Blue Sky is 33 minutes of fearless, peerless and unvarnished brilliance. [Apr 2019, p.88]

Its best moments veer away into austere orchestral grandeur: the title track is fittingly climactic and Love From The Other Side resembles a civilisation tunefully collapsing. [May 2023, p.77]

A slickness that comes with age and experience sees them settle into their own groove. [Nov 2014, p.93]

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

A clever way with melodies over and above what they achieved on debut Higher Power, and lyrically there's more than welcome cheeky sense of irony. [Sep 2018, p.93]

This isn't music intended to inspire soul-searching. With its fat, fuzzy riffs and living-for-the-weekend vibe, it's made entirely for boozy barbecues and blokey banter, and maybe the odd trip to a monster truck rally. [Mar 2020, p.88]

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

Regardless of the personnel on it, this album sounds like the Stranglers: both nice and sleazy. [Sep 2021, p.81]

Rundgren is possibly the only musician for whom a lack of any thematic coherency across a record doesn’t result in total disaster. It works - don’t ask me how.

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

This album reveals something new with each spin. [Sep 2024, p.69]

Griffin’s wit, empathy and penchant for a simple folk tune remain life-affirming qualities. [Nov 2024, p.72]

Charming result. [May 2025, p.74]

As soon as that marvellous voice opens up on the gorgeous chorus of this album's Don't Lose Sight you already know he's fashioned another one [great record]. [Oct 2025, p.72]

What resonates is how creatively potent he remains. [Dec 2025, p.75]

Can reliably wrangle an engaging, chart-friendly rock-lite tune, yet don't sound anything like their irresistibly evocative name would suggest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

A break from the band’s soundtrack work, ironically, Every Country’s Sun sounds, like a brilliant soundtrack in its own right. To what is up to you.

Quiet Town and Runaway Horses exhibit tender lyrical themes, and there's brief respite in the dreamy haze of Sleepwalker and Pressure Machine. However, nostalgia and the shattering of childhood idylls reoccur through In the Car Outside and In Another Life. [Oct 2021, p.78]

Louche rumbles such as Death And Destruction echo the furious rockabilly assault of a Jim Jones, without the obligatory quiff or preacher schtick, but that doesn’t stop leader Adam Weiner sing smouldering piano ballads such as Forever and Montreal.

Swamp certainly has a knack for the genre's heartbreak. [Apr 2020, p.89]

Jerky, visceral, complex, cerebral, a deep joy. [Apr 2020, p.89]

While the album is destined to remain underground, you just know Childish is in his element right there amid the grit and grime. [Sep 2019, p.84]

While Larkin Poe are worthy, though, they’re never dull. [Jun 2020, p.87]

Magical. [Jun 2023, p.74]

This album is a vindication of the instinct that less is more. It’s a magnificent testament to a man who has been scarred and damaged by his journey, but whose lust for life remains gloriously intact.

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

Arguably the most exuberant guitar pop alum of 2020. [Mar 2021, p.87]

While the more mellow moments may turn off some of the more alt fans of alt. country, most longtime fans will find this one just dandy. [Mar 2019, p.90]

COVID fog has infected even our sharpest minds. Thank heaven so much of Ultra Vivid Lament sounds like a mirror ball at the end of the tunnel. [Sep 2021, p.78]

While wonderfully idiosyncratic, Oddfellows finds them at their most accessible to date. [Apr 2013, p.95]

Long may they stay young. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Wild, weird and wonderful, Dark Matter/Dark Energy is a lysergic punk triumph.

This album is all heart, the camaraderie is immense, and Williams assures listeners that's it's not dark yet. [Summer 2023, p.78]

This is an album that refuses to sit still and stagnate. [Jun 2013, p.87]

They lose their way when they amble in pub-rock fashion on the gormless Hard Case, but for the most part they’re as focused as they’re inspired.

