If shiny, groovy, melodic, finger-snapping, guitar-led pop-rock is your tipple, you’ll want to guzzle down Washed Away in one.

Not everything here grabs the attention first time around: the Anthrax of today often favour a slow burn to a startling slap. But as a cohesive and dynamic whole, For All Kings delivers the goods with swagger and style.

A re-engerised record that sits comfortably next to is 'N' Hers and Different Class. [Summer 2025, p.73]

A bit of filler, but mainly killer.

The fine line between contemplation and navel gazing has always been a difficult balancing act to achieve, but here Nathaniel Rateliff, ably backed by the soulful Night Sweats on their fourth studio album, does so without the use of a safety net. And that this collective of musicians does so by breathing new life into established formats is to be applauded. [Summer 2024, p.76]

Rundgren tricks abound in the sonics--he’s a master of the synth and the Beach Boys chorus, but the overall mood is on point.

As ever with the Maels, the relentless high-camp levity and heavily mannered, shrill, staccato delivery can sometimes jar on MAD! [Summer 2025, p.72]

The whole thing sounds like they had a blast. [Jun 2013, p.88]

With shades of Tool and Aereogramme, but mainly its own beast, Polaris is pure confidence converted into sound.

It’s the Medicine we need, and it works best when they up the dosage. [Nov 2023, p.77]

As with any compilation, it’s never entirely clear how much clearance from publishers impacts on the criteria for inclusion, but there are rare treats to be mined here.

They’re on more familiar ground, with an emotional take on alternative indie rock inspired by the frontman’s new experiences in fatherhood.

Occupational hazards aside however, this is certainly the band’s strongest in recent memory, and what it might lack in edge or novelty is well countered by craft and assurance.

Springsteen has previously alluded to this [early] period of his career, albeit in the roundabout manner of fashioning songs (most notably on The River) inspired by the music he heard blaring out of jukeboxes in his youth. Similarly, formerly he has addressed feelings of emptiness and disillusionment on self-reflective songs such as Two Faces or 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), although sat in front of a computer screen he has less recourse to clumsy metaphor.

Perhaps more than any other Rammstein album, it feels like a collection of songs deliberately built to soundtrack a future series of spectacular live set-pieces. [Jul 2022, p.81]

She can sound like Stevie Nicks lost at the Whitby goth weekender. Otherwise, as always, Stina's vexations are our pleasure. [Jul 2019, p.81]

This is an album that refuses to sit still and stagnate. [Jun 2013, p.87]

With elegant electronics and playful retro-futurism, as on the tile track and Electric Sheep, Flür reminds these days of Dieter Meier and Yello. [Apr 2022, p.77]

This is punk rock at its snotty, hilarious best, rattling along on an 100mph wave of smart, deadly one-liners and beautifully abrasive riffs. [Jun 2013, p.87]

Musically Caravan excel on the thick space-jam soup of Wishing You Were Here. [Nov 2021, p.76]

Each track is a short story, a beautifully composed snapshot of a moment in a life, all set to choruses masterfully crafted to slot in alongside the radio-rock classics of the 1980s.

He's still creating an introspective mood, even if the threat of hardcore eruption seems to bubble under the surface. [Nov 2023, p.78]

Destroyer may shake and shudder but it never falls apart. [Jul 2019, p.81]

On third album Double Vanity it seems the wide-open spaces of their Oklahoma home have inspired something rather beautiful to zone out to.

Reassuringly awkward. [Jan 2021, p.87]

The weirdly comforting sound of an oddball genius proffering words of hope as the word burns all around us. [Summer 2025, p.78]

Sensitive and thoughtful doesn’t have to mean a lack of a good time. [Jan 2025, p.78]

Wonderfully schizophrenic and shamelessly populist, this is prime Babymetal. [Nov 2019, p.81]

The music is mostly luminous and spellbinding, but the slender 33-minutes us disappointing, a mini-album when such huge cosmic themes deserve deeper, broader consideration. [Jul 2023, p.78]

The Chilis are back together, having fun. And it feels good. [May 2022, p.80]

Sick Scenes is among LC!’s most accomplished collection yet.

A lot of this record sounds like Psalm 69 if you turned the drum machine to the ‘Blur’ setting, a snarling hyperspeed punkdustrial vomitorium of choppy samples and churning metal riffs. It’s not all armed audio warfare, though.

For all the vein-bulging intensity--which reaches heroic levels on standout The River--you're left with the sense that Gallagher remains a great singer short on top notch material. [Nov 2019, p.81]

They'll never completely escape the past, but it sounds like they're finally at ease with it. [Apr 2020, p.82]

IV takes a more measured pace around bleaker themes.

