It's an assured slice of post-Loaf songcraft. [Apr 2026, p.81]

Fish cherry-picks her favourite bits from the old masters and fuses them with Stax-flavoured brass, southern warmth, classy pop balladry in Fairwell My Fairweather and nicely sleazy swagger in You Got It Bad. [Oct 2019, p.86]

You can hear it in the creepy, lovelorn surrealism of Filter Me Through You’s hazy dream-pop. Then the eleven minute title track, with its ruefully fated protagonist, spidery keyboards, jaggedly interlocked parts and mantric end, proves decisively that this Dream isn’t over.

Much of the mid-section is spent down in the bayou with an acoustic guitar. ... Sink in. [Jul 2019, p.82]

This is tender and meditative music that contemplates the complex tapestry of existence.

No Home Record is a masterstroke of intimate solitude, often boiling down to poetic, semi-spoken vocals and a drum machine. ... and noise, as fans of her old band would expect, is expertly corralled. [Nov 2019, p.85]

Each track is a short story, a beautifully composed snapshot of a moment in a life, all set to choruses masterfully crafted to slot in alongside the radio-rock classics of the 1980s.

It's clear that this form of musical self-help will have even the most mixed-up fan feeling slightly zen. [Mar 2020, p.89]

Drive-By Truckers have never been angrier, but, just as crucially, they've never been more musically eloquent. [Mar 2020, p.86]

A divine meeting of minds, Reluctant Hero is a breathtaking trip unto the unknown. [Feb 2021, p.87]

Well worth (re)discovering. [Nov 2020, p.87]

An inspirational fusing of avant-garde, jazz, skronk, clattering drums, blurting saxophones, heartfelt lyrics and stellar guest vocalists. [Sep 2018, p.93]

More high-quality psychedelic-doom musings. [Sep 2013, p.93]

This Church is worth a visit. [Nov 2018, p.85]

Every carefully arranged song is packed with indelible hooks, melodic invention and heavenly multi-layered harmonies - all recorded in analogue. [Jul 2024, p.80]

The Besnard Lakes might test the listener’s patience at times, but their commendable commitment to monumental scale and ambition often results in something thrillingly beautiful.

There’s a warm, fuzzy familiarity to Goatsnake’s doomy, bluesy sound, with Stahl’s stirring, soulful vocals always elevating these southern gothic rumbles above the mundane, not least on the striking and rather beautiful seven-minute closer A Killing Blues.

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]

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

Plenty here to admire--if you're in your most po-faced mood. [Summer 2014, p.95]

Corsicana Lemonade flips through a crateful of classic rock tropes, yet sounds spankingly "now." This extraordinary foursome just go from strength to strength. [Dec 2013, p.98]

Coathangers drives home the prevailing sense of compositional attitude meeting musical affirmation. Bravo! [Nov 2013, p.88]

Silence In The Snow is not a classic album, but this puts Trivium firmly back on course.

Everybody Come To Church is designed to be repellant to the bovine majority, but if the world’s going to burn, it comes as a perfect soundtrack.

If Bowie gave Hunter the confidence to steer Mott through the hits that started with Honaloochie Boogie and opened up his solo career, the trials and tribulations of the subsequent 42 years have put him in a solid position to dish out sage advice and put cockier elements in their place, which he does on the opening That’s When The Trouble Starts and closing Long Time.

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.

As mood music it’s a stunner, the perfect complement to a lost weekend plotting your next Ubermensch moves in a haze of opium. But you can’t dance to it, that much is for sure.

The four-piece have lost none of their bite. [Jul 2018, p.86]

It's not a perfect body of work--perhaps these songs stretch in too many directions to really function as a cohesive whole. [Jul 2018, p.86]

Powers is a confident and welcome comeback. [Sep 2019, p.86]

When a collection of contrasting voices tackle [Mose Allison's] songs for charity here, it's that character of songwriting which shines through a diverse range of new styles laid upon it. [Jan 2020, p.86]

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

Living On Mercy finds the songsmith at his sweetest and breeziest. [Oct 2020, p.85]

You couldn’t call it ravishing (although the way the guitars trickle and scratch over sepulchral bass on Come Bring Your Love before exploding in distortion certainly is). It is, however, an unbidden delight: hypnotic, breathtaking and quite, quite beautiful.

