Nobody will pretend Atonement is a classic. But it is firmly fired up. [Sep 2019, p.82]

Johnny Cash starts with Johnny 99, the title track of his 1983 album released just a year after Springsteen's Nebraska, with his own distinctive drawl and guitar twang, demonstrating that the Boss's songs have all the necessary country ingredients. The more traditional Travis Tritt then employs an arsenal of cliches on Tougher Than The Rest. .... [Steve Earle] delivers a brooding, almost menacing live version of State Trooper. [Jul 2025, p.86]

Thankfully, they haven’t abandoned their experimental urges completely, with Apricity striking a deft balance between rushing choruses and free electronic grooves.

While there's nothing radically off-blueprint in the finished article, it's obvious that every note has been pored over with love and respect. [Jan 2019, p.88]

Suffering a little from the transition from live set to bootleg to official release. [Jul 2022, p.87]

If anything on Into The Woods Brock and his merry men (including drummer Richard Chadwick and keyboardist Tim Blake) conjure, not the mellowness but the magic and mystery, even malevolence, of nature.

It's all as disorientating and scary and unwholesome and - near unbelievably - heavy as fuck as you'd expect. [Nov 2021, p.74]

Somehow, his voice remains--a ghostly, spellbinding croon that swims through wastelands of strings and synths, making Noctunes unfold like an alternative soundtrack to Twin Peaks.

A surprising distillation of longing, memory and loss. [Apr 2019, p.88]

While nothing here is wrong, very little - unlike the VU themselves - is unexpected or thrilling. [Oct 2021, p.74]

Continue to sound just as fresh as they did when the band first formed 40 years ago. [Jul 2024, p.78]

American Fall is their eleventh studio album since the band formed in 1996, and there’s no compromise, no backing down. The anger keeps churning, the hooks keep building. ... It’s sometimes reminiscent of Green Day, but none the worse for that.

The punk energy remains, frontman Davy Havok’s vocal delivery dripping with drama and passion, but with a glorious, gilded production job from guitarist Jade Puget, AFI (The Blood Album) luxuriates in a velvety richness that makes it a sumptuous listen.

A polished vista rock for anyone in urgent need of a Foos stopgap. [Sep 2019, p.83]

Silence In The Snow is not a classic album, but this puts Trivium firmly back on course.

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]

[Rise] sounds like it’s been designed solely with American radio very much in mind. Things pick up quickly from there though, You Have Come To The Right Place, puts things very much back on track, wilfully over-the-top, a grand façade covering the band’s broken veneer.

Lyrically this has all been done better before, but it does show that Beck is fully engaged with the world. Moreover, Loud Hailer’s often stunning tapestry of vampy rock, funk, Southern blues and wah-wah wizardry proves that all of his considerable faculties are as sharp as they ever were.

Shades of Dead Moon and The Scientists, US 80s hardcore litter tracks like Plasticity and the monstrous swirl of lead single Almost Everything but Mudhoney remain their own, inherent force of nature. [May 2023, p.77]

Essentially, Chapman is an old-style saloon storyteller whose reflections are enhanced and coloured by his myriad guitar treatments, an old dog not afraid of new tricks.

Its best moments veer away into austere orchestral grandeur: the title track is fittingly climactic and Love From The Other Side resembles a civilisation tunefully collapsing. [May 2023, p.77]

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]

Several navel-gazing songs about musicianship only cement Eitzel’s reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter, favouring tinkering with classic structures over tugging the low-hanging heartstrings or banging out honking great hooks, but this ferryman will definitely get fans of arch-folk to the other side.

The songs are less varied, however, tending to chug along morosely, based around similar clusters of chords to David Bowie’s Five Years, which suits the apocalyptic foreboding but can make you long for a brightly coiffed alien androgyne to come along and break the monotone gloom. ... Still, for all its solemnity, Waters is clearly in his element, even if his Indian summer might coincide with our nuclear winter.

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.

