offended by religion. Often brilliant.

While Wagner's voice is not always up to it, Tidwell's authentic country pipes are the real revelation here.

Give it time and the intensity of the music--the Hagar of the title is Lloyd's great-great grandmother, who was sold into slavery--comes through.

Almost every track sounds like a potential single in an indie rock/Americana kind of way.

Jamal sounds close to his 1950s Chess Records best.

Sadly, they simultaneously fail to disguise a whole bucketload of ponderous, self-indulgent navel-gazing from the same source.

He sets his bruised but unbowed soul against a stark musical backing and rediscovers the power of keeping it simple. Beautiful.

For all its faux-primitive origins, their seventh studio album is every bit as likely to ship platinum as the previous six.

Casual bystanders might wish for more memorable songs or some advancement of the form.

Scratch beneath the surface sheen of It's All True and all kinds of depths emerge.

It's a skilled blend of the organic and the electronic.