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

Mesmerises with tales of sobriety and redemption (it says here) that sound more unapologetically stoned and out there than ever. [Apr 2024, p.83]

The band's heart-grabbing riff hooks found on Into The Blue and sultry Siouxsie Farrago are in short supply, but as closer Left Too Soon grows from astral acoustic ballad to customary cataclysm, there's no let-up in their seductive assault. [Nov 2021, p.70]

A paradoxical mixture of bashed-together informality and studio finesse, a record that seems to evolve as it goes along. [Aug 2018, p.86]

Eerie fingerstyle guitar playing decorates Bibb’s checklist for better living (‘Get to know your neighbours, especially the ones who don’t look like you’). [Jan 2025, p.83]

Wild, erratic and out for adventure, your mother warned you not to hang out with albums like this.

While Wayne, Lucid Nightmare and the 50s mirrorball romance of Crystal Night maintain the crisp retro spark of old, the rest of this somewhat inspired 55-minute mess smacks of the Fat Whites’ sticky-trousered narco-country.

The resulting sound is mature and measured, with similarities to Dulli’s work with the Twilight Singers more easily applicable than anything in Whigs essentials Congregation or Gentleman.

Knopfler's slide into the cosy vale of rootsy retro is clearly irreversible, but he certainly makes trad a luxurious place to get pampered for an hour. [Apr 2015, p.97]

Much of the mid-section is spent down in the bayou with an acoustic guitar. ... Sink in. [Jul 2019, p.82]

Genderbender is a born star, charisma dripping from every syllable, while The Melvins’ trademark heaviness complements and contrasts her bohemian, dramatic delivery like sea salt in caramel. This fairy wears boots and is ready to kick ass.

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 Silversun Pickups rolling up their blazer sleeves, plumping their shoulderpads and cruising out of Silver Lake, LA with a fourth album that buzzes like pink neon and rolls like convertible wheels on steaming tarmac.

Mayall’s own songs are self-reflective, particularly Ain’t No Guarantees and the title track. And while his voice increasingly betrays his age his Hammond and piano playing has lost none of its vigour.

As well as an intact ability to craft and deliver a song, is a sonic techno-armoury far superior to that of his Tubeway Army days. [Nov 2013, p.91]

Tasty, raunchy and mind-expanding stuff. [Jul 2022, p.82]

If you've ever gone clubbing on heavy-duty painkillers, expect flashbacks. [Apr 2020, p.83]

This is Rancid at their leanest. [Feb 2015, p.96]

This collection falls between the stools of being too normal for the serious fan and too niche for the floating voter. Nevertheless, it’s a refreshing change from the bog-standard hits compendium that usually surfs into the shops when the sun comes out.

Randolph's evocative pedal steel soars reliably as his assured vocal attains new peaks of emotive character. [Sep 2019, p.87]

V combines expansive arena-rock sonics with a heavy dose of lush electronics. Indeed, the stern synths and metal-bashing percussion of Hologram sound like vintage Tubeway Army, while the robo-riffing thunder of Machine falls between Suede and the Sisters Of Mercy.

The only problem is that the album is too long. [Feb 2015, p.96]

It sounds more like a collection of polished home recordings than a truly coherent band album, but when the harmonies fly and the melodies tumble--as they do on the genuinely lovely Titanic or on the soaring Squirrel vs Snake--The Posies can still reach those old highs.

The gentle acoustic strums and electric licks, all wrapped in lush melodies and driven by Pete Fij’s worn yet honeyed voice, both mask and enhance the ennui here.

It's strident without being brash, starry without being pompous, middle of the road without being bland. [Mar 2022, p.84]

Some of the retro-crooner murder ballads risk straying into cliché, but there are inspired sound-collage experiments here too.

More neo-prog than post-hardcore, Horizons/East is a grand statement of intent. [Dec 2021, p.75]

No Home Record is a masterstroke of intimate solitude, often boiling down to poetic, semi-spoken vocals and a drum machine. ... and noise, as fans of her old band would expect, is expertly corralled. [Nov 2019, p.85]

This is all quality stuff from a name you can trust. [Sep 2025, p.80]

[An] agreeable, mildly self-indulgent album. [Nov 2013, p.93]

Jerky, visceral, complex, cerebral, a deep joy. [Apr 2020, p.89]

Buzz is in full-on demented rock-god mode (Victory Of The Pyramids), a full-throttle sludge trash that out-Hawkwinds even the mighty Hawkwind themselves. [Jun 2025, p.71]

The rollicking barroom swager of Undone And Unashamed, complete with sax solo, is similarly appealing, as is the sardonic strut of Centennial Perspective. [Jul 2023, p.84]

Pre-Jack'n'Meg, no one would've believed Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug could replicate B-52's/Kleenex, now it's almost routine. [Aug 2023, p.79]

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]

It works, thanks in this case to an engagingly loopy clutch of lysergic psych-pop oddities created with Primus frontman Les Claypool.