No longer on the run, Mother Nature is instead "pushing Earth in a baby carriage." This recurring theme in Young's work is echoed in the equally powerful yelp of Shut It Down and the altogether more downtempo Green Is Blue. [Nov 2019, p.80]

If you've ever gone clubbing on heavy-duty painkillers, expect flashbacks. [Apr 2020, p.83]

The sound is basic, raw, bitingly sarcastic. [Summer 2021, p.82]

No-wave dislocations take the B-52's around the back of CBGB to be savaged by Le Tigre. [Jan 2022, p.85]

This is not easy listening but it is arguably Laibach's most sonically rich, least ironic, most mature work to date. [May 2022, p.81]

A mostly exhilarating, agreeably disagreeable racket. [Aug 2022, p.71]

By making music that reflects on their lives both personally and also as part of a wider, global community, they're managing that high-wire balancing act without the use of a safety net. [Apr 2023, p.78]

For better and for worse Rancid have never been overly concerned with progress. Yet there's undeniable evolution on the early-Pogues-style stomp of both Hellbound Train and the near hoe-down Devil In Disguise. [Jul 2023, p.82]

It's a complete, rounded work; the 13 tracks dovetail into each other perfectly. [May 2024, p.74]

The emotionally charged (if musically sterile), genre-blending Cassyette is as emptily irresistible as MSG. [Nov 2024, p.79]

All dozen tracks are winners. [Dec 2020, p.80]

If you want progression, look elsewhere. Here is ‘just’ another routinely radiant TFC album.

Even if their calculated brand of mullet-haired kitchen-sink amateurism occasionally feels like unshaven drunken shambling, TFS are consistently inventive, thrillingly unpredictable and steeped in deadpan Australian humour. [Sep 2021, p.78]

Dwyer has led us into yet another musical sphere, one that's proggier, perplexing and ripe for exploration. [Sep 2018, p.89]

An intense, emotional soundscape rising gently from the chiming sun bath Sun Is A Hole Sun Is Vapors. [Dec 2024, p.74]

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.

It's up there with the very best records they've released. [Sep 2018, p.86]

Louris is nonetheless still on top form with Homecoming and his sublimely resigned Then You Walked Away is the pick of the three bonus tracks on the physical formats of the album.

Music-wise there’s little not already on the 2007 box set 1977, including the alternative mixes of Dum Dum Boys, Baby, China Girl and Tiny Girls placed among assorted singles edits on the new collection’s Demos & Rarities disc, or the London Rainbow gig on another.

Goat's ouroboros cycle repeats, with added bite. [Oct 2024, p.76]

An iron-clad structural damage-inducing delight from start to finish. Early contender for punk album of the year. [Apr 2024, p.79]

Where a fug of overdriven psychedelic effects could overwhelm the message and the music--particularly on the ritualistic Call Upon The Fire and the exquisitely trippy Absolution Song-- he instead maintains subtlety, style and superb songcraft in a slow movement that’s all his own.

It's testament to the brilliance of their interplay that not even a guesting Emmylou Harris can steal the spotlight on Here Is Where The Loving Is At. [Oct 2018, p.85]

What is great about this album is that it conveys a feeling of lethargy, tiredness, the onset of old age, while never sounding tired, lethargic or clapped out. [Dec 2020, p.80]

This slender exercise in flimsy whimsy boasts plenty f charm but few substantial songs. [Jun 2021, p.78]

It's a dazzler, a dynamic folk-pop record steeped in style and bristling with modern touches. [Oct 2021, p.76]

It needs time to be savoured and reveal its full flavours, a satisfying move in a world of glib instant gratification. [Apr 2022, p.83]

Iggy is in fine voice throughout, raising a middle finger to both age and doubters. [Mar 2025, p.76]

Potent yet poignant, bright if not blinding. [Dec 2019, p.81]

Like their 60s albums, it’s a hodgepodge of self-penned songs and songs written by others, with a few vintage rave-ups thrown into the mix--‘mix’ being the operative word for this patchy affair.

An album packed with absolute love and admiration that is moving and inspiring in the extreme. [Aug 2023, p.79]

Thoroughly anti-social and wonderfully obnoxious throughout, this is kick-arse psych’n’roll as it should be.

