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

A rather fine rock record indeed.

If you don't have [the original Live At The BBC set], get it. If you do and want more, here it is. [Dec 2013, p.109]

A near-constant crisis of confidence isn’t always the best character trait for a rock’n’roll singer, but this Devon power(ish) trio make it work on their solid debut album.

The quiet/loud dynamic is an elegant partnership here. [Sep 2018, p.93]

You still have a man born with the gift of a sandpaper voice, which seems to shred itself afresh with every word. [Apr 2019, p.84]

Delivers assurance, class and a timely, powerful study in historically ingrained racist ideology. [Sep 2020, p.89]

While long-term fans might initially be disappointed by the marked absence of the bar-room swagger of yore, repeated listens bear fruit. [Jun 2021, p.80]

The styles eclectic but generally harking back to the architecture of 60s pop. [Nov 2022, p.71]

Lambrini Girls are political but transgressive, smart but not pretentious (no way!), humourous, but dark - very dark indeed. Subversive, in all the hidden senses of the word. [Feb 2025, p.73]

Essentially, Chapman is an old-style saloon storyteller whose reflections are enhanced and coloured by his myriad guitar treatments, an old dog not afraid of new tricks.

Never mind dig in deep: this is an emotional excavation.

On its own merits, 001 disrupts the notion that Strummer lost his way after The Clash, without wholly overturning it, but there's nothing remotely grubby here. [Oct 2018, p.97]

Grim catnip for 40-something lapsed Nirvana fans. [Aug 2023, p.79]

Their return album is a fire-and-brimstone rock-and-soul delight. [Sep 2013, p.91]

This is much more raw Manic Street Preachers, fuelled by despair as usual but also simplicity. .... Critical Thinking shows that with the Manics, rage never sleeps. [Feb 2025, p.72]

Hold On! sounds utterly effortless: an effervescent streak of soul, bossa nova and rumba tunes.

A distinguished, intriguing return. [Sep 2013, p.91]

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]

The default setting of these thunderous doom lords from Sweden's far north remains the expansive, melodic, lavishly arranged anthem, layered densely with clobbering drums and shuddering riffs. [Apr 2022, p.79]

The Million Masks Of God is way less heavy going than a concept album centred on explorations of faith and existence inspired by the death of a parent has any right to be. [Jun 2021, p.79]

BMTH sound more genuine, dramatic and emotional than they ever have before. [Jun 2013, p.89]

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.

You'll feel dirty. In a good way. [Jan 2019, p.89]

The 10 tracks here prove that the trio truly feel the Dog under their fingernails. [Sep 2021, p.77]

The Boston boozers’ tenth album is a triple shot of euphoria with a Guinness chaser.

First High and Born Tough seek out her adolescence, while the title track and Black Widow stress her continuing defiance. This girl is not just following the satnav. She's older, but wilfully no wiser. [Oct 2022, p.73]

A vintage Bowie album for vintage Bowie people, of whom there are many; a reflection on his own journey and also on ours. [Apr 2013, p.92]

Rip-roaringly emotionally vivid stuff with myriad tropes and devices cherry-picked from the rich tapestry of alt.rock past. [Jul 2023, p.87]

As Clark wraps up with the formulaic 12-bar of Dirty Dishes Blues, you realise how much the rest of the album pushes the envelope and applaud him for it. [Mar 2019, p.88]

Across 70 minutes, the band return in their heavier style. [Jul 2022, p.80]

The ramshackle mix of lyrical longing, acoustic guitars and glacial synths would ordinarily be described as Americana, but the lyrics are still as British as fish and chips. [Sep 2023, p.76]

This is unquestionably Weller's most personal and most heartfelt record in years. [Oct 2018, p.88]

A masterful companion piece to Lanegan's unflinching memoir. [Jun 2020, p.88]

The end result is a sweet and thoughtful set from one of the genre's lifers. [Oct 2022, p.70]

The nearest to a rock record Thompson has ever made. ... A very good album. [Oct 2018, p.83]

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

von Haysswolff achieves a new drone nirvana with her unique mix of soprano wail and minimalist-but-grand gothic church organ. [May 2018, p.91]

This attention-grabbing, moshpit-rocking noise-bomb of an album is a tremendous first step. [May 2020, p.83]

The album itself is as fine a collection of infectious, genre-hopping melodic vignettes about random stuff as they've produced in recent years. [Nov 2021, p.70]

The single Mixed Emotions (I Didn't Know How To Tell You What I Was Going Through) is the album's manifesto, the chiming opening riff breaking into a wall of sound while singer Josh Franceschi howls his failure to communicate into the gale. And the onslaught rarely falters. [Mar 2023, p.78]

On the darkly groovy Crowded Rooms Hart is joined by singer-songwriters Eska and JGrrey to bolster Dury's spoken narrative as he grapples with successfully finding his place in the here and now. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Pre-Jack'n'Meg, no one would've believed Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug could replicate B-52's/Kleenex, now it's almost routine. [Aug 2023, p.79]

Alkaline Trio temper napalm guitars with a keen sense of melody, placed front and centre on Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs by Hot For Preacher's dark, dramatic opening flourish, and continued with impressive consistency throughout its 11 tracks. [Apr 24, p.76]

Crisp, strident, brutal. [Nov 2024, p.79]

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

It's a pleasure to report his studio debut catches the spark. [Dec 2014, p.103]

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]

Nadine Shah has deftly channelled her fury and disbelief at it all into a record that’s both fiercely intelligent and, with its tense Krautrock rhythms, deliciously dark, gothic melodies and gorgeous, strident vocals, moreishly listenable.

