The erstwhile Soft Boy’s latest solo outing is a brooding, politicised set.
It’s hard not to by won over by Thurston Moore’s eternal teenager energy.
Another great album from the Canadian, posing the question: why is he not bigger?
Finely wrought modern funk-pop wearing its emotions on its sleeve.
A rootsy, all-American affair offering an ingenuous, prairie-wide signature.
An indispensable illustration of the wild and vivid evolution of 1960s psychedelia.
Salford chanteuse delivers her share of astonishingly mature Big Pop Choruses.
There’s a seductively majestic quality always at play on Yeti Lane’s second LP.
An elegant, fastidiously constructed album from the Bristol composer.
Now, it seems, her time has finally come.
A second LP from the Irish singer which feels unforced, spontaneous and timeless.
This meditative and cinematic set is a victory for subtlety and sensitivity.
A fine place to sample much of Smith’s considerable oeuvre.
Former 'folktronica' maverick branches out in style
A watershed album on the cusp between their underground appeal and stadium future.
An undeniably impressive second album – more Philip Larkin than Mark E. Smith.
There’s much to marvel at on Robertson’s first LP of the 21st century.
The classic combo tasted the American condition by stirring up the soup of its past.
They revel in their retro-rock genre with mellifluous joie de vivre.
Confrontational South African trio strut the thin line between madness and genius.
A fine new label debut from the composer of the Amélie soundtrack.
A stylistic about-face from the Sea & Cake frontman on his third solo LP.
The vocalist shows no signs of fading into well-earned retirement just yet.
Dreamy, timeless music from the blues-tinged ethereal folk duo.
An unexpectedly poignant turn from the indie veterans.
Collins’ trawl through the Hitsville USA songbook is surprising and disarming.
Two EPs combine to make a single, beguiling long-player.
Ten tracks of timeless, simply adorned song-craft never constrained by Nashville tropes.
Packed to the gunwales with Brill Building hooks and decorated with wafting pedal steel.
A persuasive solo debut: confident, innovative and brimming with hooks.
The German trio turn electronically-tinged, instrumental rock music inside out.
Complicated, esoteric and, yes, really quite bonkers.
Somewhere, you suspect, Tony is nodding along, approvingly.
They may just have minted the new decade’s first essential album.
A cavalcade of keening, copper-bottomed pop melodies.
History tends to overlook the wilful unorthodoxy of early Keane.
Veirs returns to the fingerpicking folk milieu that characterised her early records.
An accomplished and alluring opening gambit.
Their first album for five years is something of a minor triumph.
Evokes the exotic and the awe-inducing with disarming subtlety.
An album that reins in the band’s multi-layered opacity for a new-found airiness.
Beguiling yet somehow unsettling textures together with the odd moment of stygian beauty.
Bewitching instrumentals from members of Arcade Fire.
Britfolk lifetime achievers still on form in the studio and live on this fine re-issue.
