Birchwood is still making rowdy brand of blues, seemingly unlikely to suit up or slow down any time soon. [Apr 2021, p.87]

It's a disorienting yet potently addictive mix, reflective of industrial metal's labyrinthine roots in electronica, new wave and beyond. [Oct 2023, p.86]

The outtakes – live performances drawn from CBGBs (of course!), mighty raging debut single Love -> Building On Fire, various acoustic and alternate versions of familiar numbers – are damn near indispensable. [Dec 2024, p.85]

The results are mostly magical, largely because these songs still sound like Simon at his wry and melodic best.

An exhilarating, blustery document. [May 2021, p.84]

Eric's new version brings a new lo-fi energy and the maturity of a dark ray Davies. .... This is truly a great album. [Dec 2025, p.76]

It's an essential addition to any Young fan's library. [Jan 2019, p.94]

More highly flammable melodic buzz-punk, now with added flecks of Stranglers atmospherics. [Oct 2021, p.72]

It takes a few listens, but once it swims into focus it's another knockout. [Oct 2023, p.82]

Purple simultaneously builds on what its predecessor achieved and reins in its sometimes overwhelming sprawl.

Sprawling four-CD, 64-track (11 previously unreleased) retrospective. ... Overwhelmingly, it’s Cornell’s voice that wins through--a star-burst of a scream, a full-throated delight.

If your bag is relentless hectoring from five angry, tune averse firebrands, feel free to have at it. Doubtlessly great live, though. [Apr 2026, p.81]

Disc one's the gold. [Jan 2024, p.87]

Frankly, your head spins. Unpick it all, though, this is one of the most probing and pioneering avant-retro-pop albums of the age. And when Furman swerves from his Seraphiel & Louise narrative to discuss his issues with religion, coming out and the rise of the Far Right on the album’s jauntier ditties, it’s one of the most provocative too.

Rather than straying too far from the path, Robinson returns with his usual stew of blues, country, warm psychedelia and rock’n’roll. But within that template, they’ve left a trail of surprises to uncover, and the band have built themselves a playground and given themselves the time and space to thoroughly explore every corner.

Alice In Chains fans should prepare to love this, but expect more echoes of Jar Of Flies than of Dirt.

Suede’s ninth album is a back-to-basics ‘punk’ affair utilising their raw alt.rock thrust to deliver some equally unvarnished personal truths.

Heartache has rarely been so touchingly danced away. [Jul 2024, p.79]

Heavy music rarely feels this absolute. [Jun 2026, p.75]

From Saturnine & Iron Jaw’s haunting ambience and chugging Led Zeppelin guitars, to the trippy, pitch-black tones of See You Next Fall and the cathartic finale Rats In Ruin, it’s a dark, enticing feast for the senses, with one foot in ancient times and the other in some far-off dimension.

Uncompromisingly creative, it's an album designed with the absence of neighbours in mind. [Jun 2019, p.87]

One of Voivod’s finest works, Synchro Anarchy stands as proof that a band can please the crowd and themselves at the same time.

If you do like a bit of in-depth rock luxury in your life, In Cauda Venenum delivers by the caseload.

The band focus on capturing moments rather than arranging songs, interspersing tracks with tone poems including Millenial Prayer.

Recorded just weeks after Barre’s arrival, the album shows Tull still clinging to a blues root although reaching for something entirely new.

All the albums, and the odds-and-sods presented on this 11-CD collection are remastered, but only Lodger, in a move approved by Bowie before his death, is given a Tony Visconti 2017 remix. This new mix illuminates the giddy mood of experimentalism abroad, a contrast to the intensity of its precursor’s, and a band fresh from the tour captured on the exemplary Stage (also here), in fine, resourceful fettle.

