This is his biggest, brightest, most crackling and electric album since his Sugar days. [Apr 2019, p.86]

The London post-punkers keep the pigeonholing hack on their toes throughout this third album. [Apr 2019, p.85]

One of the most upbeat albums in his catalogue. [Mar 2019, p.91]

There are brief pit-stops for pensiveness on the whirling Room 137 and the baroque Barstool Warrior, but the dominant thread is superior thrash.

It's got some absolute burners on deck. ... It's also got plenty of noisy psychedelic horseshit they did in the early 90s, but even that stuff sounds glammy and cool. [Mar 2019, p.88]

As Clark wraps up with the formulaic 12-bar of Dirty Dishes Blues, you realise how much the rest of the album pushes the envelope and applaud him for it. [Mar 2019, p.88]

They lose their way when they amble in pub-rock fashion on the gormless Hard Case, but for the most part they’re as focused as they’re inspired.

While the more mellow moments may turn off some of the more alt fans of alt. country, most longtime fans will find this one just dandy. [Mar 2019, p.90]

This jubilant, ritzy resurrection offers a Poundland paradise. [Mar 2019, p.95]

Gone is any trace of the searing vitality that drove their earlier records; in its place a winsome urge to recreate all of the waftiest, wimpiest moments from pop history. [Mar 2019, p.91]

This heart-melting exercise in widescreen evocative soul-baring brazenly sets the controls for greatness. [Mar 2019, p.89]

This is a beautiful record, a reflection on an extraordinary 50-year career that's more a memory of life than a memento mori. [Mar 2019, p.89]

A treat for the kind of sensitive souls who remember how good emo was before it mutated into the eyeliner-and-skinny-jeans brigade. [Mar 2019, p.89]

There's a DIY feel and bouts of slacker tomfoolery to Varshons 2. [Mar 2019, p.88]

For all the grim despondency, this is an album steeped in the acrid stench of beauty. [Mar 2019, p.88]

If you want to know what Hendrix might have done beyond 27, listen to this. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Long-overdue, and quite delightful footnote to San Fran's illustrious rock history. [Dec 2018, p.87]

An album of depth and impact that merits luxuriant poring over. [Feb 2019, p.88]

This is a super-modern, rock-tinged record and needs to be considered on those terms, but it's undoubtedly BMTH's bravest move yet. [Feb 2019, p.89]

Papa Roach's not entirely convincing attempt to music in on the action. [Feb 2019, p.88]

90 minutes of sensitive, surreal lyrics and wailing wig-outs which make J Mascis sound like Julian Bream. ... You'll enjoy it. [Feb 2019, p.90]

It has stood time's ravages well, both as an indicator of the band's capacity for change and as a great album in its own right. [Jan 2019, 2018, p.93]

Characteristically dramatic readings of festive favourites. [Dec 2018, p.89]

This is perhaps a musician's album, in that peers will admire his skill and originality, while it could be rather challenging for the untrained. [May 2018, p.89]

Springsteen On Broadway is best when he tackles his fractured relationship with his father, whose boozy presence he credits with forging his tenacity, and by extension that of his own children, his sisters and his mother (“with Alzheimer’s these past seven years”) to whom he’s gloriously devoted. ... Equal parts communion and catharsis--an immaculate deception. [Jan 2019, p.86]

They approach this fourth album with typical irreverence. [Jan 2019, p.89]

Blood On The Tracks is rightly considered to be one of Dylan's masterpieces, and this exhaustive collection shows why. [Jan 2019, p.95]

It's an essential addition to any Young fan's library. [Jan 2019, p.94]

The album is most revealing when Knopfler bares autobiographical teeth. [Jan 2019, p.87]

For any given sideman, a Bowie gig was invariably an occasion to rise to, and on this particular night rise they did. ... “And it’s fucking great.” He’s not wrong. [Dec 2018, p.99]

Bela Lugosi's Dead was a happy accident. The rest of the material finds a band fumbling for direction, even touching on ska, before an eerie delay appeared to invent their sound for them. [Dec 2018, p.93]

Not quite a "new" album in the proper sense, but still a warming introduction to their world. [Dec 2018, p.89]

Notwithstanding the fact that this is a collection of outtakes, this is acid/blues rock at its pinnacle, Joplin at the very height if her primordial, unfettered powers , with Big Brother contributing a psychedelic backdrop that still stands firm five decades on. [Dec 2018, p.92]

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

Experience Hendrix have done him proud with this reissue. Take it as his ultimate monument. [Dec 2018, p.92]

TSOM's strange, taut, heroic beauty invariably transcends irony. [Dec 2018, p.89]

Sprawling four-CD, 64-track (11 previously unreleased) retrospective. ... Overwhelmingly, it’s Cornell’s voice that wins through--a star-burst of a scream, a full-throated delight.

