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]

Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel is full of things we’ve become accustomed to over the band’s previous three albums: psychedelic trippiness, carefree country-soul, swampy southern rock rolled out under a baking California sun. Yet it’s also wonderfully loose and instinctive.

Alkaline Trio's fangs are still sharp after all these years. [Jul 2013, p.92]

It might never escape the long shadow of the past, but it deserves a fair hearing. [Jun 2013, p.86]

The rest of the album is all over the map, from electro-rocker Let’s Get The Party Started (featuring Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon) to Charmed I’m Sure’s dub-step metal. It’s fun hearing Morello stretch out, though all but the most broadminded RATM fans are unlikely to feel the same way.

A monumentally hideous, yet strangely glorious album. Some might say it goes up to 11... [Dec 2023, p.72]

Since nothing has come close to emulating Sail’s sales, it’s easy to dismiss Awolnation as one-hit wonders; Here Come The Runts shows what a mistake that would be.

Skunk Anansie find their groove in the album’s latter half with arena-sized anthems like Bullets, a gnarly funk-rock bruiser which erupts into a landslide of guitars and voices.

There’s a theme, numbered from 14; dramatic, cinematic, dark but (disappointingly) modern-dancey. 18 hits an ambient spot, though, and 20 is the big ole cosmic epic we really crave.

Doherty himself remains endearingly cack-handed and poetically confessional but uncontrollably wayward. By the final third, the band appear to have given up and gone to the pub. [Jun 2019, p.84]

Vocalist Mark Stewart’s unending salt-and-vigour vocals on songs like City Of Eyes and Zipperface combine brilliantly with a space-dub electro palette, and the results are thrilling.

This album reflects its maker--a restless spirit that now and then stumbles on something special.

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

At points it's jazzy, then psychedelic, then with the sort of undulating groove that makes you wonder what it might have sounded like if Booker T jammed with the Average White Band. [Mar 2024, p.81]

Songs Of Innocence is stricken with lethargy, with a level of aspiration that extends as far as Coldplay and never explores further. [Nov 2014, p.93]

This River is all gravy, and the perfect opportunity to make your acquaintance with an artist at the top of his game. [Summer 2013, p.95]

Despite, or because of, its aptly era-appropriate brevity, English Heart is immaculate, and a lot better than it needs to be. Warm and beautiful.

As it is, there’s a certain Wagnerian tweeness about the record, its changes predictable, it’s progressions too easily resolved, his tunings over-familiar. The whole thing feels like drinking several pints of spring water.

His debut solo album edges away from Korn's clattering, downtuned noise. What is unexpected is just how far from the mothership he's travelled--and how good the result is. [Jun 2018, p.88]

Snapshot consists largely of new material written to ape the 50s and 60s standards they've been covering live since puberty. And that's it's downfall. [Nov 2013, p.95]

A few lesser tracks overplay the voyeuristic horror-movie violence, but otherwise Body Count are sounding much more like hardcore elder statesmen than a shock-rock side project.

The plastic punk with the cartoon sneer has made his grown-up masterpiece. [Nov 2014, p.90]

Produced by Youth, it’s a routeone volley of loud guitar riffs and peripatetic punk energy, railing at the establishment. It’s our world, they roar, and it’s on fire, so let’s not go gently.

There's little subtlety displayed in their mission, and not much in the way of memorable tunes either. [Sep 2018, p.90]

The real surprise is how graceful this lockdown-inspired album is. [Oct 2021, p.74]

The result, albeit low-key, is a charming, warm-hearted collection. [Oct 2025, p.79]

Showcases an undeniably more varied sonic palette, even if that just means there are more classic bands that its 12 songs remind you of. [May 2021, p.84]

Intriguing stuff, but Stereophonics are incapable of shredding the trad rock rule book for an entire album. So the rest of Graffiti is pitched firmly in their beige rock comfort zone. [Apr 2013, p.93]

This is a welcome blast from an uncompromising band. [Nov 2013, p.93]

Here the irresistible tag masks some solid riff-heavy whoopee. [Dec 2014, p.107]

While nothing on this album will replace anything from Doolittle or Surfer Rosa in your affections, bangers such as Classic Masher and Um Chagga Lagga detonate with a palpable sense of fun that leaves you in no doubt who the authors are and that it’s a better album than Trompe La Monde.

