He decided to “rock out” at every subsequent opportunity, so that mass audiences understood and acknowledged the founding role of bluesmen in rock. This album might be considered a further step in that direction.

Eight short, sharp shocks in 30 minutes provide a perfect stun-blast soundtrack for today’s shattered society.

The Vaccines' retro rock'n'roll clearly suits this kind of next-generation upgrade. [Oct 2021, p.79]

A stunning stripped-to-the-bone reinvention. [Nov 2021, p.83]

Though Weirdo's pop smarts err on the glossy, there remain enough hooks and swagger here to convince. [May 2023, p.80]

Tracks like Horns Below Her Halo and the title one are some of the best in their class. [Summer 2023, p.77]

An acquired taste, perhaps, but a neat 20s tweak of 90s grunge/grrrl tropes. [Summer 2023, p.79]

An urgent half-hour adrenaline surge that will lodge itself in your brain after just one listen. Impressive. [Dec 2023, p.73]

If it’s dumb fun in the sun you’re after, these are the rodents you’re looking for. [Sep 2024, p.69]

The new tracks – the first since 2022’s comeback album The Tipping Point – embellish their spacey pop melodies with skittering ambient beats (The Girl That I Call Home) and contemporary psych disco (Say Goodbye To Mum and Dad). Recent songs included in the live portion from Tennessee’s FirstBank Amphitheater also transplant their 80s elegance into today’s airy electropop and synthrock. [Dec 2024, p.74]

There’s a rejuvenated feel to this reunion album of the ‘dream team’, which is themed around the impact of sleep disruption from sleepwalking to nightmares. [Mar 2025, p.77]

A pure pleasure. [Aug 2025, p.75]

Lazarus--partly because it’s a show with a great band, partly because many of David Bowie’s songs are peculiarly adaptable to the musical format--works as a record.

Their strength is in their inclusivity--yes, they’re from a punk background, but this is melodic hardcore with killer choruses to stir the hardest of hearts, bursting with a positive energy that channels your adrenaline until passive listening becomes all but impossible.

They can still craft the odd pop-rock banger. [Jul 2023, p.87]

An all-round triumph. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Their world-weary shtick has more passion than depth. But. as ever, they do it with conviction, their uncomplicated love for heritage rock informing every warm, wonky, soulful note. [Sep 2020, p.88]

Kowalewicz’s oration on the similarly punky Hanging Out With All The Wrong People adds a Broadway-esque dynamism, while stand-out single End Of Me is brimming with chemistry from alt-rock behemoth Rivers Cuomo. The track’s pastiche of twangy Blue Album-era riffs and kitschy Weezer choruses showcase all that was good about yesteryear.

Where classic and post rock meet experimentalism, the brooding soundscapes portrayed by the theme of LA's dark underbelly is one of 2023's most inventive surprises. [Jan 2024, p.80]

It charts its course with verve and accessibility, offering a masterclass in powerfully economic guitar rock. [Jul 2014, p.97]

Perfection, though, remains unattainable thanks to Barney Sumner, whose enthusiasm is such that he adds an uncommon amount of whoops and yelps to songs that really do not need any. [Aug 2013, p.89]

A bit of filler, but mainly killer.

Four 11-minute "Improvised modal drones." [Nov 2019, p.85]

Sleaford Mods are still kicking ass with acerbic beauty. [Feb 2026, p.80]

The Minus 5 remain a star-heavy Trojan horse for McCaughey's songwriting. [Jun 2015, p.97]

A little too shiny and over produced in places, but Life Journey is a trip worth taking. [Jul 2014, p.92]

Commune may seem a little pat, a compendium of psychedelic, exotic and ethnic sounds, but it makes for a handy compilation. [Oct 2014, p.89]

It’s a deeply intimate, deeply beautiful examination of regret, loss, disappointment, solitude and personal demons, made all the more alluring by his warm, frank, subtly emotional vocals.

Mostly, it's an invigorating set that sounds, like a cubist marriage of King Of Limbs and Eno & Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. [Mar 2013, p.95]

Raitt has once more demonstrated her ability to distill the essence of human emotion down to its most potent form.

There's a lot to enjoy here, the constant changes in mood keeping you guessing, but because it's so dense and so very long it becomes a bit of an endurance test. [Sep 2022, p.77]

Musically, tracks like My Cleveland Heart achieve an effortless quintessence with the swing of a practised elbow. [Aug 2021, p.81]

A heartfelt hymn to a national treasure, this is the acceptable face of patriotism, the evergreen sound of England's dreaming. [Oct 2023, p.85]

This seven-track album has a similar stripped-down, raw feel to its acoustics and shivery, spooked vocals. [Summer 2020, p.89]

Psychic Warfare remains in the same succinct and bullish territory that made Earth Rocker such a straightforward joy.

