With a dash of peacenik politics the heritage is clear, but Dhani does more than enough to establish his own terrain.

Feels like the work of a man who’s rediscovered his mojo.

There are no dubstep breaks, string quartets or bursts of yodeling. But this is also the best Motorhead album for many years. [Nov 2013, p.92]

It's Lanegan's Americana growl that keeps the whole thing sounding ironically timeless. [Nov 2019, p.85]

All told, Darkadelic is a vital and reassuringly pugnacious return. [Jun 2023, p.74]

There's a renewed freshness and immediacy to several of the tracks, particularly in his laconic vocal delivery. [Dec 2019, p.80]

There’s much to enjoy about Pylon, not least on the punitive, jet-black musical side of things.

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]

Aggression Continuum sounds as it should, like the next last word in extreme metal futurism. [Jul 2021, p.80]

An engaging blend of slowcore, drone, post-rock and dub. [Nov 2021, p.77]

Cockily adventurous, By Default is a plasma grenade lobbed out of the blues rock trenches.

He enlists a pan-generational wish list and lets them shine. [Apr 2024, p.81]

As this once-fabled recording attests, the Family Stone's chops and their leader's startlingly innovative tropes (including scat singing and testifying) were already in place that March. [Sep 2025, p.85]

The original album, remastered by a team co-headed by George Martin's son Giles, is presented with a freshness and immediacy that makes a mockery of the passage of half a century. ... The two CDs of sessions and demos are a revealing trove. [Nov 2019, p.88]

They have directly inspired some truly dire pretenders to the throne in the intervening years, but Dark Matter sees them sweep those bands away, and reset and reclaim their own signature sound. [May 2024, p.72]

Coda itself a contractual hotchpotch of career-spanning outtakes, is the only reissue given the three-disc treatment, with a total of 15 extras as disparate as the album itself.

Mayall endures, and keeps exploring, with his best originals - Got To Find A Better Way and Deep Blue Sea - bent happily out of shape by screeching violin. [Feb 2022, p.79]

According to Paul, the new mix is intended to reflect the original mono mix, in that all the voices and drums are in the middle, while also being a stereo mix. The result is, as it sounds, a compromise, where everything is not so much in stereo as on steroids. ... The real excitement for fans is of course in the extra tracks. Here there are no massive surprises (I expect--I was sent the double CD, not the full six pack), just some interesting spoken bits and a lot of Anthology-style backing tracks

Thanks to the band’s own accumulated expertise and the masterly stitching qualities of Danger Mouse, it’s a tightly woven affair, never messy or maudlin or self-indulgent; a dreamcoat of many colours, a marble rye of genres.

It's been expertly manicured so you can either lie back and float up, up and away on a breeze of pedal steel, or get up close to the speakers and check the references. [Jun 2024, p.80]

By The Fire is a massive antidote to our age. [Oct 2020, p.87]

You could spend hours ticking off the references (which obviously extend beyond Abbey Road), but what gives the album its identity is their own sense of style.

Crucially, radioactive classics such as Blood Red River, Weird Love, Atom Bomb Baby, Swampland and their psychobilly spray-job on Jonathan Richman’s She Cracked still sound vital and audaciously genre-crushing. The Scientists well deserve this Mount Rushmore of a set.

The obscurities provide the real delight. [Aug 2024, p.81]

Diggin’ A Hole is scratchy blues; Almost Always could have graced Harvest Moon; Stand Tall and Children Of Destiny are earworms; but if you want beauty, you’ve got it on Carnival, once the cackling stops. Neil Young is reborn, yet again.

The record ends with a burst of Velvets fuzz-rock titled Hey Lou Reid - but it's only fitting on a record that burnishes their legend with such sizzling acid. [Apr 2024, p.76]

A huge welcome throwback. [Oct 2020, p.87]

This is a work of beauty and beastliness in equal measure. [Nov 2021, p.71]

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

Bare-chested canyon rock is present and correct, but so too is much introspection, melancholia, hurt and hope. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Recorded in various locations during a 28-day tour in March/April 2016, this album represents the finest work from the Jean Hervé- Péron/Zappi Diermaier version of Faust in years.

None of the 17 songs waste any time getting where they're ultimately going. ... Seriously, it's time to believe. [Apr 2023, p.74]

The raging fires of Martyn's talent roar through the mix. [Nov 2013, p.97]

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

A breezy, funky prog-ssych knockabout. [Jul 2019, p.83]

They mix things up with restrained, pondering songs like the acoustic-driven Armchair View and the album's jaunty title track. [Nov 2024, p.73]

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]

An album that exudes warmth pretty much at every turn. [Feb 2025, p.72]

When You’re Depressed is the jauntiest, most real song about depression since Paint It Black. Zelda’s In The Spotlight recalls genius early Mute made-up childlike electro-pop band Silicon Teens. If you can resist an album that features a glam-stomp titled 12 Knickers On The Line By 3 Chord Fraud you’re a better person than I am.

Solo piano pieces drag, but with a floating line-up in intuitive complementary support his trademark guitar tones soar. [Sep 2021, p.81]

Certainly no nostalgic fad celebration, this epic collection is more like a stellar overview of the last century’s more vibrant and often overlooked darker-hued rock, cast among a hell-spawned panoply of lesser-known pranksters.

From storming opener Die By The Sword to rabble-rousing anthem Analog Man, will tear your face clean off.

