For chunks of the album there's an unshakable feeling of familiarity. [Jul 2018, p.27]

His voice isn't built for such poignancy. This is a 74-year-old's dance record, not an elegy. [Jul 2018, p.27]

There's an inherent creepiness in his frequently audacious work that makes it hard to connect with on an emotional level. [Jul 2018, p.33]

Though the stadium-EDM elements of "Miracle" are an unwelcome addition and there's a slight clash between two brands of brooding, when Matt Berninger guests on "My Enemy," Chvrches excel at an electro-pop simulacrum that's actually more craftily structured than most of their favourite records of 1982. [Jul 2018, p.26]

Haines' mean-spirited gifts abide, but Airfix cannot mend a broken spirit. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Magpies, for sure--but rather brilliant ones. [Jun 2018, p.30]

The album could sometimes benefit from a shift in pace from its often locked-in, mid-tempo state. [Jun 2018, p.35]

It sometimes feels a little pedestrian, though Jurado excels when upping the pace. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Though his jazz instincts can still send him into incantatory live orbit, all he wants here are the boyhood comforts of his early record collection. His voice remains admirably supple, though. [Jun 2018, p.33]

This is a pretty exhausted soundworld. [Jun 2018, p.37]

The ramshackle, campfire vibe is endearing, bu this is neither a fully immersive experience like Dead Man or a third LP with POTR. [Jun 2018, p.36]

Vide Noir unspools with cinematic seamlessness, as quicksilver psychedelic buffers bridge its 12 tracks, which shift between folk, country and heartland rock. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Wells favours minimal lyrics and skeletal, looping arrangements that an feel overly austere, but the improvised viola scraps and sampled splash of New Orleans jazz on "A Quiet Life" show an evolution towards Matthew Herbert territory. [May 2018, p.30]

The results has to be the blandest record in which either Sting or Shaggy has ever been involved. The lyrics are beyond banal. [Jun 2018, p.34]

The results are almost too intimate to bear. [Jun 2018, p.33]

Sometimes this nomadic approach produces some sublime pop, but more often the results are erratic--odd even--but never dull. [May 2018, p.33]

Weirdly, it sounds like a modern-day Alice Cooper album.[May 2018, p.35]

He's been inspired by the Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout, but in truth the synthetic textures and drum machines bring to mind a more downbeat Bruce Hornsby. [May 2018, p.33]

Their dogged adherence to the Southern rock template remains at once a strength and an intermittently frustrating weakness. On the upside, the Atlanta group do what they do with devoted attention to detail, and the correct balance of sincerity and swagger. [May 2018, p.24]

Like the stormy contents of 2015's Transfixiation, songs like "Never Coming Back" have no lack of velocity and ferocity, though APTBS often fall between two poles, being not quite able to deliver memorable songs yet unwilling to let the music dissolve into purer forms if turbulence. [May 2018, p.23]

The distinction between their sensibilities remain strikingly apparent. [May 2018, p.33]

Best are tunes that showcase Cash's plainspoken lyricism and mould his musing into fully formed songs. [May 2018, p. 37]

Effective, if not quite thrilling. [May 2018, p.30]

Longwave is languorous and amiable. ... The largely unchanging pace prompts yearnings for more frequent shifts from second gear, however. [May 2018, p.26]

It's no drastic reinvention, but the PRS cheques keep on coming. [May 2018, p.37]

Her follow-up, produced by Mark Howard, adds country-gospel choirs and fussy arrangements to her palette, steamrolling any nuance she might bring to these characters. [Apr 2018, p.23]

A sometimes mystifying but often inspired work. [May 2018, p.22]

Accomplished but oddly characterless, and despite the high hook count, forgettable. [May 2018, p.30]