On this fifth album they do sound like a country band who like to rock sometimes, rather than southern rockers who do country, but their versatility makes such distinctions academic.

High Flyin' is fine, a romp, a moment captured in time. ... It remains more a curiosity than a necessity, though. [Jun 2023, p.82]

A cohesively themed album lathered in muti-tiered guitars, anthemic chouses and high-density power riffage, tempered by road-honed dynamism and built for the stage. [Sep 2023, p.76]

Good things abound. [Oct 2024, p.73]

While this ninth starts well it ultimately nags 'could do better'. And they have. [May 2023, p.81]

Act Surprise is a very decent return indeed for the trio. ... A record bristling with merit and a validating, electric sense of urgency that it be made. [Jul 2019, p.82]

As Long As I have You surpasses expectations at every turn, a high-water mark in a career already boasting a fair few triumphs. [Jun 2018, p.92]

The majority of this all star tribute treads an inappropriately conformist path. [Apr 2022, p.83]

Glossy arrangements sometimes owe more to Foreigner than to Focus, but this is a prog affair. [Mar 2014, p.100]

Whereas the DVD offers a longer set, including jewels in her crown like Broken English, the CD selects just 45 minutes, highlighting more recent material and covers, before sauntering into a forlorn As Tears Go By, a resilient Sister Morphine and a finale of The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan.

Their seventh album doesn’t stint on the Wagnerian bombast, from the Ritalin-powered kick drum assault of Astral Empire to the epic Guitar Hero duels of, well, pretty much everything on here. But there are pop smarts amid the silliness.

It’s a bewildering collection, but one that becomes increasingly compelling with each listen. Just don’t settle into it expecting an easy ride.

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]

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

Historically priceless, but intrinsically one for the fans. [May 2019, p.94]

The APD grooves, jazzes and lover's rocks, but only delivers total post-punk Apocalypse on Panzer Dub and Full Metal Dub. [Apr 2020, p.89]

Down To Earth has drama, poise and energy, but not sure its use in a film about a lonely rubbish-collecting robot in the future adds or subtracts anything, to be honest.

A sultry, smouldering, non-committal vocal meanders over bass-heavy backdrops. [Apr 2021, p.89]

The speedometer doesn't quite reach the heights of Wreckless Abandon but a consistent buzz keeps the Heartbreakers spirit alive and kicking. [May 2022, p.82]

Resolutely back in rich, seamy and downbeat alt.country territory. [Jun 2022, p.83]

The result borders on easy listening with a yacht-pop vibe, before the psychedelic starbursts come out to play. [Nov 2022, p.75]

It's the spikes, barbs, caterwauls and tantrums that define The Muffs, set them apart, and make Whoop Dee Doo as essential an album as any you'll hear all year. [Aug 2014, p. 208]

A group that can shift from straight-ahead retro to effortless eclecticism in the time it takes to shift gears on a truck. [Mar 2020, p.86]

Recorded in various locations during a 28-day tour in March/April 2016, this album represents the finest work from the Jean Hervé- Péron/Zappi Diermaier version of Faust in years.

This second solo album dissects an array of internal torments in scarifying style; more gruesome and brutal than ever, and often glitching like a fractured psyche. [Oct 2025, p.72]

There’s plenty more to like. The imaginary soundtrack piece Fact 67 is full of neat Sturm und twang; Dropping Bombs On The Sun is a pretty, hazy piece with a spooked Parks vocal that lives up to the title. If you like Ornette Coleman and all that jazz, then Don’t Get Lost is your friend.

Same edgy, post-punk, anything-could-happen-next discomfort about them [as 90s band Compulsion]. Which is nice. [May 2025, p.79]

Matches vintage MaximumRock'N'Roll short, sharp, DIY hardcore blurts with kindergarten puppetry to baffling effect. [Aug 2023, p.79]

Ninth album Quiet And Peace is roughly one third quiet, peaceful and Chris Stapleton-like. ... elsewhere, All Be Gone and Lonely Fast And Deep recall the lumberjack Lemonheads of '93, but there's forward motion too. [May 2018, p.90]

The band venture away from their own back yard for the first time, recording this new album in El Paso. It results in a pleasingly broader palette, from the redneck power pop of Sandlot, to the melodic and bouncy Madness-like closer We’ll Meet Again.