A hilarious throwback to the days when bands didn't take themselves too seriously. [Dec 2018, p.89]

It's not a perfect body of work--perhaps these songs stretch in too many directions to really function as a cohesive whole. [Jul 2018, p.86]

On its own merits, 001 disrupts the notion that Strummer lost his way after The Clash, without wholly overturning it, but there's nothing remotely grubby here. [Oct 2018, p.97]

This immersive collection captures the excitement of an era sometimes overlooked between their twin peaks of Master Of Puppets and the Black Album.

It's the sound of a band making peace with their own fundamental style, without feeling the need to gild the lily. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Instead of losing intrinsic magic, Martin's enhanced it. ... Everything sounds more emphatic, more...everything. ... Bin your bootlegs, [the Esher demos are] exceptional. But the gold for completists comes on discs 4-6: the sessions. [Nov 2018, p.90]

If nine discs of REM is too much for the wallet, the collection is available as a two-CD highlights pack which includes a full disc of sessions, and a second disc focusing on a chronological selection of live broadcasts. Recommended, any which way. [Dec 2018, p.95]

Ultimately, where Imagine wins over similar projects is the degree of access Yoko has given to source material. A Simon Hilton-edited, Ono-prefaced book is exceptional. And the core album? A masterpiece. [Dec 2018, p.94]

Simulation Theory treads a thin line between cheesy chart-chasing and genuinely innovative pop rock. [Dec 2018, p.86]

Yorke's minimalist fragility fits the bill entirely. [Dec 2018, p.89]

Daughters have never sounded so strong and they've never got it so right. [Dec 2018, p.86]

Much of it's lovely, from the relaxed, melodic strumalong title track to ... well, the relaxed strumalong of just about everything else. It's the kind of album that makes you think there's nothing wrong with the world. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Good to hear the quiet one speaking up again. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Still scuzzy, still weird, long may Jon Spencer walk his own unique path. [Nov 2018, p.82]

Almost comically explosive and full of exhilarating moments. [Nov 2018, p.81]

There won't be a better record released this month, and very few this year. This is one for the ages. [Nov 2018, p.84]

A must-buy, if only for the brilliant soap-opera twist of watching Johnny Borell rise from the ashes. [Nov 2018, p.81]

Like all great albums, it reminds you of everything that made you fall in love with this crazy thing called rock’n’roll in the first place.

Bohemian Rhapsody's soundtrack is as dramatically paced, unrelentingly emotive and intrinsically cinematic as it's reasonably possible for any flat piece of circular plastic to be.

All four musicians have their moment in the sun to shine, while their closing take on Joni Mitchell's Woodstock bring things circle. [Nov 2018, p.83]

Hardcore doom-metal dummies may not get with this new plan, but the combination of airy psychedelia, lumbering riffs and shamelessly poppy hooks turn headbangers like Shockwave City, Bloody Runner and the epic, seven-minute title track into cinematic works of art. [Nov 2018, p.81]

Their most convincing album since 2000's sickness. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Tasteful and eloquent. ... minus the killer tunes. [Nov 2018, p.85]

If Charlie's Spahn Ranch girls had formed a band that was part-Stooges, part-Bikini Kill, all groove. [Nov 2018, p.85]

This Church is worth a visit. [Nov 2018, p.85]

As a craftman's final flick on old canvases, it makes for a fine late Blue period. [Nov 2018, p.85]

It's a fine line between hypnotic and soporific, but he's usually on the right side. [Nov 2018, p.83]

A wall of noise delivered with cinematic intent. [Nov 2018, p.83]

Pick and mix your own highlights, but as a one-sitting listen expect a bumpy ride. [Nov 2018, p.82]

Overall ATW seem "smaller" somehow, where previous records were... well, bigger. If it were anyone else we'd be more impressed, but ATW can do better. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Anthem Of The Peaceful Army isn't quite the finished article. ... At the final count, Anthem Of The Peaceful Army is shaping up to be the finest debut album of both 2018 and 1972. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Padded out with uneven live albums, indifferent remixes and anodyne film soundtrack songs, this 120-track package makes for depressingly arid listening in places. That said, no anthology that includes the heart-soaring Absolute Beginners or the high-gloss Let’s Dance can be considered a total wash-out.