While the diet hip-hop of Something Different screams, unfortunately, of early noughties jock pop--they've returned with a fun, pacey slab of entirely unthreatening rebellion. [Summer 2013, p.93]

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]

They've filtered their inheritance through their jam-band generation, and the sound is heavier, muddier at times. [Sep 2020, p.88]

It’s the ever-present hint of neurosis in Rivers Cuomo’s voice and vaguely bi-polar lyrics (thankfully not produced using the cut-up technique he employed for last year’s self-titled release) that give this band their perennial edge of strangeness, and reaffirm Weezer’s unique place in American rock fans’ affections.

Such Hot Blood sounds like a major label buff-up of their glowering, folk-flecked dusk-rock, the raw pomp of earlier albums given a national (anthem) gleam. [Nov 2013, p.89]

Electric Eye elevate to captivate, they have the power to seduce a soul ascendent. With a post-Roses spin on a 60s soundtrack vibe here, a celestial sitar there, the succulent fruits of this particular tree are as seductive as Eve’s apples.

A muddled attempt to signal contemporary relevance. [Oct 2019, p.88]

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

Ann Wilson knows her music history, and it resonates powerfully throughout this fine album. [May 2022, p.82]

This is Ministry’s best record since we were all young and good-looking. [Apr 2024, p.78]

AmeriKKKant feels like a measured response to the times.

Simulation Theory treads a thin line between cheesy chart-chasing and genuinely innovative pop rock. [Dec 2018, p.86]

A handful of tracks shoot for the anthemic uplift of vintage U2, but fall short. The only real left-field beauty here is Love Is All We Have Left, a token reminder of the Dublin quartet’s shimmering ambient avant-rock period.

[L7] still sound as toxic and ornery as ever, their songs sharp and savage, their solos short and sweet, their vocals still capable of freezing testicles at 50 paces. [Summer 2019, p.82]

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

While the album Widow's Weed has all the usual heavily layered atmospherics, there's an even inkier feel than before. [Summer 2019, p.83]

The Darkness’ return to form is a welcome surprise in these apocalyptically drab times.

California collects 14 hook-drenched punk-pop barnstormers that both reflect nostalgically on their youthful vigours (Bored To Death, Kings Of The Weekend, San Diego) and revisit them impressively (Teenage Satellites, No Future).

The result is less a coherent statement and more a collection of songs that simply show off their eclectic influences and their ability to reproduce them well. [May 2018, p.91]

Debut album Dark Black Makeup is a thrilling half-hour of punk rock with a small ‘p’ but a big UNK!--hooky, heavy and furious in all the right places.

White Bear, in its expertise and clarity, feels refreshing, like the shock of the new, despite its traditionalism. Better still, you feel they’ve got a lot more in the locker still to come.

Creepy and disturbing, but it’ll still make their mothers proud.

This album skips by far lighter than more ponderous collections like 2004's Together We're Heavy. [Sep 2013, p.88]

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]

Thirty years later, Documents And Eyewitness works best in the way its name describes: as an account of a moment when bands would do the wrong thing and do it brilliantly. [Sep 2014, p.98]

Occupational hazards aside however, this is certainly the band’s strongest in recent memory, and what it might lack in edge or novelty is well countered by craft and assurance.

Pick and mix your own highlights, but as a one-sitting listen expect a bumpy ride. [Nov 2018, p.82]

At best, for a former superstar, returning to the creative fray, the record is mediocre. [Jul 2013, p.88]

The fact that The Fall are still going is remarkable enough; the fact that they're still making extraordinary records is even more so. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Listening to all 17 tracks in one go feels like going 12 rounds with a heavyweight boxer, a championship belt on the line. [Oct 2014, 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.

An extraordinary 11-track distillation of raw urban vitality that recaptures and resets the dizzying conversational street energy of 1972's On The Corner at the cutting edge of 80s soul. [Sep 2019, p.90]

What's surprising is that Anderson can kick up more menace with his flute than any number of hoarse roaring voices and thrashing guitars. ... The music lightens up when Anderson moves on to the sagas themselves, but the intricacies remain. As do the idiosyncratic allusions. [Jun 2023, p.78]

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.