The cumulative result is an album accessible enough to provide an entry point for the curious, while having just the right amount of wiggy to satisfy paid-up members of the Motorpsycho cult.

While it can’t match the last, extremely impressive Heartbreakers set, Hypnotic Eye, it’s a strong country-rock presentation from what’s not quite the sultan of side projects but rather more than Petty’s return-to-roots Tin Machine.

Baroque, doom-laden proclamations are Manson's bread and butter, and We Are Chaos is stuffed with them. [Oct 2020, p.86]

Van Weezer is a Lightweight guilty pleasure, but mostly delicious pleasure. [Summer 2021, p.80]

Full of infectious, summery pop melodies, acoustic guitars and abrasion. [Apr 2022, p.77]

Plants such enduring standards as Wild World and Father And Son firmly in the now. [Oct 2020, p.87]

This is a welcome blast from an uncompromising band. [Nov 2013, p.93]

While there's nothing here that will alienate fans or frighten the horses, there's no denying the power of songs like the crashing "Brave This Storm" or the rattling "Strife." [Nov 2013, p.93]

Preaching positivity, the woozy dream-pop melodies flutter and float on the air like the butterfly the record takes its name from. [Summer 2021, p.80]

For better and for worse Rancid have never been overly concerned with progress. Yet there's undeniable evolution on the early-Pogues-style stomp of both Hellbound Train and the near hoe-down Devil In Disguise. [Jul 2023, p.82]

Though it's arranged into four old-school sides, lob on a download card full of bonus material and home movies and it's a retro-modern package to make old Muddy's eyes water. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Screen Time is a minor but consistently engaging Moore release, crackling with kinetic tension, forever perched on a knife edge between easy listening and uneasy noise. [Apr 2022, p.77]

It's a relief to find this eighth album bounding up to the gates waving some fresh ideas. [May 2019, p.87]

His love for the music shines throughout. [Apr 2023, p.75]

It's the album's embrace of retro-futurist video arcade electronica on The Doctor and Hooked, verging at times on a lascivious indie Prodigy, that keeps Franz Ferdinand surprising 20 years in. [Feb 2025, p.72]

For its place in his canon, the 4 1⁄2 album is a relatively scant 37 minutes of sessions created around the recording of Hand..., and it’s easy to see where the songs might have fitted into the conceptual jigsaw of the original work.

There are echoes here of The Fall in their Brix-era imperial phase, a clobbering garage-rock physicality spiked with dry wit and subversively sweet melody.

Wraith wrestles drums, bass, guitars and trumpet into sinister electronic shapes informed by towering noise makers such as terminal Cheesecake and textural experimentalist James Holden. [May 2019, p.87]

Producers Andy Zax and Steve Woolard have considerably expanded available sets by Richie Havens, Sha Na Na, Janis Joplin, Mountain and dying-a-death Incredible String Band; but analysis reveals more often just adding one extra track, albiet good ones. [Aug 2019, p.90]

Listening to the earlier mixes accompanying 1979’s In Through The Out Door (7/10) is to be transported to an alternative universe where songs named Blot, The Epic and The Hook (I’m Gonna Crawl, Carouselambra and All My Love respectively) jostle with a scruffier, rambunctious Hot Dog and a sparser In The Evening, the drone intro truncated and Jones’s synths high in the mix.

While the diet hip-hop of Something Different screams, unfortunately, of early noughties jock pop--they've returned with a fun, pacey slab of entirely unthreatening rebellion. [Summer 2013, p.93]

Listening to it is a wonderfully disconcerting experience, each track swirling and merging into new patterns like a murmuration of starlings. [Apr 2022, p.78]

Sunwatchers' third album takes no prisoners with squealing opener New Dad Blues,. [May 2019, p.87]

The end result is a sweet and thoughtful set from one of the genre's lifers. [Oct 2022, p.70]

AntiKpop, anyone? [Jul 2019, p.85]

It's all delivered in a broad range of tech-rock colours. [Apr 2022, p.78]

It's the pace breakers that stand out most. [Nov 2024, p.78]