In just any universe, Playing Favorites would dominate the world's FM stations for two years straight. [Apr 2024, p.84]

This cool and stylish record should make the jazz best-of-year lists. [Apr 2024, p.90]

Classic songwriting creatively re-imagined in pulsating, droning, rackety new environs. [Apr 2024, p.89]

An alleviating statement from an artist whose curiosity and striving fir development have remained a driving force. [Apr 2024, p.85]

The melancholy feels more goth than hippy and, ultimately, both the sounds and lyrics feel unresolved. [Apr 2024, p.90]

A gently breath-taking wonder. [Apr 2024, p.91]

Walls is an essential slice of art-punk history. It's also a blistering good time. [Apr 2024, p.97]

An elegant, thought-provoking record. [Mar 2024, p.86]

Brilliantly executed with Shirley Bassey-like surety in an arresting, always distinctive, lyrical voice. [Mar 2024, p.89]

Daniel conveys an expert melancholy. its ups always just on the brink of an elegant down. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Heavy though it is, the songwriting remains remarkably light and agile. [Mar 2024, p.88]

A mesmerising return. [Mar 2024, p.90]

For all its filigree detail, Spring Eternal is a big philosophically questing record, a velvet glove hiding a death-like grip. [Mar 2024, p.90]

For all the heartache, Blu Wav is surprisingly uplifting, transcendent, even.[Feb 2024, p.85]

There are 808s and sensory synths galore, but it's the powerful message and those voices - tough soulful leads and contrastingly sweet gospel harmonies - that hold sway here. [Mar 2024, p.87]

Allied to keening, reedy vocals and sophisticated hooks, these songs deliver a truly impressive debut. [Mar 2024, p.88]

It's over in a flash, an exhilarating fairground ride you won't want to disembark. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Its aim is true, uplifting and yes, mighty persuasive. [Mar 2024, p.80]

The works-in-progress disc of this handsome reissue package gives an even starker impression of a man rummaging joyfully through the studio toy box, now slapping down an instinctively lively drum beat, now jumping on a synth he’s only just plugged in, and rolling with it.

Her ability to dominate a room with minimal musical movement is astonishing; this record lowers the temperature, heightens the sense, slows down life, frame by frame. [Mar 2024, p.85]

She's still drawn to the edges like a death's-head moth to an inferno, but once you are in Wolfe's distinctive headspace, it's easy to believe they are her comfort zone, and maybe even yours. [Mar 2025, p.85]

Rendered with a delicate, impressionistic touch, Phasor's dreamlike entreaties cut far deeper than predecessor Far In's lockdown ruminations. [Mar 2024, p.90]

What Now is no less discursive, plundering so many styles that it might instead be called What Next. But working with co-producer Shawn Everett in a series of top-tier Nashville hubs, Howard makes it cohere not only through the prayer bowls that clang and drone between tracks but also through the way she captures the wild vacillations of falling in and out of something that’s possibly good and potentially terrible. [Mar 2024, p.84]

But, for all the technical proficiency, there's a sense of nobody ushing themselves too hard. [Mar 2024, p.91]

Tapir!'s considerable world-building skills impress, even if seven-minute closer Mountain Song seems a little directionless. [Feb 2024, p.88]

[Producer Daniel Boyle] strikes a crisp specious groove somewhere between dubstep and '90s digi-dub, for Perry to voice croakily alongside co-vocalists. [Mar 2024, p.82]

There's a full band, a string section Swarmatron and brass. Reassuringly, the songs are strong enough to carry the new load. [Mar 2024, p.85]

It's an LP of insight and empathy. [Mar 2024, p.82]