A rockier proposition, re-channelling the militant, straight-ahead postpunk spirit of 1980, especially on Psychic Attack.

A curious curt selection with no obvious crowd-pleasers, but doubtless KC fans will rise to the challenge. [May 2015, p.107]

Double down on revitalising their music while finding new logs to throw on the philosophical fire. [Oct 2023, p.81]

If you fancy being barked at by a grizzled campaigner about pesticides and sea pollution over three-chord sludge and ragged-glorious guitars, then you’ll love what Young and co cook up here. If not, stick to Harvest.

They're also still some way off leading any packs, but they're making up ground. [Feb 2020, p.90]

Classy but strangely sterile. [Sep 2022, p.77]

Social Cues feels like the sound of a great band in desperate need of some down time. [Jun 2019, p.88]

Utilising informed guitar sound palette and Johnny Marr ingenuity. [Aug 2020, p.89]

Here he duly revisits his own past, on an album that blends new material with covers of his old work and that of others.

The basic country sounds frame a compelling singer. [Apr 2015, p.97]

Where Is The Water twists and meanders hazily before shifting into gear with a riff from the Jack White school of thud, while opener Needles is excitable garage rock with a stiff, post-punk edge. And over in the kaleidoscopic corner, Wheels Within Wheels flips merrily from one psychedelic landscape to the next and includes a wriggling organ solo that sounds as if it's being squeezed from a tube. All in all, it's quite the adventure. [Dec 2022, p.75]

It's rock'n'roll for aging urchins who don't know how to quit. [Apr 2015, p.98]

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

There’s a demo version of The Ramones’ Rockaway Beach included here, which is as scratchy and worn as you might imagine and, remarkably, lacks any of that patented, and much missed, Motörhead kick. Much better is their gnarly version of Metallica’s Whiplash; if you didn’t know any better you’d swear it was one of their own. Ditto Twisted Sister’s Shoot ‘Em Down.

Romy Vager's vocals are raw, earnest, and Tambourine is Brain Worms distilled, a taut memoir of remote mourning. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Magnetic may veer close to Maroon-5-at-their-very-best territory, but let's not get sniffy. It's a life affirming, joyful record. [Jun 2013, p.91]

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.

Great in parts, but flat and clumsy in others, Bellamy’s bid to become more serious appears to have stunted what he does best, which is operatic excess fuelled by volcanic emotion.

A hit-and-miss affair padded out with too many Fred Durst-style shouty tantrums. [Apr 20202, p.88]

For all his apocalyptic bleakness, Moby’s electropopulist instincts remain active, lending a euphoric rush even to suicidally glum Joy Division-style confessionals like Silence and All The Hurts We Made.

It's probably the Rolling Stones' best album ever. ... Slim pickings of the expanded vinyl package border on the insulting. [Dec 2018, p.94]

Noise & Romance offers a much more disjointed, disorienting and unpolished experience. [May 2019, p.84]

Another adequate but inessential album.

The stumbling block is that too many songs here never develop pasta dino-stomp riff, and that the vocals can be a little shrill. [Summer 2013, p.89]

While there’s plenty of self-indulgent noodling (God Is In The Rhythm; the final section of Infinite Rise) compensation comes with their adventurous spirit.

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

Employing rhythmic sideswipes, jarring guitar clangour and dub bass frequencies through a production filter marked 'Mud'. [Summer 2025, p.79]

This is certainly a dead weird album; it may improve with time.

Despite a handful of anodyne plodders, it is difficult to dislike Simple Minds in this nostalgic late-career mode, elder statesmen with nothing left to prove. [Nov 2022, p.71]

The album emerging as willfully lo-fi, bouncing along on cheery electronica while McTrusty's almost spoken-word panic attack showcases his rich Glaswegian vocals. [Feb 2022, p.79]

It cuts and blazes and works well live in all its kinetic abandon but, if Shining really want to lay claim to a new genre, they need to integrate their progressive elements into the mix rather than add them as a side option.

Nothing here is as good as their Sweet Jane, but it'll do. [May 2022, p.87]

On 33 Crows he channels his inner Dylan, giving it lots of nasal drawl. Holy Flame brings things up to date, recalling Dandy Warhols. If you fancy some 60s-centric pop-rock, this might work.

