Always surprising, entirely entrancing indie-rock ingenuity. [Aug 2024, p.77]

This thirteenth album finds them starting to sound like a band who deserve the billing [at Alexandra Palace]. [Jun 2019, p.85]

This beautiful album will continue to reveal more with every listen, and those repeated listens will be irresistible. [Jan 2026, p.78]

Sweete, and then, deliciously soured. [Apr 2019, p.86]

There are slower, less effectual burners as well, but there’s a raw authority not seen in his last couple of records; something that reinstates him as a gutsy rocker of flesh and bone, not just a virtuoso show pony.

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

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

Crow redeems herself somewhat with the useful chorus of the I-love-my-kids closer Waiting In The Wings, but only somewhat. Some good singles, as always, but unfortunately a long way from career highlights Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions. [May 2024, p.79]

Whichever level you enjoy it on, this folkie’s volte-face is less ‘Judas’, more ‘genius’.

All things considered, Lady In Gold is a more satisfying listen than its predecessor, with a host of truly great moments.

The album concludes with Nicky Wire’s grainy lead vocal on The Left Behind, a charmingly offbeat detour into 1980s indie-rock. More of these eccentric tonal variations would have been welcome on an album that emerges as a solid exercise in arena-sized anthemics, majestic in parts but not a career peak.

An ambient suite based on a two-note motif, as if homing in on a detail on Luminal, dwelling on it, tenderly bleeding it dry. [Summer 2025, p.76]

Add one of 2015’s swooniest ballads in Trouble and you’ve got an album that’s not exactly pretty, but is definitely a keeper.

Sartain ramraids rinky-dink 80s US radio teen romps on the frenetic Black Party. His rare sense of mischief deserves to be encouraged.

12 is another gem worth unearthing. [May 2018, p.92]

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.

Lightning Bolt could do with a bit more of that hot-wired sound. But its brutally hard-won optimism is satisfying enough. [Nov 2013, p.88]

Predictably, there are strong shades of Buck’s old band too, not least amid the arpeggios of Any Kind Of Crowd (an R.E.M. track in all but Stipe). Elsewhere the greasy chug of Come Back Shelley carries fuzz-filled echoes of T.Rex in their prime.

Classic don't need varnish. [Jul 2020, p.87]

After all this time, Pixies can still surprise and intrigue. [Oct 2022, p.72]

What they lack in scope is more than made up for by the physicality of their attack, chopping out jagged chords and rank fumes of garage-y noise. [Sep 2013, p.89]

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

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

There’s a freshness in both words and attitude that’s more than welcome in a world of heritage and excessive respect. So until the long-awaited collaboration between Noel Gallagher and Ian Brown emerges, feast your ears on this hugely enjoyable album. [May 2024, p.78]

Album of the month. [May 2020, p.83]

Rock'n'roll in 2022 doesn't get any better than this. [Jun 2022, p.82]

IX showcases a band with little interest in repetition. [Summer 2014, p.90]

A disappointing mess. [Apr 2019, p.89]

The live disc, a partial retrieval of a concert at the Olympia Theatre in Paris in May 1971, reminds, despite its rawness, of The Band’s unmatched on-stage brilliance and the legacy they’d already built up with the likes of Rag Mama Rag and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. ... Among the out-takes, Bessie Smith is a further indicator that their sense of American ‘roots’ was fully integrated.

A full-on rager, this one. Devour You knows what's up. [Nov 2019, p.82]

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

Apologists will see it as a paranoic update of the doom-rock blueprint laid down by King Crimson and Amon Düül. Anyone else will be reaching for the paracetamol.

This, somewhat muted, first album in 20 years lacks much of the Beck-like shuffle and experimental pop lustre of that early era, but boasts a mature earthy seam thanks to Barlow lacing its noirish alt.folk, 80s-inflected crypt rock and melodic drone and dub experiments with touches of Middle Eastern instrumentation. [Summer 2024, p.72]

The songs aren't works of staggering compositional genius, or bursting with heartbreaking lyricism. But as air-grabbing alt.rock fun instilled with a charming honesty, there's an ocean of possibility yet for these fine young fellows. [Sep 2014, p.94]

There is the occasional flash of pop brilliance - notably desert-rock nugget Arabesque - but for non-fans Coldplay this dose of Everyday Life will be one they can easily do without. [Jan 2019, p.87]

As a project and as a reminder of a hugely talented lyricist this is a treat. [Nov 2014, p.96]

Trent Reznor's past production has leaned Murphy towards an industrial sound, which Youth's turn as producer adds techno overdrive to. [Summer 2014, p.91]

The result is the band’s most concise effort since Strung Out In Heaven.

For the most part, though, Saviors is the sound of reassuring rebellion from the midst of the 21st Century breakdown. [Mar 2024, p.80]

By occasionally confusing drabness for darkness, they've fallen short of their own lofty standards. [Aug 2018, p.86]

With their warm, evocative, hot fuzz production, muted vocals and keening atmospherics that set them down somewhere between Slowdive, Mew and early Radiohead (see the surely deliberate echo of Creep in Eaten By Worms for evidence of the latter), they sigh their way through a set of tracks that are simply billowing with maudlin beauty.

Highlights are the punchy pop-metal of Got The Power and the greasy glamorama of The Reverend, replete with satisfyingly fuzzy guitar, but Zipper Down misses as much as it hits.

Their punk training doesn’t quite lend them that particular grace. As a result, this can feel like a bit of a rough ride in places, albeit an intriguing one.

Even when exhorted by chanting fans, Liam's solo hits can never quite match Some Might Say's enduring emotive appeal. [Summer 2020, p.89]

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.