Their attitudinal distillation of blues, glam and grunge sounds like a marriage made in rock heaven. [Jan 2022, p.84]

There's a straight-forward brilliance to this covers set. [May 2022, p.85]

Heavy yet eloquent, full tilt yet considered, it’s a record that is incandescent with rage, and clever too.

The songs are great. ... This is a collection of brilliant, swinging rockers. [Jun 2023, p.76]

Those with sensitive ears will find its more extreme moments indigestible, but it remains impressive stuff. [May 2023, p.78]

Perhaps not the new studio recording some were hoping for, but a fascinating and compelling deep dive into Young’s past. [Mar 2024, p.80]

This is fine work indeed. [Apr 2024, p.80]

Future Soul is sublime, and one of America's great bands just got a little bit greater. [May 2026, p.72]

An album of quiet, immense beauty. [Jun 2026, p.72]

So J did his usual effortless stand-in thang on guitar, and with Lou writing two beautiful soft rockers and Murph powering away on drums created another album to stand if not quite the equal of the original Dinosaur albums that around the end of the 80s helped change the face of US alternative rock, then somewhere close.

Hard truths are faced down and bad voodoo gets annihilated throughout in unflinching, life-affirming, hard-rocking glory.

As the rest of rock scurries to condense its charms into sync-friendly Shazamable nuggets, Britpop pioneers and eternal outsiders Suede slice gloriously against the grain once more with a grandiose semi-concept seventh album that demands to be consumed as a complete piece of art.

Highlife electronica meets understated Celtic folkiness on charmingly whimsical, multifaceted, Welsh language. [Oct 2019, p.91]

Halford and the latest incarnation of Judas Priest are still rattling rafters with this new album of pristine and dauntingly powerful heavy metal. [Apr 2024, p.76]

COS is a lot darker and more claustrophobic than Thomas's press notes propose. [Sep 2014, p.94]

It's good to hear an artist who shuffles through the undergrowth. [Summer 2021, p.81]

This Melbourne trio blaze undeniably with desperate Saints thuggery, causal swagger and an occasionally skronking No Wave sax. [Aug 2022, p.71]

"No Hope", "Everybody Dies" and "Care Less" all sound like phrases scratched on a teenager's notebooks, but The majesty of their songwriting craft - imagine The Byrds if Evan Dando had sat in for the session - makes even the darkest of days feel like a new dawn. [Sep 2025, p.81]

Art, love, personal and political ideology--all of it is delved into with gloriously unpolished gusto. [Summer 2014, p.91]

Live In Brighton 1975 showcases a band at the height of their immense power. [Jan 2022, p.91]

For all its flaws, Rewind The Film shows they're not ready for the glue factory just yet. [Oct 2013, p.86]

Thankfully, they haven’t abandoned their experimental urges completely, with Apricity striking a deft balance between rushing choruses and free electronic grooves.

Serf's Up!'s sonic exploration heralds a more colourful new dawn for the Fat White Family. [Jun 2019, p.89]

Treasured songs suffer repeated acts of vandalism. On many nights, Dylan and the guys howl the chorus of Like A Rolling Stone frat party-style. Conversely, the 1974 release Forever Young (from the Planet Waves album) gets regular care and rises in stature as a Boomer benediction. [Oct 2024, p.83]

A deeply rageful affair. .... Heavy. [Jul 2023, p.79]

Clever without being too clever, but only just. [May 2020, p.83]

Several navel-gazing songs about musicianship only cement Eitzel’s reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter, favouring tinkering with classic structures over tugging the low-hanging heartstrings or banging out honking great hooks, but this ferryman will definitely get fans of arch-folk to the other side.

This regular release offers reminder enough of just how special this band is when they're on form. [Jan 2024, p.86]

The album is still as random as a Frenchman’s hat at times, though, and songs like Mad Shelley’s Letterbox and the superb 1970 In Aspic (‘Your bacteria are in me,’ intones Hitchcock, wide-legged and eyeless) couldn’t be written by anyone else. A worthwhile ball to put in his canon.

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

An eclectic work, Lazaretto shows off White's multi-instrumental, seasoned-producer lineage with some charismatic flashes. As a complete exercise in songcraft, however, it's a little thin. [Summer 2014, p.88]

AntiKpop, anyone? [Jul 2019, p.85]

A towering testament to a much-missed band. [Aug 2019, p.84]

Exuberant throughout, PPC's trip has notched up a gear. [Mar 2021, p.84]

How does it burn? Darkly, but with sparks.