The Gospel according to Water hovers in a mystical space between country, folk and jazz, his literate lyrics providing the thread which holds it all together. [Dec 2019, p.85]

This is an utterly brilliant collection. [Mar 2022, p.90]

Quality levels are consistently high, with sublime finger-picked folk-pop reveries like I Woke Up nestled alongside sumptuous, harp-kissed, Bacharach-sized chansons like Rise Up Singing and Glimpse OF You. [Jul 2024, p.80]

A CD of unreleased outtakes, which doesn’t just bring the creation of the songs to life, it brings the people behind them to life too. .... More than just a celebration of an album, Queen I provides a vivid snapshot of a moment in time. [Nov 2024, p.82]

An instant classic. [Apr 2013, p.94]

Bob Vylan arrive as a much-needed wake-up call, but it's one that's already electric. [May 2022, p.81]

As determinedly quirky as its title, The Girl is Crying In Her Latte is a very strong collection of vintage Sparks moods, plus a few new left-field twists. [Jul 2023, p.84]

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]

This is a clever hybrid of prog, hard rock and dance; there’s even a full-blown power ballad (that’s part The Tubes, part Kate Bush atmospherics) in the shape of All We Have Is Now.

Such is the attention to detail that it evokes an eerie world of rattling ghost trains and deserted penny arcades as successfully as a windswept day-trip to Blackpool. [Jun 2021, p.81]

At first you think, "Meh, more generic LA stuntcore." then realise you're loving it. [Nov 2022, p.75]

Gloriously raucous, with memorable tunes that bury themselves deep in the psyche, Bass Drum Of Death encapsulate the spirit of garage rock'n'roll. [Mar 2023, p.79]

Yo La Tengo have only intensified rather than showed signs of abating. [Mar 2023, p.77]

Paramore have successfully remoulded the cornerstones of their music not only for the new times we find ourselves in, but also for a personal evolution, and maturity evident across This Is Why. [Mar 2023, p.76]

While there's no getting around the fact that this five-disc set has been released to promote said film - even the Boss isn't above cross-platform media marketing - it still succeeds as the last revealing word on the album's gestation. [Dec 2025, p.83]

If nine discs of REM is too much for the wallet, the collection is available as a two-CD highlights pack which includes a full disc of sessions, and a second disc focusing on a chronological selection of live broadcasts. Recommended, any which way. [Dec 2018, p.95]

Flaming Pie sounded excellent then and it sounds excellent now. [Sep 2020, p.92]

A vivid multi-generic maelstrom of alt.ingenuity. [Oct 2020, p.87]

TWOD finds fresh spark on the Springsteen-esque Wasted and the title track. [Nov 2021, p.77]

Lavish production disguises thin songwriting on a few tracks, but overall this voluptuous sonic feast feels like a fitting epitaph to departed friends. [Jun 2023, p.72]

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]

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

This anthology is front-to-back brilliant. [Sep 2023, p.79]

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

While Mental Illness doesn’t stray too far from the beaten path, it does offer something new for seasoned Mann watchers.

Altogether, tons of twang for your buck. [Summer 2021, p.83]

Like all the best crate-dogging comps it also unearths a wealth of wonderful obscurities. [Apr 2026, p.87]

Sophisticated follow-up. [Aug 2020, p.83]

Another mind-melting album from a band that refuses to be pinned down. [Mar 2022, p.80]

And Nothing Hurt is like a seasoned mountaineer flying up K2 on one leg. [Sep 2018, p.87]

If you like your country with a side order of maudlin, saddle up. [Jul 2018, p.88]

It's a slow-burn of an album, sounding more layered with each listen, the strain of a pedal steel woven into the fabric of the songs. [Oct 2021, p.79]

The atmosphere is stunned, reverential. [Jul 2022, p.87]

White Jesus Black Problems is a wide-ranging sprawl of sound. On a purely musical level, it's all over the place in the best possible sense. [Jul 2022, p.82]

Their self-titled ninth studio album find them, if anything, in even finer fettle. [Summer 2024, p.74]

Divorced from the visual spectacle--puppets, illusionists, avian transformations, ticker-tape poetry--and the thrill of watching actual Kate Bush actually singing, this audio recording is akin to John Lennon being resurrected to perform the Wedding Album--i.e. only mildly amazing.

Independence Day is normal for Neil: he tests the climate and the atmospherics are depressing. Terrorise Me, a response to the Bataclan outrage, is the key piece. The rest is no faffing and easy listening.