Heaven is an adrenalin-charged barrage of intelligently crafted, hook-heavy material, enlivened with hairpin tempo twists, and impressively free of punk cliches. As Hell surges into action with Rise Up's thrusting fusion of shout-along punk chorus and metallic riffing, it's clear they're not playing their heavy side for laughs, using it instead to inject their characteristic sound with well-suited darker aspects on It's All Me and You Wanted War. [May 2024, p.79]

Despite its nonlinear creation, the album is one of their tightest and most consistent in years. [Sep 2019, p.83]

Bleakness sparkles. [Sep 2024, p.68]

Delving deeper into funk groove and psych textures, this expansive ninth record pays a flying visit to such old haunts, to find its hedonistic crowd now wracked with late-capitalist economic woes and struggling to stay rock'n'roll post-rehab. [May 2023, p.78]

The Complete Budokan 1978 is hardly likely to convert Dylan doubters, but it's an interesting curio all the same. [Dec 2023, p.83]

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

One for those who like some songwriting substance with their hellbound gargling. [Jun 2015, p.95]

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]

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

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]

The most interesting bits of Engines Of Destruction are the moments when the beardy berserker mask drops. [May 2026, p.74]

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]

A way more fun prospect than it seems. [Nov 2022, p.75]

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]

Even as they slip effortlessly into middle-age, their perennial prog tendencies are still evident on the demonic squall of I Told You I Was Crazy and the sprawling, trippy Dogs And Cattle Prods. [Dec 2013, p.99]

While the album still has the overall feel of being in a flotation tank while listening to Gerry Rafferty, James experiments beyond his tendency to jaw off occasionally into psych jazz interludes, tackling dark future fink on Magic Bullet and Godspell gospel blues on Wasted. [Sep 2020, p.89]

The pace of Duets Special is slow and steady, so inevitably there are moments where it drags a little, but to hear one of the great rock voices of her era in her element, sharing the music she loves with musicians she respects and complements, is a quiet, low-key joy to behold. [Nov 2025, p.80]

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]

As ever, this band find their joie de vivre in jadedness. [May 2026, p.78]

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]

Only diluted by a couple of thin tracks, Spirit is an impressively robust late-career album. Emotionally naked yet clad in thick, metallic armour, Depeche Mode are growing old angrily, and it suits them.

Six inessential demos added to the original album hardly warrant the ‘deluxe edition’ tag. But as a document of a musical sea change, Ultramega OK is indispensable.

Dr. John sounds in tip-top form here. [Oct 2022, p.73]

In playing predominantly with familiar sounds, From Zero feels less like a step forward for Linkin Park than a rallying point to bring the band back from the brink. But in that, the album is nothing short of a triumph; measuring their angst and leaning on the communal heart that's always existed in their songs, Linkin Park have saved themselves to fight another day. [Jan 2025, p.78]

A relentless stream of strong, sinewy riffs and blistering solos. ... It's just a shame he doesn't trust his own voice more. [Jul 2019, p.85]

It may not have the immediacy of Crowded House at their peak, but there are nonetheless defiant pop sensibilities seeping through the cracks of more experimental left-field soundscapes that form the spine of the likes Of Ghosts and We Know What It Means. [Sep 2018, p.86]

Harder, heavier and more cohesive than their Manifest Decimation debut, Nightmare Logic is precise and snappy enough to win over hardcore fans too.

They find the sweet spot between Dinosaur Jr's nagging noise and The Posies' woozy power-pop charm. [Apr 2015, p.101]

Exposes his long-standing flaws: lyrics with the depth and insight of an astrology column, and songwriting that flashes on brilliance. .... Tracks are redeemed, though, by some spectacularly muscular riffing from guitarist Liam Tyson. [Apr 2023, p.83]

It may all be a little too polished and tasteful for some palates, but for others this is 15 togs of pure aural comfort to wrap yourself in.

A handful of solo piano interludes also summon inescapable echoes of Spinal Tap’s Lick My Love Pump. Overall, though, Synthesis feels like a successful experiment.

Revisits Gotham-based hits and Lou's timeless Wild Side. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Frontman Stu Mackenzie nails a Hetfield-esque gurgle from the galloping, squiddle-spattered opener Planet B, and it’s hard to resist the rat-a-tat riff and stuttering vocal of Self-immolate or the insistent turbo-Sabbath churn of Mars For The Rich.

Homegrown was strong enough to have been released in 1975 and Young is right to exhume it now. But that doesn’t mean he was necessarily wrong then. He may have been baring his soul, but he was smart enough to know just how rotten that soul had fleetingly become.

Sacred picks up where they left off with 1994’s The Church Within, ramping up the grinding riffs and Wino’s tortured Ozzy-esque wail.

We’re hanging on to them by our fingernails, but this is impressive stuff.

The emotionally charged (if musically sterile), genre-blending Cassyette is as emptily irresistible as MSG. [Nov 2024, p.79]

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 is a return they can be proud of. [Nov 2022, p.70]

The band more than reinforce their status as modern metal heroes. [Summer 2018, p.89]

Grim catnip for 40-something lapsed Nirvana fans. [Aug 2023, p.79]

There’s gold to be uncovered here.