While frontwoman Ritzy Bryan remains a force of nature, there’s a lack of eureka moments this time, leaving us with a slow-burner rather than an inferno.

While the hazy creep if bleeding skull candles still waft through DVG's music this is essentially a white magick album, pulsating with light and sunshine and bursts of raga-punk exuberance. [Dec 2020, p.81]

Get Gone is a tumble dryer full of retro ideas given a contemporary currency by their restless drive, which evades categorisation.

It's wise, but rhythmically, musically, it feels Byrne's age. [May 2018, p.91]

Clutch are getting better with age. [Jun 2013, p.88]

Albatross is a step up, sailing closer to the crunch and proggy intelligence of their 1997 debut, with songs that manage to be both smart and visceral. [May 2013, p.91]

Palms is a marriage made in post-rock heaven. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Rhythm & Blues is a proper double album: each disc is notionally themed though, as you'd rightly expect, there's plenty of each. [Oct 2013, p.88]

The whole damn album's as sweet as a pecan nut. [Nov 2014, p.93]

This Stray Cat's strut continues. [Sep 2014, p.94]

This is a record to sink into, not to shock you into action. The Rev’s best.

More of the same, then, but for bleak Scandinavian beauty, Katatonia are still hard to beat.

A fine album that’s more imaginative than reimagining.

The Anglophile lingo (‘He’s such a dear boy’), opiated nursery drawl and woozy organ of Charlie’s Lips is deep in homage to Barrett’s Floyd, just as the Hammond in You Never Learn is to Al Kooper on ’65 Dylan duty. More interesting is the tendency to trancey, transformative repetition on the likes of the autobiographical, sick-bed sweaty Little Stars.

Time may have dulled some of their digital dexterity but their enthusiasm is undimmed, as is their ear for what makes a good Fairport song.

Sections within Things Buried In Water 1 and The Stranger’s House suggesting melody, the rest an offbeat, thrumming sound collage.

The Groovies are indeed back, still majestic, supernatural and magnificently defiant, and as a result the rock‘n’roll world feels back on its axis.

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.

There are plenty of great songs on here, but no stone-cold classic. [May 2018, p.86]

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

Things Change positively aches with melancholy and regrets, but, like the finest outlaw country crooners, Barham manages to find slivers of light in the darkness. [Summer 2018, p.86]

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]

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

While they might not whip up the same adoration, Another State Of Grace shows that there continues to be life beyond Lizzy. [Sep 2019, p.84]

There’s little to distinguish its 10 tracks from each other, beyond Wishing’s stark, startling verses. It’s a shame, because Fafara clearly believes in what he’s doing, and this is far from a bad album. It’s just not enough to reach beyond the faithful.

In short: 13 hugely enjoyable songs that all sound like old friends. [Dec 2020, p.85]

A game of two halves. ... Could please all. Or none. [Apr 2021, p.89]

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

It's not exactly in Rikki's nadir, but neither is it exactly rock. [Jul 2021, p.87]

A debut rich in raw potential.[Summer 2021, p.87]

A richly dense experience that also channels syncopated avant-pop, semi-symphonic prog and luxuriant soft-rock. [Sep 2021, p.74]

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

It may have been a long wait, but The Mandrake Project is easily one of Bruce Dickinson’s boldest projects, and it goes to show there is almost nothing that this band frontman/fencer/pilot/author can’t turn his hand to. [Apr 2024, p.82]

Bolder and more confident in its experimentation. [Jun 2024, p.77]

Stephen Lawrie grumbles dutifully over the anticipated Spacemen 3 guitar squalls, and tracks like Shake It All Out and This Train Rolls On do their traditional misery-in-motion thing. Nothing Matters suggests an out-take from Iggy’s The Idiot that was ditched for resembling Dum Dum Boys too closely. [Oct 2024, p.74]

Their hearts are in the right place, but their percussion needs pumping. [May 2025, p.79]

Offering no major reinvention. That said, it kicks harder than a mule in lead boots. [Summer 2025, p.82]

Overall this live album confirms how solidly he has established his post-Smiths identity. [Oct 2025, p.78]

The hooks go off like petrol bombs too. [Mar 2026, p.79]

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

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

For diehard fans and the inevitable new army of converts, however, this blue period is one to marvel at. [Jul 2014, p.94]

Brilliant. [Summer 2013, p.95]

The finished product is actually more like AC/DC having a crack at making their White Album, in that it’s as varied, expansive and crammed with drug-crusted invention as a band embedded in blues and hard rock can get. For a record relatively light on pop-rock stadium slayers, it’s also easily the Foos’ most elemental album yet.

Brilliantly bright-side. [Summer 2024, p.75]

Together, they’ve produced an album of cracking Mac-esque pop, most notably the clipped, catchy Feel About You and the tightly constructed first single In My World.

Their interactions will turn understatement into seductiveness, as Paul Banks's voice and Daniel Kessler's guitars weave sorrow and hope through the shuffling Toni, the keening Fables, and Passenger, which feels like a sequel to their classic NYC. [Summer 2022, p.74]

The concept of nature destroying man-made civilization to a soundtrack of dark, danceable symphonics is chilling. [Sep 2020, p.85]

Still favouring extended excursions (see White Rose), their acquaintance with melody is developing into first-name terms to create a fabulously hypnotic trip.

Thirteen songs, 40 minutes and not a moment wasted. [Nov 2020, p.84]

Chunky, repetitive stun-gun guitars, sore-throat howls, throbbing digital backbeats, check, check, check.

We’ve been here before, but we’re back and it’s great.

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.