Differing from its predecessor by visiting 2021 studio album I Don’t Live Here Anymore (notably on Harmonia’s Dream) and showcasing a seven-piece band, there’s trickery afoot: some tracks are spliced from multiple takes. It’s hard to argue with the hugeness when it hits though. [Dec 2024, p.74]

Amelia is the work of a true auteur at the very height of her craft. [Sep 2024, p.74]

Fear Inoculum is an intricate record that calls for you to reserve judgement until you’ve been fully immersed. It might be long (running to 86 minutes) but it’s a worthy investment of your time. [Sep 2019, p.82]

Another cracking album. [Sep 2023, p.80]

Not only have the Bad Seeds delivered another healthy baby, but perhaps the most gracefully beautiful of the whole brood. [Mar 2013, p.98]

A major work of stunning breadth and originality, heralding a talent who shines a blinding white light in the post-Prince darkness.

Make no mistake, this is an angry record made by a protest singer whose rage hasn’t dimmed with age (she turns 77 this year), though there are shards of positive light sneaking through.

Like all great albums, it reminds you of everything that made you fall in love with this crazy thing called rock’n’roll in the first place.

What is surprising is just how good it is. [Jul 2019, p.82]

This is his best record yet. [Sep 2019, p.87]

Uplifting and lovely. [Mar 2023, p.78]

Her splendidly named new album How Did This Happen And What Does It Now Mean is a forest of invention and great songs. [Dec 2024, p.78]

Lawrence has delivered the best daft/sincere novelty pop album you'll hear all yeat. It's a sugar rush. [Nov 2025, p.81]

The music is quirky, textured Americana. [Sep 2014, p.93]

hile its takes on classic swing, psych country and postpunk pop are understandably fragile and lacking wallop--an inevitable consequence of age and getting your kids in your backing band--How The West Was Won is shot through with a wonderfully wry reinvigoration.

There's a remarkable sense of interplay, open space, hard rock and ambition that suggests other bands might as well pack up their tents and think about heading home. It's hard to pick gems from a sea of diamonds. [Oct 2022, p.72]

A parade of beige pop numbers that even Taylor Swift would turn down for being too generic. [May 2013, p.86]

The result is enough to refresh the palate of even the most jaded garage-rock fan. [Jul 2019, p.84]

These now achingly familiar songs never sounded so good. ... An immaculately packaged, multi-format tribute.

A rich feast for connoisseurs, a rewarding research project for curious casual fans. [Dec 2021, p.78]

Hooks hook, riffs riff, senses smoulder, resistance is futile. [May 2022, p.87]

The good news for casual listeners, though, is that the music works as a standalone experience. [Jun 2022, p.82]

The album was written on the hop, Newcombe spilling his brains right onto tape, and it shows – imperfections are made into a positive, the songs allowed to just naturally come into being.

Easily the best since their debut, but there's still a way to go before they produce an LP as fine as that again. [Oct 2023, p.87]

Eggsistentialism might just be their best. [Jul 2024, p.79]

III is the sound of a less restless McCartney simply doing what he does best. [Jan 2021, p.86]

This jubilant, ritzy resurrection offers a Poundland paradise. [Mar 2019, p.95]

There’s a surprisingly thoughtful plague-themed concept running throughout, which, if you care to dig deep enough, equates the sins of the medieval church with today’s societal ills. All this elevates Ghost above the herd, placing them in the sacred company of Blue Öyster Cult and Marilyn Manson.

If the band’s grander statements are buried beneath the record’s bursts of crushing speed-punk and pounding buzz-rock, though, their vivifying passion and excitement for a genre too often ploughed through like a chore makes it utterly forgivable. Depths do emerge. [Nov 2024, p.78]

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]

These lush ambient soundscapes mostly make great backdrops to the 62-year-old crooner's pithy musing and archly allusive lyrics, especially on more widescreen numbers. [Summer 2023, p.75]

The results sound thin, contrived and ultimately laborious. [Aug 2020, p.89]

Nothing Last Forever might even be the closest approximation yet of what the 60s actually sounded like. [Oct 2023, p.83]

On the evidence of this quite brilliant record, brighter days lie ahead for one young American at least. [Dec 2013, p.103]

It's this latter sense of indefatigable positivity that shines through, a sense of togetherness engendered by a celebration of classic, no-nonsense rock'n'roll. [Nov 2020, p.83]

It might be ultimately pointless, but it works because Fogerty's voice is so extraordinarily intact and because the songs are still invincible. [Sep 2025, p.77]

For The Sake Of Bethel Woods confirmed that they are not the band they once were but A Bridge To Far flows directly on from there with many of the songs more theoretical in nature. [Dec 2025, p.78]

This is beyond immersive; this is music to suffer a cleansing obliteration to.

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]

It's elegiac, claustrophobic and contagiously disturbed. [Apr 2023, p.79]

The DIY arrangements--treated guitars, keyboards, the odd banjo--sometimes sound like they’ve been fixed up with gaffer tape, adding to the immediacy of songs like Boy Band, a comedic tale about has-beens on a dodgy comeback trail, and the autobiographical, genuinely affecting Property Shows.

Clever, articulate and big dumb and sparkly, the Mael brothers are still pulsating, foot to the floor, full throttle.

Really it should get 10 but nobody’s perfect.

Perhaps more than any other Rammstein album, it feels like a collection of songs deliberately built to soundtrack a future series of spectacular live set-pieces. [Jul 2022, p.81]

Mind Control may occasionally lack the outright mania of its predecessor but this is music made in a puff of red smoke, heady and hypnotic. [Jun 2013, p.90]

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

Listening to it is a wonderfully disconcerting experience, each track swirling and merging into new patterns like a murmuration of starlings. [Apr 2022, p.78]

Genre-defying angst never sounded so good. [Nov 2025, p.80]

With its gentle, unwaveringly steady, never-changing tone and rhythm, it demands work on the part of the listener. [Jun 2021, p.79]