The Complete Budokan 1978 is hardly likely to convert Dylan doubters, but it's an interesting curio all the same. [Dec 2023, p.83]

They don't go for the jugular of the tune as rabidly as they once did, although Wu-tang, the French-language Je N'en Ai Pas and several galloping new-wave track certainly do the business. [Jun 2026, p.77]

As well as an intact ability to craft and deliver a song, is a sonic techno-armoury far superior to that of his Tubeway Army days. [Nov 2013, p.91]

A spellbynding brew. [Nov 2020, p.87]

They need just a little more musical and emotional grit to avoid fully surrendering to pastel-shaded midlife mellowness. [Jun 2021, p.76]

His vocals might lack memorable character, but right now the forceful energy he throws into his songs is enough. [Jul 2021, p.86]

It's hardly essential, but not without charm. [Summer 2019, p.87]

An hour of sheer roar-along brilliance. ... Stupendous. [Jun 2020, p.88]

Mariani's ear for melody lifts it above the ordinary. ... Terrific. [Jun 2020, p.86]

It's Biffy Clyro producer Dan Austin, who adds lustre to YMAS's lonely bones. [Apr 2021, p.89]

Goat's best album. [Nov 2022, p.70]

The likes of Crocodile Smile and Love Is Like Gravity seem to teeter on the brink of chaos, but these seasoned players hang these pieces together faithfully and beautifully, jutting and jagging every which way, conjuring up the vivid abstractions of Thomas's lyrical visions. [Jul 2023, p.87]

An impeccable, emotionally undulating, ultimately defiant set of songs from an old master. [Jul 2024, p.82]

The entire album's tremendous fun, uniquely brilliant and brilliantly unique. [Sep 2025, p.76]

Some of the album's best moments come when Wheeler turns the lens on himself. .... With Ad stra Ash are reborn again: older, wiser, but sounding not a wrinkle of it. [Nov 2025, p.74]

A fine punk album, but no more than that. [Summer 2014, p.92]

You don't come to this band foe an easy rode and a soothing soundtrack to while away the hours; you come to them to be pummelled with some horrible but mesmerising noise. And on Synthesizer they deliver in abundance once again. [Nov 2024, p.75]

Confessional, witty, with a touch of The Vaselines, Swear I’m Good At This finds singer Alex Luciano magnifying small daily failures and turning them into works of art.

The result is a compact and highly combustible album that packs 10 songs into just 22 minutes. [Aug 2022, p.86]

Lost Domain will leave the listener raw. [Jan 2015, p.114]

Sound-wise there's a gravelly, mature, post-punk bluesiness about The The in 2024, some of the blackness of Johnny Cash. But there are silvery moments of hopelessness. [Sep 2024, p.71]

This eleventh album - earthy, grain-infused Americana folk rock and eerie noir-country in tone - sounding like Hersh sinking deep into the southern soil. [Apr 2025, p.70]

It's strident without being brash, starry without being pompous, middle of the road without being bland. [Mar 2022, p.84]

The Width Of A Circle displays brilliantly, he's not so much planning his next move as constantly shape-shifting. [Jul 2021, p.92]

Though it's arranged into four old-school sides, lob on a download card full of bonus material and home movies and it's a retro-modern package to make old Muddy's eyes water. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Every Loser captures an Iggy Pop never more ready to be himself and never better equipped to deliver a stone-cold classic. [Feb 2023, p.78]

Electric is a return to one of his best attributes, the snarling electric guitar. [Mar 2013, p. 95]

It’s obvious that under the production guidance of Andy Sneap, the band have been pushed on every level. The result is one of the best metal albums of 2016--one that proves Testament can match anyone.

The album pushes an inspired blues-hued blend of their irreverent moonshine gospel romps--‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’ sings Love on Exodus (Movement Of War People)--comedown confessionals (Nothing To Lose But Your Chains) and gutbucket reflection (Rattlesnake Woman), all crucially spiked with the blackest humour.