It's an album outside its own time, designed to intrigue the dedicated few rather than service the content-consuming many, and if nothing else it's bringing the art of enigmatic charisma back to the world of rock. [Apr 2025, p.74]

Sporadically great but decidedly patchy, A Moon Shaped Pool is not the sound of a great band dying, more a great band spreading themselves too thinly.

It's probably the Rolling Stones' best album ever. ... Slim pickings of the expanded vinyl package border on the insulting. [Dec 2018, p.94]

As a collection, Anthology 4 charts a parallel path through the Beatles’ career, one with a tacky postscript in the 21st century. As a Beatles record, it is not very good, offering nothing exciting in terms of rarities (wow, the “strings only” version of Something from the Abbey Road 50th anniversary edition) or insight. [Dec 2025, p.84]

If your bag is relentless hectoring from five angry, tune averse firebrands, feel free to have at it. Doubtlessly great live, though. [Apr 2026, p.81]

Difficult to separate the jokers from the aces. [Aug 2019, p.80]

Divorced from the visual spectacle--puppets, illusionists, avian transformations, ticker-tape poetry--and the thrill of watching actual Kate Bush actually singing, this audio recording is akin to John Lennon being resurrected to perform the Wedding Album--i.e. only mildly amazing.

Independence Day is normal for Neil: he tests the climate and the atmospherics are depressing. Terrorise Me, a response to the Bataclan outrage, is the key piece. The rest is no faffing and easy listening.

While it does start to get a little repetitive, it's good to hear a band straying off the beaten track too play timeless music just for the sheer hell of it. [Dec 2021, p.72]

Meld[s] jangles, loops, fuzzes, plucks and floaty introspections. Heavy on shoe-gaze, light on Gallagher swagger. [Apr 2022, p.83]

It's been effectively produced to death. A cold, clinical experience. [Oct 2022, p.77]

A solid addition to the canon, but not quite a classic.

Collects three albums and apposite era odds 'n' sods. [May 2021, p.97]

A case of more darkness required. [Mar 2015, p.94]

This fifth edition's half-hour documents their second collaboration with Nurse With Wound and never fully recovers. [Sep 2022, p.83]

Ultimately a completist's set. [Dec 2023, p.84]

The quiet/loud dynamic is an elegant partnership here. [Sep 2018, p.93]

Differing from its predecessor by visiting 2021 studio album I Don’t Live Here Anymore (notably on Harmonia’s Dream) and showcasing a seven-piece band, there’s trickery afoot: some tracks are spliced from multiple takes. It’s hard to argue with the hugeness when it hits though. [Dec 2024, p.74]

Make no mistake, this is an angry record made by a protest singer whose rage hasn’t dimmed with age (she turns 77 this year), though there are shards of positive light sneaking through.

The album was written on the hop, Newcombe spilling his brains right onto tape, and it shows – imperfections are made into a positive, the songs allowed to just naturally come into being.

The results sound thin, contrived and ultimately laborious. [Aug 2020, p.89]

For The Sake Of Bethel Woods confirmed that they are not the band they once were but A Bridge To Far flows directly on from there with many of the songs more theoretical in nature. [Dec 2025, p.78]

It's elegiac, claustrophobic and contagiously disturbed. [Apr 2023, p.79]

He delves into lesser-known parts, like Wheel, a 1973 song about tragic, rural cycles, and he sings Old Road, as a sparse holler, akin to the original. Other songs celebrate the ‘gonzo country’ aims of Jerry Jeff, but Mr Bojangles and his worn-out shoes is still best in show.

Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful ('66) and Everything Playing ('67) include the odd classic, such as Nashville Cats, but don't gel so well, despite Yanovsky's flamboyant playing. The constant style shifting suits the soundtracks for What's Up, Tiger Lily? and You're A Big Boy Now, with groovy themes a-go-go. [May 2026, p.85]

It's invariably over-punctuated by hyperactive prog-metallic drumming and paradiddly percussion that leaves little space for their ideas to breath, while memorable hooks or riffs get buried in the chaos. [Sep 2023, p.79]

It’s bashed out in an exuberant blast of piano-stonkin’ late-60s rock’n’soul that occasionally wanders into poppy, kitschy Elton John territory, but owes most of its groove to the lean, mean, stray-cat blues of Beggars Banquet.

Jazz standard Lullaby Of The Leaves begins in husky torch song mode, but gains interest with a brassy Bonamassa guitar solo, like a Bond theme played past midnight in a Chicago dive. When these rockers go reggae for Addicted, though, it is, as usual, a step too far.