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.

Maintains In//Parallel's intrinsic style and pan-genre forward momentum, a seamless, pop-literate/prog-friendly fusion positively peppered with an abundance of barbed hooks. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Songs such as the rolling The Devil Is In Her Eyes and the carefully layered Isabel’s Daughter are the work of a group who have absorbed much of what’s great about rock’n’roll and turned it loose in the present.

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]

The album tapers off towards the end, but this still a likeable - albeit slight - confection. [Oct 2024, p.77]

Strings stutter and fall, the tone can best be described as lush, gentle and reassuring.

Beautifully angry tunes cunningly made more accessible through the application o killer dance grooves. [Jun 2021, p.77]

Howlin Rain have fashioned an album that eschews the harder rocking moves of predecessor The Alligator Bride for a mellower although no less impactful approach. [Oct 2021, p.74]

This is glorious stuff: the punchy, thin lipped Church & State; the affecting wonderfully harmonies of A Woman Oversees; the slowly uncoiling storytelling bound up in the lingering A Long Goodbye. [Nov 2025, p.77]

This second album has the same sickening impact: 11 cold and merciless slashes of amorphous goth-pop that dish out sparse high-wire melodies, as on Harpstrings, Blume and the violent waltz of Velvet, like glimpses of sunlight to a basement gimp.

Where once they would gallop, here they lope, they slide, giving themselves all the time in the world. Hardcore fans of the weird stuff are going to hate it. ... This is clearly the right music for this stage in their musical evolution. [Nov 2022, p.70]

Young's voice is plaintive and cracked, the guitars whip up a veritable thunderstorm, nd the mood is stormy and reflective. Another treasure. [Jun 2023, p.82]

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]

The styles eclectic but generally harking back to the architecture of 60s pop. [Nov 2022, p.71]

A spicy, heady, mostly satisfying brew. [Summer 2018, p.87]

Proves that an evening sitting round Weller's record player would be an interesting one indeed. [Aug 2025, p.74]

Sometimes, as on Domina, the mood is almost singalong, but much of the album, including the title track is sublime. [May 2013, p.84]

Everybody Come To Church is designed to be repellant to the bovine majority, but if the world’s going to burn, it comes as a perfect soundtrack.

Hawkwind sit in 2025 alongside the kosmische likes of Berlin’s Arcane Allies, making similar forays into space. It’s all good – and this is certainly good. [Jun 2025, p.74]

Some of it’s inescapably retro, such as The Times’ I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape and Firmanent & The Elements’ The Festival Of Frothy Muggament. However, there are plenty of better-known names, sympaticos such as The Monochrome Set and TV Personalities, as well as an early demo from Doctor And The Medics, Barbara Can’t Dance, whose number one single Spirit In The Sky was the commercial highpoint of this movement.

Uber-producer Youth adds a sleaze-funk swagger to a valedictory Nine Lives, while standouts Losing Sleep and Money Burns could almost be outtakes from the Mondays’ commercial peak Pills ’n’ Thrills And Bellyaches. Lyrically, Ryder remains in a league of his own.

Powerful and thought-provoking, if depressing, The Future Bites ultimately asks you to take a good hard look at what the hell you’re doing with your life.

If their debut was dependent on painkillers, Reiðl is the sound of a band beginning to heal.

There’s little ground they haven’t covered before, whether that’s the old school Steve Harris gallop of The Seductiveness Of Decay or the choral interlude of Achingly Beautiful, but no one does it quite like them.

A collection created purely for dancing to, a millennial disco that leaves the troubles of the world outside its spiky bubble. [Apr 2022, p.86]

Cheatahs create melodic miasmas of space marimba, psych pop and crystalline drones, while lyrically teleporting around the globe.

The Besnard Lakes might test the listener’s patience at times, but their commendable commitment to monumental scale and ambition often results in something thrillingly beautiful.

This alt.bluegrass band remain in a field of their own, dragging old-times instrumentation into fresh relevance.

A whole album at 100 mph needs skill at the wheel not to start sounding slow, and for all the sensation of manic burn-out, every track has disciplined intricacy, using hairpin turns and jolting tape-slices to sculpt the gush of drums and feedback into prog-garage shape.

Earle's narrative is compellingly singular, and the musical variety feeding his fiery and thoughtful tunes well measured. [May 2013, p.85]

It won't change the world, but The No-Hit Wonder makes it a nicer place to live in. [Sep 2014, p.91]