With stoner rock's monotonous thrum as a template you're always going to have to work a little harder to break through with something genuinely interesting, and Pigsx7 don't always manage it here. [Oct 2018, p.84]

It's the record's crazed detours that make for the most interesting moments. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Collection of coldly beautiful electronica. [Dec 2020, p.83]

One of the band's most reflective releases (here she works toward acceptance of the fragility of her body while also reasserting its many strengths) but also one of their most defiant. [Jul 2025, p.78]

The band’s forthcoming album has a little bit of everything for everyone. It’s been seven years since the last Pearl Jam studio album, and the world has changed irrevocably since then. But thankfully some things remain reliably the same. ... Pearl Jam have given us an unexpected album of hope. Welcome back.

Light, airy, clear, strong, astonishing. [Jul 2022, p.83]

As bananas as it is brilliant, Face Stabber is a poke in the eye for anyone who says guitar bands are running out of ideas. [Sep 2019, p.83]

As with most of Anathema’s records, this is one that fans of Elbow and Radiohead would love every bit as much as fans of Opeth or Marillion.

This collection falls between the stools of being too normal for the serious fan and too niche for the floating voter. Nevertheless, it’s a refreshing change from the bog-standard hits compendium that usually surfs into the shops when the sun comes out.

Offering gems, misfires and revelations, Elton: Jewel Box is an absorbing opening of the vaults.

Suffering a little from the transition from live set to bootleg to official release. [Jul 2022, p.87]

Though neither Pierce nor Interior vocally, his twang's the thang: brooding, epic, immense. [Jul 2024, p.82]

Pond continue to make high-quality records on their own terms, and Stung! is undoubtedly one of their most enjoyable. [Summer 2024, p.77]

The classic stoner rock we know from QOTSA is alive and well, but on this record they've pushed themselves into the more experimental corners of their psyche. [Summer 2023, p.74]

An incendiary record from a band teetering on the edge of a crumbling precipice. [Sep 2025, p.78]

Ultimately, every track on this masterfully sculpted set courses with life-affirming pop-rock passion.

Notwithstanding the fact that this is a collection of outtakes, this is acid/blues rock at its pinnacle, Joplin at the very height if her primordial, unfettered powers , with Big Brother contributing a psychedelic backdrop that still stands firm five decades on. [Dec 2018, p.92]

There’s a healthy sense of experimentation, peaking with wondrous prog-metal epic Halloween Bolson.

They’re on more familiar ground, with an emotional take on alternative indie rock inspired by the frontman’s new experiences in fatherhood.

The songs on this follow-up to 2013’s Dig Thy Savage Soul rock harder than before while retaining the garage signature of ex-Lyres guitarist Peter Greenberg.

If you’re a fan of the more raucous, high-octane twang-stompers this band are best known for, you might find this a strangely sedate, mid-tempo affair.

A modest masterpiece. [Oct 2023, p.86]

The mood varies across the record. [Nov 2023, p.81]

The songs themselves are among Lennon's worst. .... This reissue comes in a box full of new mixes - several CDs or vinyl LPs of Raw Mixes, Ultimate mixes and Out-Takes, none of which add anything much other than a sense that one's ears have been syringed for no good reason. [Summer 2024, p.83]

Taken in a single sitting, the rewards from this record are manifold. [Summer 2019, p.83]

Bookended by the glorious, galloping sludge-fest, Bridgeburner and the Dio-era, Sabbath-indebted doom-laden title track, the likes of Soft Spot In My Skull and the pummelling 1000 Mile Stare prove that this is much more than a vanity project and it’s as thrilling as anything they’ve put their names to in the past.

Delving deeper into funk groove and psych textures, this expansive ninth record pays a flying visit to such old haunts, to find its hedonistic crowd now wracked with late-capitalist economic woes and struggling to stay rock'n'roll post-rehab. [May 2023, p.78]

The resulting sound is mature and measured, with similarities to Dulli’s work with the Twilight Singers more easily applicable than anything in Whigs essentials Congregation or Gentleman.

Hansard says of his emotional, spiritual and musical journey to complete this record. He’s succeeded. Ramble on, indeed.