Her heart is laid bare in a manner that just manages to avoid becoming cloying.

Inviting famous friends to help him give the songs a fresh coat of paint doesn't, for the most part, make any real impact. [Summer 2013, p.91]

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.

This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.

Super-smooth strings, bluesy stomps and immense righteousness are crammed into this varied, if oddly disparate selection. [Feb 2015, p.98]

[A] blend of instrumental moods, torpid 80s indie and self-regarding songs that never entirely clear their launchpad. [Oct 2021, p.79]

It's basically business as usual here. [Nov 2013, p.91]

Some fans may miss the hobo simplicity of yore. [Summer 2013, p.92]

It’s well-meant but well-trodden, rarely exciting ground.

Sporadically great but decidedly patchy, A Moon Shaped Pool is not the sound of a great band dying, more a great band spreading themselves too thinly.

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]

23 tracks is too many. ... But when it's good - as on Marc Almond's ballady Teenage Dream or David Johansen's R&B stomp through Get It On, it's great. [Oct 2020, p.84]

Hitchcock strips away all the production embellishments of its musical highlights and presents them as they would have been written. The resulting album is a decidedly mixed bag. [Nov 2024, p.73]

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]

This fifth edition's half-hour documents their second collaboration with Nurse With Wound and never fully recovers. [Sep 2022, p.83]

Overall the album comes together in somewhat less cohesive fashion than Ride Out, and listeners may end up wishing for a Seger to take firmer grip on the steering wheel for one final album.

Some nifty tricks - mashing their own Lonely In Your Nightmare into Rick James's Super Freak, for example - but not enough treat. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Ultimately a completist's set. [Dec 2023, p.84]

Little has changed in the schlocky-horror junk-shop aesthetic.... However, the polished and emotive power-pop chuggers She's The Bad One and Sorry About Tomorrow show more midlife maturity. [May 2015, p.103]

Hard Light works so well because rather than cling on to relevance during the wilderness years, Drop Nineteen have simply waited and let the world catch up with them. [Dec 2023, p.77]

Baird’s weary, almost impassive croon and deadpan humour across both records can’t hide his serious resistance to our self-deceiving, digitally distanced lives.

Past Lives is a wilfully uncommercial record, made for the sheer love of the tight-knit scene that spawned them. [Dec 2022, p.74]

It makes sense with the book on your lap, but otherwise, the album may not convince. The acoustics are peculiar on tracks like Pride and the vocal mic seems compressed, rather than expansive. Something to do with surrender, perhaps. What remains of it, when you give yourself away. [May 2023, p.80]

Its shorter, pacier tracks up the dynamism, making for a pummelling - if somewhat relentless - experience as deep-strata hardcore tracks like Detroit and Blackage shift gears into more ponderous interludes. [Jun 2025, p.72]

The band's sixth album is another uneven mix, but with enough fresh twists and smart cameos to save it from redundancy. [Jun 2015, p.90]

It’s a fine mix of odds and sods to stave off the hunger for the next sonic feast they cook up.

Not essential, then, but well worth a peek through the window. [Nov 2019, p.84]

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

A little unwieldy in places, but still pleasingly timeless. [Jul 2019, p.85]

There is skill on display, but the album is unlikely to progress beyond background music. [Jun 2015, p.93]

You don't come to this band foe an easy rode and a soothing soundtrack to while away the hours; you come to them to be pummelled with some horrible but mesmerising noise. And on Synthesizer they deliver in abundance once again. [Nov 2024, p.75]

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

As displayed by the title track and the pumping Brutalism, Oxymore feels stuck in the 90s rather than the work of two trailblazers, though at least Epica’s hands-in-the-air dynamics feels fresher. [Nov 2022, p.71]

Although micro-melody whimsy is at its heart, there’s a Tangs/Radiophonic Workshop slant that gives tracks such as Midwinter Rites a spooky Kill List/Children Of The Stones edge.

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

His words and sentiments are left deliberately smudged and indefinite in places; sardonic Dylan phrasing sticks to some words, double-tracked Lennon wails on others.

