As on her debut, beats are minimal, bordering on lo-fi, allowing Bey space to voice in meditative jazzy runs whose no- messing eccentricity strongly recalls primetime Erykah Badu. [Jul 2024, p.94]

The imaginative fire still burns. [Jul 2024, p.93]

All quite stunning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

It's an entirely cohesive record, brimming with energy, invention, humour, lived experience, nifty playing and earwormy melodies: all things that make up a great debut album. [Jul 2024, p.88]

If that all sounds bleak, it is. Yet Lives Outgrown is also very beautiful. [Jun 2024, p.80]

This is his finest collection of melodies yet, reflecting candour, tenderness and pthos with no bare polemic to disrupt the intimate tone. [Jun 2024, p.89]

This is to Ghosted what Layla Part 2 is to Layla, the transcendent, ambient coda to the hit record and, to those in the know, the place where you go for calm, peace and release. [Jun 2024, p.91]

Occasionally slight and throwaway, everything here is nevertheless fun. [Jun 2024, p.87]

They do sound less corporate, more like their original idiosyncratic selves. [Jun 2024, p.90]

These non-linear creations are vehicles for an incredible contralto that echoes Anohni, Diamanda Galas, Jarboe, even late-era Scott Walker. [Jun 2024, p.84]

Thrillingly raw, it captures the pair at their most streamlined, visceral and direct, disproving F Scott Fitzgerald's theory about second acts. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Oui LSF remains firmly in the group's idiosyncratic wheelhouse, equally foregrounding their bristling dissonance and acerbic pop flourishes. [Jun 2024, p.90]

So many ideas, so much beauty and a fitting memento of Trish Keenan's poetic songwriting and inimitable, unimpeachable voice. [May 2024, p.100]

Don't worry so much about what it all means, lie back and let the tape hiss. [Jun 2024, p.89]

Impeccably sequenced, with fulsome liner notes, global groovers will find this seamless mix of the known and obscure frequently revelatory. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Only relenting for the odd Tinariwen-esque chill moment (Takoba; Imajughen), this one's an amps-on-11 polemical masterpiece that warrants worldwide respect. [Jun 2024, p.90]

As with 2023's downbeat Everything Harmony, what might be a Beatles-beach-Boys-Big-Star data-scrape is elevated through high-calibre songwriting. [Jun 2024, p.82]

On these dozen tracks, Washington creates a playground and invites friends in to be themselves, shaping a dizzying crosshatch of ideas where George Clinton’s lounge croon sets up a trumpet-chased pep talk from rapper D Smoke, or André 3000 slips – with flutes in hand – into a nocturnal haze that feels like some futuristic Debussy state of bliss. [Jun 2024, p.85]

Uplifting, rueful and expertly crafted. [Jun 2024, p.89]

With its meticulous ebb and flow, Time Is Glass is best approached in a single sitting. [May 2024, p.86]

While the brilliant closing Murder Of Sunrise delivers a suspenseful 18 minutes of menace via shimmering cymbals, speaker hum and fathoms-deep bass lines. There's beauty here too. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Ultimately hit and miss, Justice's gift for arena-friendly hooks remains undimmed. [May 2024, p.86]

Yet for all the luxuriant, Gong-like dreaminess of I Surrender or Imagine An Orchestra, sudden beats and vocal hooks make Delight more unpredictable odyssey than easy float downstream. [May 2024, p.89]

Nonetheless shows the duo pulling themselves up to full songwriting height, not just forging on, but flourishing. [Jun 2024, p.87]

A certain rock'n'roll energy is lacking. .... Think: transitional. [Jun 2024, p.86]

You might assume, given the title, that beam's seventh full-length album as iron & Wine is lightweight and whimsical. Actually it's pretty magnificent. [Jun 2024, p.84]

There's an undeniable zip to these. [Jun 2024, p.82]

Ultimately, this is a work of lush, immersive harmonic beauty and escape. [Jun 2024, p.86]