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]

A gift for completists, music historians and obsessives. Even for them, approaching it in one sitting is a challenge. Instead it’s better to savour it episodically, because each segment ends on something of a cliffhanger: you can hear her evolve from gamine coffee-shop folkie into a masterful, angel-voiced singer-songwriter as the collection develops.

This album reveals something new with each spin. [Sep 2024, p.69]

It's the sixties end of the nineties again, yet repurposed with significant flair. [May 2023, p.81]

It's an assured slice of post-Loaf songcraft. [Apr 2026, p.81]

Raw, explosive and edgy. [May 2020, p.83]

Occasionally things are wide of the mark, such as with the ponderous Junkie, but that's mostly an anomaly in a record full of snarky, sneering metal that has the punky energy of a new band on the block. [Sep 2022, p.77]

This album feels like musicians bouncing ideas off of each other in the same room. [Jun 2023, p.75]

There’s plenty here to keep their hard-core fans transfixed until the Jonestowners return with the next full albumy walbum.

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

There's a delicious, deliberate irony to this atheist band putting their own 100mph spin on carols. [Jan 2014, p.115]

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

The synth-heavy The Signal & The Noise shows they can still quest when the mood takes them, but overall the album plays to Simple Minds’ many strengths.

This baffling mixture of the anarchy and the ecstasy takes some pulling off but the quartet has perfected the alchemical reaction. [Nov 2014, p.96]

She still knows how to hone a catchy melody. [Summer 2014, p.88]

My Dying Bride remain steadfastly rooted in gloom. It's a nuanced gloom, though. [Apr 2020, p.87]

An exhilarating and unexpectedly uplifting record. [Sep 2024, p.71]

As a stand-alone album, it’s a trip. Where it fits in Dwyer’s canon is another kettle of bananas entirely.

Back To Land lets the sun in through the grooves. [Jan 2014, p.116]

An intricately crafted return to form. [Nov 2020, p.85]

While this album isn't quite as impressive as the record in its original guise, it's still an interesting shift in gears by the Mars Volta. [Jun 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]

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

Tracks like Drive, Novocaine and Black cloud sound like the soundtrack to a 1980s brat-pack comedy, nut the sheer vim and vigour with which they're delivered still make it a rock 'n' roll rush. [Jan 2014, p.116]

At the heart of the album is Brooker’s dextrous keyboard work, his pristine piano-playing embellished in all the right places by Josh Phillips’s Hammond organ. What’s equally impressive is the might of Brooker’s voice, which has lost none of its vigour in the 50 years since he first skipped the light fandango.

The band's evident love for the material floods the performances, even though they can overdo the jamming when they get a groove going and reverence dampens Hooker's guest spot. But Petty's own songs, deployed sparingly, sound infinitely fresher and tighter. [Dec 2022, p.85]

Though the record’s real strength is the deft vocal interplay between Elsenburg and Jana Carpenter, who imbues things with a new sense of depth and, on Chasing Horses and the achingly lovely Tyrekickers, a nuanced sensitivity.

After initial queasiness at a moment of amorousness in Eraser (‘I’m just a toy waiting for you to play me’), it quickly becomes business as usual in terms of their shamelessly enormous pop-rock music.

The Menzingers deliver an energetic strain of melodic rock and bare their souls on aging, alcohol and angst. [Dec 2019, p.85]

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

A set of songs that sound like someone's favourite record collection. [Feb 2020, p.89]

There's enough here that's new to renew your love of Hendrix. Yes, there's blood in the stone yet. [Apr 2013, p.94]

The presence of old Jam oppo Steve Brookes on slide guitar during a pop-art inspired In The Car, meanwhile, only adds to the sense of Weller returning to what he knows best. [Jun 2015, p.94]

It's a mad house of friction, attitude and ambition. [Oct 2025, p.77]

His [Brian Henneman's] Tom Petty-tinged voice and bursts of Rickenbacker guitar reinforce the familiar sound. Unfortunately he doesn’t always move with the times.

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

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]

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

Voivod have again recorded something that will appeal to those with an open mind. [Apr 2013, p.96]

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.

A smacker. [Jun 2023, p.78]

Wicked Nature is a fateful folly that might just bear fruit. [Oct 2014, p.89]

It's a perfect kind of insanity, and it gets the old adrenalin pumping nicely. [Summer 2014, p.91]

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

Hiring QOTSA producer Eric Valentine has given their bluesy bluster a hint of Josh Homme’s desert Bowie sleaze on tracks like Never Swim Alone, Statues, Caught Up and Moonlight. ... There’s still space for the weird bits, though.

This album's exploration of very type of human relationship is more Blood On The Tracks than Love Actually. [Sep 2024, p.71]

Most touching is the full-circle thrill of hearing P.P. belt out her 1968 standard, Angel Of The Morning. [Dec 2024, p.77]

If you won and love other recent Bonamassa records you know what to expect and won't be disappointed. But for more casual listeners, the big-band approach may grow a bit overwrought and leave you hankering for those no-frills Rory Gallagher albums. [Oct 2014, p.90]

Goat's ouroboros cycle repeats, with added bite. [Oct 2024, p.76]

As the soundtrack to the black mass ritual of their ardent followers, From the Very Depths more than delivers. [Mar 2015, p.89]

The energy levels are astounding too, with producer Julian Raymond extracting a sonic attack that makes Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson and Daxx Nielsen sound like they’ve been locked in an industrial hangar with a bunch of AK-47s.