One Deep River is one of Knopfler's best. These are gorgeous songs, sung in a voice that sounds like it's lived a life that's full. [May 2024, p.74]

It grows with listens, and at its best (as on Hold On), Clark’s guitar/soul-beat fusion is smooth and stylish. But some of it is just (whisper it) a bit boring.

Bob Dylan regulars Larry Campbell and Tony Garnier pop up but this isn’t a star-studded exercise, more of a stylish platter aimed at grown-ups.

LTB’s woes have been rewarded with something remarkable: their best record yet.

With Bloom, Larkin Poe prove they’ve got the whole authenticity thing locked down. [Mar 2025, p.76]

If the joyous Ready For The Magic isn’t already an indie club floor filler, it damn well should be.

Some of the lengthier behemoths among the seven tracks here, though, particularly the sprawling Flamethrower are a little overblown and tend to lose their way at times. Despite that, PetroDragonic Apocalypse is another worthy entry into King Gizzard's avalanche of ever-changing albums. [Summer 2023, p.77]

This is music to immerse yourself in, lose yourself within its many complexities and layers of sound, sudden explosions of light and directed commentary; always fascinating, challenging and densely packed. Sepulchral, sombre, challenging, claustrophobic. [Dec 2019, p.85]

This feels like the album of a group recharged; lent a new perspective by the pandemic, perhaps. [Nov 2021, p.73]

Visconti busies it up, eking out build-ups and layering the ambient sound of a crowd arguing on We’re So Nice, while closer I Don’t Care gets jazzy. Overall, though, this is a well-behaved, orderly Damned: stoic, steady-handed and spirited.

Relish the result of an intelligent, engaging act taking a new stand. [Sep 2014, p.90]

The gravel-voiced 62-year-old coasts along on foot-stomping jukebox cliché at times, but his howling murder ballad Fixin’ To Die burns with an agreeably ragged fury, while plaintive finger-picking story songs such as News From Colorado are welcome reminders that he can sometimes out-Springsteen The Boss himself in the heart-stirring Americana stakes.

A dream experience, Born Horses canters at a fine pace. [Sep 2024, p.75]

It's not quite up there with Majestic hey-day offerings, but there's loads to reinvigorate the enthusiasm if fans disenchanted by recent ill feelings. [Summer 2013, p.93]

An ambitious concept work based in the 15th century's Hundred Years War. [Nov 2019, p.85]

This fourth album sounds like a broken man writing himself better, Tolchin weaving beautifully sparse folk-blues fingerwork around autumnal organs. [Nov 2019, p.81]

A largely acoustic album, its haunting quality is brought out by a variety of alternative tunings and ambient drones, as well as lyrical meditations on mortality and emotional healing that are delivered with a psychedelic clarity. [Aug 2020, p.88]

The Lips are clearly huge fans of the retro-kitsch pop culture that they pillage and parody on this love letter to junkshop Americana. [Nov 2022, p.74]

At times the consistency dips, but Deer Tick can still roll like a classic bar band, and closing track The Real Thing sounds determined and sure. [Summer 2023, p.79]

The widescreen sound suits this career solo artist, and standouts like Boombox and Ten Watt whip up a rollicking hoedown ambience. [Jun 2024, p.75]

The nagging sense remains that way too much effort has been put into reinterpreting other artists’ material instead of writing their own. [Nov 2024, p.76]

IV takes a more measured pace around bleaker themes.

Big? Nope. Clever? Definitely. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Well worth seeking out. A cracker. [May 2024, p.79]

Overall, it's a pleasant album and one that covers a lot of bases. [Jun 2019, p.86]

Somewhat lacking in real character of its ow, there is nevertheless a certain charm to this album, and it's sure to trigger a nostalgia trip in those who came of age at the turn of the current century. [Oct 2019, p.89]

While perhaps not as emotionally loaded as Ordinary Man, Patient Number 9 better captures the mischievous, defiant energy of heavy metal's original madman. [Sep 2022, p.72]

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

Father's Day [was] inspired by his recently departed dad and explaining this subtly insidious album's overall reflective mood. [Mar 2015, p.90]

Crosseyed Heart actually delivers.

It's a bewildering but rather fabulous array of soundscapes, noise, arthouse street theatre, windswept melodies and jagged juxtapositions, which evokes Steve Miller's Macho City or Laurie Anderson's Home Of The Brave, But with a very 21st-century twist. [May 2026, p.75]

The Pineapples drift towards anodyne politeness at times, but their deceptively doomy ruminations reward close listening. [Sep 2018, p.87]

This album is absurdly in the red with ear-loading fuzz as Oasis at their most cocaine-blitzed. [Nov 2014, p.96]