The recording is great, Fogerty's in fine voice throughout, the hits keep coming, and when the band slip into those chugging grooves they're emphatically fierce.

as shiny theatrical melody rock designed to look deceptively dangerous on teenage bedroom walls goes, Impera takes Ghost several more ferula shuffles in the direction of their very own American Idiot. [Apr 2022, p.77]

Feels both reassuring and stirring. [Sep 2024, p.71]

Throughout, this album is a defiantly un-laddish joy. [Aug 2023, p.78]

Their fourth album takes yet more detours, but without ever losing sight of the path. Devotees of lead-heavy riffs will be spoilt by the title track and Rites Of Passage, and the pace never exceeds sluggish.

Ultimately still mesmerising, enhanced by photos and memorabilia-stacked book plus 36-page reproduction of Bowie’s notebooks, the box set provides a suitably chaotic time capsule of a magical period now bathed in extraordinary poignancy. [Summer 2024, p.82]

What’s apparent immediately is that it’s a tremendous album, up there with turn-of-themillennium Opeth high-water marks Still Life and Blackwater Park. [Oct 2024, p.70]

Mature in a good way, this is an excellent album. [Apr 2025, p.77]

A maximalist spectacle that ticks every Lamb Of God check-box yet still finds the space to become their most innovative album in years. [May 2026, p.77]

If you're partial to the glittering seam of music that runs from The Beatles through Badfinger, Alex Chilton, Todd Rindgren, Cheap Trick, Jellyfish and a thousand others, then you're going to love this album. [Jun 2026, p.76]

Biffy fan or not, there is much to enjoy on this album, such as the thundering North Of No South and the snap of Tiny Indoor Fireworks. But it’s the lingering beautiful sadness of songs like Space and Opaque that really stays with you.

The tone lightens marginally for the relationship rampages of the second half, with Baby Needs A Cookie bordering on pop melodies and Leather Dreams revelling in a sultry churn with a hint of S&M, but Blue Hearts is ideal fodder for smashing in the news channel to.

So engaging, you might even forget your phone for 40 minutes. [Mar 2024, p.83]

It's the glowering six-minute stormcloud of Numb that steals the show here. [Dec 2014, p.103]

A set that casts a smoky haze over a remarkable event were characters from the shadow kingdom of Dylan's past come out to play one more time. He'll be a hard act to follow. [Jul 2023, p.91]

Always engaging, occasionally magical. [Jan 2015, p.129]

It's getting late, but Springsteen's dusty art shows no sign of fading. [Summer 2019, p.84]

An album that equals the original. [Apr 2025, p.77]

All bets are off, all doors open and consciousness is expanded. [May 2019, p.86]

Things get rough and rocky in places. .... But the soft centres of Davina McCall and U And Me At Home keep Moisturizer a light and vivifying lotion. [Aug 2025, p.73]

Bags of melody, plenty of light and shade, and great songs. A cosmic triumph.

Loneliness has rarely felt so uplifting. [Jun 2018, p.92]

As elegiac, brutally minimalist, silent and hymnal, disturbingly open and ultimately rewarding as before. [Oct 2021, p.77]

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]

The truth is that Carry Fire is about as good an album as we could reasonably expect from him in 2017.

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]

This follow-up is, if anything, even more exquisite.

For Free is anything but indulgent. ... David Crosby's late-career purple patch continues. Aug 2021, p.82]

What metal's fundamentalists will think of it is anyone's guess, but this is the sound of the genre's future. [Nov 2021, p.77]

Their creative studio peak might have (just) been behind them, but for a taste of the Stones at their down-and-dirtiest, Goats Head Soup will always be the dish of the day.

With Parker’s voice haloed in reverb, some of it sounds great, especially eight-minute epic Let It Happen and the gorgeous ’Cause I’m A Man. But quite what his regular audience will make of this change in direction is another matter entirely.

Mostly, Underneath is confrontational and exhilarating - just as metal should be when it's doing its job properly. [Jun 2020, p.87]

It's an incredibly busy, dense record, with few moments to come up for air from the maelstrom. [Nov 2021, p.73]

An hour in her company is still time well spent. [Sep 2023, p.79]