The allure and immediacy of the songs is remarkable, the stuff that translates into an instant classic. [Sep 2014, p.94]

Mostly it works. [Apr 2013, p.94]

Alas, by front-loading the album with the kind of numbers U2 would be proud of--witness Reverend--Walls grinds to a halt in tedious balladry, rather than scaling new heights.

If shiny, groovy, melodic, finger-snapping, guitar-led pop-rock is your tipple, you’ll want to guzzle down Washed Away in one.

At times recalling the impressive yet aimless psych squalls of early Verve, Ride or Tame Impala, and at others of Can trying to make sense of 1980s pop radio. [Aug 2018, p.91]

We’re All Somebody From Somewhere sounds like an album conceived as a therapy project, one in which all the interesting corners of Tyler’s persona have been neatly rounded off. There’s no pizazz, very little spirit, not much sparkle and no sex.

King monkey contemplates his navel. [Apr 2019, p.89]

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

[A] meaty pop debut album.

[The Fratellis] still lack an identity beyond the decent Glaswegian doggedness that has got them this far.

A worthy addition to one of alt.rock's greatest canons. [Jul 2014, p.92]

One of the most musically interesting things he's done in years. ... However, a bitter aftertaste lingers long after the final notes. [May 2020, p.79]

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

Texas have gone back to basics, reconnecting with the solidly crafted simplicity of their earliest albums, Southside and Mother's Heaven. [Jul 2013, p.90]

What The Journey lacks in subtlety--nothing here quite matches the beauty of Porrohman or the sheer exuberance of In A Big Country--it makes up for in heart. [Jun 2013, p.92]

It sounds like just another FFAF album. [Mar 2015, p.91]

As a compendium of rock styles, it’s hard to beat--maybe that’s what they mean by Little Victories. But it’s all quite characterless.

A classical version of a rock album only reveals how tonally conservative rock is (formally, Quadrophenia’s compositions would have sounded hidebound in the late 19th century), while at the same time revealing classical music’s inability to convey the electric volatility and the spine-tingling, physical frisson that’s unique to rock.

Old ground, yes, but viewed through bright, fresh eyes. You want the real vintage rock’n’soul deal? Look this way, and then make sure you catch them live.

As a trad dad pastiche it isn’t funny enough, and as a parallel career it’s a painful vanity project. Either way, avoid.

All in, it’s superior stuff, brimming with self-effacement and fun that belies the quality and seriousness from which it’s constructed.

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.

Peace Trail is a wide-open-sky gem that feels wild and free, while Cowgirl Jam s stupendous, a vintage Young showcase of instrumental assault and battery. Frustratingly, these highlights are punctuated by the six Paradox Passage instrumentals, which desperately miss a visual accompaniment to hang off. [Jun 2018, p.90]

Nobody's pretending that this album is a masterpiece, but it's convivial. [Dec 2019, p.85]

The heaviest tracks of a surprisingly rocking outing find Santana sounding more energised than he has in years.

When not recycling hand-me-down Gallagher-by-numbers, has his moments. [Sep 2022, p.77]

Forever sounds like a Bon Jovi album. Rock songs, power ballads, it's a big-sounding record designed to be played to big rooms. Admittedly it's no New Jersey, but that's like expecting to still fit the T-Shirt you bought on that late-80s tour. [Jul 2024, p.76]

Much of We Can Do Anything, their first album since 2000 and following on from last year’s Happy New Year EP, is a breezy return to what they do best: acoustic folk-punk with ragged edges, held together by Gano’s ear for a ringing melody and delivered like a peculiarly skittish Lou Reed.

This is a more conventional album. [Dec 2014, p.104]

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

Stockdale’s magpie career continues to show not an inkling of musical mutation. Let’s call it treadmill rock--one man putting a lot of effort into going absolutely nowhere.

Primus are an acquired taste, but a taste worth acquiring. [Dec 2014, p.107]

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