The Independent (UK)

Yet another career-best offering. .... Her voice is clear, pure and precise – delivered over deftly picked acoustic and swooning slide guitars – making each truth all the more devastating. Middle of Nowhere isn’t Musgraves at an impasse. No, she’s exactly where she needs to be.

Fenian is an immensely enjoyable record. Chara and Bap have a great natural sense of flow, able to syncopate phrases in a way to ensure the punchlines hit.

It’s a tremendous return, and all the more gratifying for its honesty.

A playful record that pushes in different directions without straying too far from the Seventies dancefloor brief.

This is a solid, saloon-door-slammer of a country classic.

There’s a sway to the melodies that slip around you, supportive but unassuming, like an old friend’s arm around the waist.

The Swedish pop innovator take charge over nine expertly produced tracks, exploring matters of sexuality, relationships and desire with playful candour. It’s brilliant, too; Robyn’s voice is commanding but also curious, enveloped by tremendous salvos of house and electronic sounds.

Her appetite for the heart-on-sleeve razzle dazzle of it all is glorious. This Music May Contain Hope is a pure audio spectacle that will have you screaming for an encore.

She tries her hand at new instruments and darts boldly between genres. As a consequence, Girlfriend can be a hard record to get a grip on. But it’s the ideal album for anyone else on the comedown from 2025’s Brat summer who now yearns, with Ives, to be “drinking up the day”.

Trying Times falters slightly in its final third – “Obsession” registers more as a sketch than a song – but these are minor frictions in a record whose emotional logic is otherwise unerring.