New releases last eight weeks: All genres

Review: My Morning Jacket seem to just get better and more popular with age. They look and sound the part even now when they're ten albums in. The Louisville psych-tinged soft rockers have a knack for creating spiritually uplifting and soulful tunes that are a balm for hard times and across the ten tracks here leave no fat on the bone - it's a concise collection with the hairs trimmed thanks to an outside producer being involved. Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine and Bruce Springsteen big time rock producer Brendan O'Brien was at the controls, which is something of a rarity for My Morning Jacket as they usually self-produce. Of the songs on here, the single 'Time Waited' is instantly memorable and holds a beautiful sentiment as it's about "how flexible time is, how we can bend and warp time, especially if we are following our hearts, the universe and time itself can flow to work with us." Moreover, 'Half A Lifetime' is a jerky feel-good hit that's a welcome summer banger for road trips in a convertible.

Review: There's something refreshing about an album press release that goes out of its way to tell you a band has been around for 25 years, a quarter century no less, building a significant cult following in that time, but have also gone out of their way to sustain "all the curiosity and creative hunger of their very earliest days." So - hats off to Louisville, Kentucky five-piece, My Morning Jacket. The band's first album in four years is their most refined and regal in sound, but that needs to be understood in wider context. My Morning Jacket are known for heavy rock out shows, infused with blues, rockabilly, stoner, sludge metal and Americana. Raw is what they do, and the sense of them just turning up at the studio and getting down and dirty to record another stunner is alive and well here. They're just not afraid to flash a little production spit and polish in the process.