The highlight is a live DVD, Live And Loud.... When we get down to the demos--which are largely free of vocals--the sound of a barrel being scraped starts to overpower the music. [Nov 2013, p.101]

Finley applies versatile pipes and stinging licks to extraordinary songs of broad experience. [Dec 2023, p.79]

When it's good, it's very good. [Jun 2015, p.91]

A compulsive half-hour montage of dynamic Metric buzz-pop, Garage tech-rock, drivetime soundtrack sounds and pummelling grit metal. [Nov 2024, p.79]

Death By Rock And Roll is their first attempt to claw back what they had. Fortunately it’s brilliant.

Here Hiatt's palette tends a little towards country, but the best cuts still fall to the blues. [Summer 2021, p.83]

Their strength is in their inclusivity--yes, they’re from a punk background, but this is melodic hardcore with killer choruses to stir the hardest of hearts, bursting with a positive energy that channels your adrenaline until passive listening becomes all but impossible.

Blue Oyster Cult continue to do whatever the hell they want. But the good, and perhaps surprising, news, given how long it’s been since we’ve last heard new music from them, is that it’s all good, and in places great.

Weird, but adorable. [Nov 2024, p.79]

For Raincoats fans this is the most similar to their underrated third album Moving, for its fluent, danceable, off-kilter rhythms. For everyone else it's a marvel waiting to be discovered. [Apr 2023, p.76]

At last, a Mew album as essential as it is deeply odd. [Jun 2015, p.97]

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

The star of this set is Michael Karoli, whose freak-out guitar solos are the epitome of what 1977 claimed to be killing off. 1977 failed, but Can in 1977 were, in their own little big world, on fire. [Dec 2024, p.86]

The most motley of crews manage to bring out the best in McCaughey's songs and he's on peak form here. [Summer 2025, p.72]

Overall, this is their most eclectic album yet and, despite a couple of lightweight generic tracks, their most end-to-end enjoyable too.

A rewarding journey that delights in a celebration of friendship, inclusivity and 'this crazy dream of our utopia'. [Apr 2023, p.79]

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]

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

This fourth album from them is special. [Apr 2026, p.79]

Road-toughened beyond their identi-Emo origins to attain a formidably muscular grunge-tinged melodic fury. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Garwood sounds like he's found whatever he's been blindly searching for. [Apr 2015, p.99]

An album of depth and impact that merits luxuriant poring over. [Feb 2019, p.88]

Deft arrangements, vintage heaviness, classic power. [Jun 2020, p.89]

One Deep River is one of Knopfler's best. These are gorgeous songs, sung in a voice that sounds like it's lived a life that's full. [May 2024, p.74]

It's a very New York record, It's an energetic record, and while the older listener would enjoy some guitar playing frm Gordon - that sort of thing seems to be supplied by Raisen and engineer Anthony Paul Lopez - it's her attitude. not the glitchy beats, that really give The Collective its aggression and fun. [Jun 2024, p.74]

Stunning. [Jun 2020, p.89]

At times, like on Hero, King's healing process leads him into R&B slushies that make you miss the crunch of old cuts like Hard Working Man. But this record is real, raw and often beautiful. [Jun 2024, p.75]

Legend Of The Seagullmen is inventive, eclectic and gleefully unhinged, but if there are any criticisms to be made it’s that it’s over too soon.

The widescreen sound suits this career solo artist, and standouts like Boombox and Ten Watt whip up a rollicking hoedown ambience. [Jun 2024, p.75]

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

This set contains some wastage, but more than enough demented brilliance to merit serious consideration. [Aug 2018, p.96]

For all of its freshness, there are clear influences at play here, most notably The Banshees or Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [Summer 2013, p.95]

A must-hear for fans of glorious, horrible noise.

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

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]

By-the-book, yes, but still a page-turner.

Temples' fourth leaps from the speakers tapping veins of electro-psych, hypno-kosmische and soft-focused unreality. [May 2023, p.81]

Powder Dry is a new career peak. [Aug 2024, p.73]

When You Found Me combines top-notch musicianship and expert songcraft with bags of brooding atmosphere, with Lucero clearly at the top of their southern-rocking game.

He tops it [2021's Blue Hearts] with Here We Go, thanks to a stripped back approach and a more hopeful lyrical tone. [Apr 2025, p.76]

A clutch of powerful original songs. [Sep 2022, p.76]

Carries a deliciously tight-but-loose quality that makes you feel that this album could've been thrown together by friends, who just happen to be shit-hot musicians. [Sep 2020, p.84]

Not just faster, but harder, too. ... Best of the lot is Loud. [Nov 2021, p.75]

[Patti Smith is] in her element. [Oct 2020, p.83]

Brilliant. [Summer 2013, p.95]

With intelligently handled subject matter to stand alongside the likes of Bikini Kill, and sparkling but off-kilter melodic skills that allow comparisons to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O, Gender Bender has empathy to spare, and is a punk rock poet to believe in.

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

Be Right Here retains the simple formula that has made the band such a success: songs, tons of songs.

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.

Thoughtful, compassionate, heartbreaking and more, it's a record that is above all, deeply human. [Jul 2023, p.84]

It's starkly, scarily beautiful and transcendent in places, chilling yet comforting in others. [Apr 2025, p.75]

It's the sound of a band returning to the apex of their creative potency. [Oct 2022, p.71]

Finely balance between rock and pop, Blood Red Roses showcases some of Stewart's best work in decades. [Oct 2018, p.82]

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.

Eleven years into their career, Tesseract are still thriving. [Jun 2018, p.91]

There's still a rich seam of experimentation, but with more palatable results than has often been the case. [Jul 2013, p.95]