[Doesn't] reinvent any wheels but flesh out the blues/pub-rock format with quick wit and keen observation. [Oct 2018, p.86]

While IOU and Danger are incessantly catchy, glittering amid high-end production, they fell as soulless as the vast stages they're destined for. [Oct 2018, p.84]

It makes for a lustrous, laid-back return that will frustrate those pining for Costello's brutal youth, but it befits his gracious age beautifully. [Oct 2018, p.85]

After 30 years behind the mic, Hersh's vocals have gained extra grit and lost none of their eerie magic. [Oct 2018, p.89]

Their heaviest, most memorable and most wildly animalistic material to date. [Oct 2018, p.83]

Anyone who spends their weekends lurking in the more pungent corners of sci-fi/horror/comic-book shops will lap it up; for everyone else it's less Star Wars, more Space Balls. [Oct 2018, p.85]

You sense in his raw outpourings the memories of the joy they had in making the original record and the joy it has at last seen the light of day. [Oct 2018, p.93]

This is no hasty cash-in. The music is exemplary: rock'n'roll, southern gothic, serious stuff and downright fun tunes. ... There are 63 examples of Petty's art in total and they illustrate that his range was far wider than some think. [Oct 2018, p.92]

Dose Your Dreams is fucking ace. [Oct 2018, p.85]

Finely balance between rock and pop, Blood Red Roses showcases some of Stewart's best work in decades. [Oct 2018, p.82]

With stoner rock's monotonous thrum as a template you're always going to have to work a little harder to break through with something genuinely interesting, and Pigsx7 don't always manage it here. [Oct 2018, p.84]

These crusty old salts still know how to deliver solid, penetrating, life-affirming rock'n'roll. [Oct 2018, p.86]

At times recalling the impressive yet aimless psych squalls of early Verve, Ride or Tame Impala, and at others of Can trying to make sense of 1980s pop radio. [Aug 2018, p.91]

A Brock-sung acoustic setting of We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago is a highlight, but the less said about how the massed saxes treat Down Through The Night the better. [Sep 2018, p.91]

It has arena-rock attitude, but contained within songs and performances that are a lot more intimate and highly charged than you might expect. Slash’s punchy guitar style complements Kennedy’s passionate vocals, and in doing so brings to mind what Aerosmith achieved in the late 80s. [Sep 2018, p.88]

He keeps his freak flag flying with this collection of bar jams and blues covers that is as flinty and steely edged as Gibbons himself. [Oct 2018, p.82]

For serious fans--and them only--this album is a revelation. [Oct 2018, p.83]

Jack Wyllie's sax and Laurence Pike's drumming keep the feel raw and live throughout. [Oct 2018, p.89]

Album number three takes Anna Meredith-style neoclassical and jumbles it with a woozy mix of Broadcast, Hounds of Love and glockenspiel gamelan. [Oct 2018, p.89]

It's to her credit that this open-hearted material never comes off as cloying. [Oct 2018, p.85]

This is unquestionably Weller's most personal and most heartfelt record in years. [Oct 2018, p.88]

Plentiful showstopping melodies and an authentic dedication to their influences--Todd Rundgren even plays Shane's dad--will see Go To School run and run. [Oct 2018, p.86]

It's testament to the brilliance of their interplay that not even a guesting Emmylou Harris can steal the spotlight on Here Is Where The Loving Is At. [Oct 2018, p.85]

The nearest to a rock record Thompson has ever made. ... A very good album. [Oct 2018, p.83]

This is just an especially focused, varied set of entertaining Bonamassa tunes. [Sep 2018, p.90]

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

There's little subtlety displayed in their mission, and not much in the way of memorable tunes either. [Sep 2018, p.90]

A clever way with melodies over and above what they achieved on debut Higher Power, and lyrically there's more than welcome cheeky sense of irony. [Sep 2018, p.93]

It's up there with the very best records they've released. [Sep 2018, p.86]