Smart enough to avoid slavish imitation, Temples already sound strong enough to breathe new life into old forms. [Mar 2014, p.101]

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

A fine punk album, but no more than that. [Summer 2014, p.92]

MBV is no great leap forward, though it's still aeons ahead of its 21st century competition. [Apr 2013, p.98]

They may have a more muscular setting, but there’s no denying the appeal of Argent’s ornate piano and Blunstone’s breathy warble.

A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip is still a heartening example of a truly original and who continue to enjoy success on their own unique terms by refining and amplifying their youthful weirdness instead of mellowing with age. [Jul 2020, p.88]

This album finds them surrounded by squelching basslines, scattershott guitars and pop-eyed vocals, and it's brilliant.

All six albums for Island Records generously expanded. [Oct 2020, p.93]

It's short--11 tracks over in less than 39 minutes--but genuinely sweet. [Dec 2019, p.80]

While something more adventurous might have been the way forward, the singer and his inspirations remain unscathed. [Feb 2021, p.84]

The results is at once joyous, poignant and heartbreaking. [Feb 2021, p.86]

They Want My Soul has a spiky, timeless quality, and frontman Britt Daniel's sharply wry lyrics add a nicely acidic edge to the sweetness of their melodies. [Oct 2014, p.91]

The sound is basic, raw, bitingly sarcastic. [Summer 2021, p.82]

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

This album is as good as we could expect from the Mary Chain in 2017.

The formula is nowhere near broke, so why fix it? Stirring stuff. [Oct 2014, p.91]

With the heft of rock and fat bottom of funk, Heavy neatly summarises the sound achieved by guitarist Dan Taylor, bassist Spencer Page and drummer Chris Ellul, while singer Kelvin Swaby adds the requisite guts and grit.

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

Effortless virtuosity and timeless idiosyncratic tropes elevate nine tracks recorded at Sam Phillips Studio in Memphis (except for the live Got My Mojo Workin'). [Jul 2024, p.83]

Acoustic is a consistent collection that works best when the songs are strongest, and it’s movingly effective on the final track, a cover of Richard Hawley’s Long Black Train.

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]

Long may they stay young. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Somewhere Under Wonderland isn't a revolution, but it is assured, interesting and quietly experimental in its own way. [Oct 2014, p.94]

While it might lack the golden glow of Shiflett's regular band, it's happy to bask in a bourbon haze a few seats along the bar from Blackberry Smoke and Whiskey Myers. [Summer 2019, p.86]

Opener Up All Night moves through the formulaic pop gears as smoothly as Don Henley cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, while Holding On is a slickly realised mid-tempo foot tapper. However, shorn of the novelty factor, such middle-of-the-road material remains better suited to balmy summer nights and drivetime radio than to repeated home listening.

It's a concoction that shouldn't work but does. ... Disarming. [Jan 2021, p.82]

It's an excellent reminder that a great band with a great back catalogue can be just as beautiful without make-up. [Summer 2014, p.99]

The haters will protest, but this is the sound of metal dragging itself into the future. [Jan 2021, p.83]

If You're a lapsed follower, this record will make you believe again. [Jul 2014, p.91]

Reason To Live is full of a warmth and pleasure in life that suits his growing maturity as songwriter and raconteur well. [Jul 2021, p.80]

It's a little naive in its presentation and denotations of homely American Stereotypes, perhaps, but all the more powerful for that. ... Crazy Horse are in fine fettle. [Jan 2021, p.84]

An assured piece of reach-for-the-stars hard rock, sure to thrive live.

Vocals are minimal, though less processed and more prominent than usual.

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]

New album Hard Love is altogether more bullish, Showalter unleashing his inner rock beast on a collection of songs that seem to reach for some kind of epiphany through sheer volume.

No Taste is positively obese with ideas, street smart with a side order of Sonic Youth, a grrrlish death disco diva Banshee fest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

The Charlatans of this 14th album have evolved into a far richer and more reflective band, as much concerned with inner as outer spaces. [Dec 2025, p.75]

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

This second album brings the heft and enormity to make them serious contenders. [Jul 2022, p.78]

Feedback maestro Buck leads the layers of exultant guitar ideas, such as the T.Rex riffs deep in the mix of Shave The Cat, and they help Escovedo drink deep of his sources to climb back into the light.

Occasionally, as on Fire Storm Hotel, with its shades of an 80s hair metal anthem, he sounds at once energised and enfeebled and you find yourself willing him to reach the velocity of yore. But most of the time, you could play these tracks to an alien and they would struggle to tell them apart from Motörhead’s 90s, or even 70s, work.

A weirdly uncomfortable and exhilarating listening from start to finish. [Jan 2021, p.85]

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]

Can reliably wrangle an engaging, chart-friendly rock-lite tune, yet don't sound anything like their irresistibly evocative name would suggest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

None of this is especially groundbreaking or radical, but the sound of a veteran in fine voice, making music with his pals (McGuinn and David Crosby are also along for the ride), is very persuasive indeed.

Despite all the gloom, this is a deeply enjoyable album. [Jan 2021, p.87]