They revisit a previous concept. ... Floating along on a wave of jazzy good vibes. [Nov 2022, p.75]

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]

It's an album outside its own time, designed to intrigue the dedicated few rather than service the content-consuming many, and if nothing else it's bringing the art of enigmatic charisma back to the world of rock. [Apr 2025, p.74]

Anyone not expecting a retread of his former glories will find enough here to enjoy. [Summer 2018, p.90]

Bootsy shines brightest when the Big Daddy Kanes pipe down and he gets to consider mortality on the poignant Heaven Yes, pay tribute to fallen P-Funk comrade Bernie Worrell on A Salute To Bernie, or stretch out on the uncut funk he does best, bolstered by guitarist Eric Gales and veteran Funkadelic drummer Dennis Chambers on Come Back Bootsy.

Inevitably they’re not reinventing the wheel, yet it’s still good to hear Ringo’s non-voice (heavily treated), and his drumming skills are undiminished.

Difficult to separate the jokers from the aces. [Aug 2019, p.80]

Despite lofty ambitions to write a letter 'from God to humanity' on Restless Souls, these are counter-attacked by Rebel Girl, an overstuffed, over-sweetened, male gaze-heavy, lovelorn confection that completely overrides the potential of its title. ... nevertheless, Lifeforms is beautifully produced and catchy as hell, earning itself a spot on any intergalactic playlist. [Oct 2021, p.73]

The additional CDs redeem the era. Every B-side here is superior to half the record.

Hexed isn't a repetition of what's gone before, and sounds reasonably fresh. [Apr 2019, p.89]

As equipment hums, bass rumbles and Robb bellows over joyfully insistent melodies, it becomes clear that The Terror Of Modern Life is the sound of a band hopelessly in love with the music that made them. [Jul 2013, p.88]

This factory runs on goodwill. In less cataclysmic times the exercise might be mawkish, and while a cover of Lean On Me is well-meant it feels a little like eating too much cake icing.

Chaosmosis is not an explosive comeback, but it does at least contain flickers of the band’s lysergic disco-punk magic.

The result is both shamelessly derivative and gloriously entertaining. [Jul 2013, p.88]

It's a pleasant enough album, but not a crucial one. [Jan 2020, p.85]

What it lacks is a pulse-quickening ‘showcase track’ – a Fire And Water, a Mr Big, a Running With The Pack, a Burning Sky… a (to continue the 12 o’clock theme) Midnight Moonlight, even. It’s all rather countrified and subdued. [Oct 2023, p.84]

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.

Strip away all the sumptuous studio texture and these lyrics--about savage love, violence and revolution--are sodden with adolescent gothpunk cliché. But this scarcely matters when the future arena anthems Magnetized and We Never Tell hit their stride: lusty, energised and refreshingly shallow.

Universal platitudes makes Ricochet feel like Disney-fied protest compared to some of the thornier acts and topics grabbing headlines right now, but there's no denying the message of unity is on point. There's a maturity to Ricochet's sound. [Sep 2025, p.81]

The Residents are just as tricky and bewildering and (occasionally) irritating as they ever were.

It feels retro, a description you can bet Flat Worms would be proud of.

Songs From The Black Hole is unlikely to mean much to anyone not already dialled in to Prong’s gnarled, existentialist world view, but it’s difficult to begrudge them this indulgence. [Jun 2015, p.92]

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

A mixed bag of variable results, then, though Reid’s voice remains consistently magnificent throughout.

His new album is also self-penned, with mixed results.

This slender exercise in flimsy whimsy boasts plenty f charm but few substantial songs. [Jun 2021, p.78]

They're clearly having a blast, in every sense - there's enough noirish sarcasm to make that clear - but there's also a punk nihilism at play that makes this debut album a compellingly unsettling listen. [Sep 2025, p.77]

The ultra-catchy pop-punk of old is there in spades, but they're taking a cold hard look at America on This Is Not Utopia. ... Not all gambles pay off. ... A fun romp with a serious undercurrent. [May 2021, p.91]

A fun album, but one in need of trimming and extra heft. [Aug 2022, p.69]