It's uneven in places, but "OMW" - a twinkly 10-minute closer written with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig - is a low-key delight. [Mar 2021, p.25]

He sings in a hushed, fragile whisper that is a;most unbearably personal. [Mar 2021, p.35]

The fifth season might be more art piece than album, but is no less intriguing because of it. [Oct 2020, p.32]

This swift reimagining of the Protean Threat tapes launches into greater psychedelic flights. [Jan 2021, p.31]

Musically, it can get a little one-note but there are some terrific moments. [Nov 2020, p.37]

A spirited album that runs the gamut from pop to pop-punk to punk. Not everything works. [Jan 2021, p.23]

Metal-tinged stadium rockers like "The Machine," "Stand And Fight" and the Sabbathy "The Alchemist" still offer their strongest moments. [Dec 2020, p.27]

When they succeed, it's on more traditional Pumpkins territory. ... Otherwise, Cyr sounds like an underwhelming misadventure. [Jan 2021, p.32]

They sound positively in-your-face rather than isolated on garagey, throbbing stomps. [Jan 2021, p.27]

Disco is too much of a safe, shiny, frictionless crowd-pleaser to deliver much more than mildly entertaining retro pastiche. [Jan 2021, p.31]

Certainly it is a record of two halves, its first batch of corroded box jams smothered in hiss, including two listless cuts with Sampha. [Jan 2021, p.21]

Plenty of liturgic rumbling, but it really works when she aims for something greater. [Dec 2020, p.39]

There are moments of real beauty, like the tenderly plucked "Of Unsent Letters," but what might be comfort via familiarity for some may well be lacking in evolution for others. [Dec 2020, p.29]

What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? is no return to the glory days, it is a credible reprise of their old-school rolling and one-two punch, spiked with heavy psychedelic guitar. [Dec 2020, p.36]

Several songs that aim for Springsteenian grandeur but land nearer to John Mellencamp before he dropped the Cougar. Thankfully, Goldsmith's level of craft elsewhere means there's still plenty here to savour. [Nov 2020, p.29]

Shiver sometimes feels like a glitchcore sound collage, where ambient passages are ruptured by harsh beats and clamorous noise. [Nov 2020, p.31]

It's not always successful, but if the thrilling likes of "Lead Sister" and "Renegade Breakdown" constitute a fresh start, we'll take it. [Nov 2020, p.28]

Sprout can get a little too earnest - greater distance might, perhaps counterintuitively, make these songs more globally affecting - but he's still a great pop writer. [Oct 2020, p.36]

Help is overloaded with tastefully spare sketches, but there are enough sublime soundscapes and rich ideas here. [Sep 2020, p.36]

Much like The Head And The Heart, it's all mid-paced, with subject matter also inevitably static. [Oct 2020, p.32]

Fall To Pieces is too slight and elusive to move Adrian Thaws beyond his cult-level comfort zone, but there are appealing forays into flamenco guitar, light-headed Eurodisco and gleaming robo-funk here. [Oct 2020, p.39]

Krieger's fuzzy, sustain-heavy guitar solos drift along pleasantly. [May 2020, p.28]

Rarely bubbles over into the remarkable. [Sep 2020, p.25]

Is often guilty of over-earnestness and sentimentality. [Oct 2020, p.27]

She approaches the material with understated expressiveness. [Sep 2020, p.32]

The once robust voice is thinner but still gruffly effective. [Oct 2020, p.39]

They could afford to take more liberties with the musical cliches thereof: listening to Gaslighter is a bit like eating 12 courses of dessert. [Oct 2020, p.29]

Though Caravan Chateau may match the tone of society's mourning, it does so through a navel-gazing lens. [Oct 2020, p.32]