It is an embarrassment of riches, not least the variety of exceptional live material. [Nov 2023, p.87]

Wonderfully cohesive hour of vein-popping indignation. [Sep 2019, p.82]

It’s a 21st-century record for a 21st-century audience that, with an old-school 48-minute duration, only ever leaves the listener hungry for more.

Beautiful in style and intent, The Myth Of The Happily Ever After has magic written into every note. [Nov 2021, p.70]

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]

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

This is a remarkable album from a band that still has plenty to say and to offer. Its high point, Death Of The Celts, a fruity 10-minute-plus guitar showcase for the Three Amigos that could be the Iron Maiden equivalent of Thin Lizzy’s celebrated Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend, is little short of jaw-dropping.

Trademark intimate ballads shine again on startling subway tragedy The Third Rail, Beck uncurling dramatic punctuation, and What Would I Do Without You reaffirming Hunter’s love for wife Trudi with Williams’s counter vocal, closing the set with Hope’s widescreen optimism. [Jun 2024, p.76]

The 1LP version is heaven-sent hitsville. .... The 3LP version is where things loosen up, as (relative) deep cuts strut their stuff. [Dec 2025, p.83]

And Nothing Hurt is like a seasoned mountaineer flying up K2 on one leg. [Sep 2018, p.87]

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]

Originally rejected by Reprise Records executives as being nothing more than a bunch of demos, the entire set is spun with some strange, surreal and beautiful magic.

Flaming Pie sounded excellent then and it sounds excellent now. [Sep 2020, p.92]

This is no pure nostalgia trip, though. Both House Of A Thousand Guitars and Rainmaker take shots at the ‘criminal clown’ in the White House, and Letter To You is as young at heart as any of Springsteen’s proudest moments, a sign that we’re some way off the credits yet.

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

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

As if his glorious slipping of the blues genre's straitjacket wasn't brave enough, Son Little's latest album is also an excavation of some pretty heavy-duty personal trauma. ... Consider our minds expanded. [Oct 2022, p.71]

A CD of unreleased outtakes, which doesn’t just bring the creation of the songs to life, it brings the people behind them to life too. .... More than just a celebration of an album, Queen I provides a vivid snapshot of a moment in time. [Nov 2024, p.82]

This 1986 Morrissey-Marr career peak proves enduringly rich and rewarding in its punchy, remastered, expanded form.

It's the zippiest Foos album to date. ... As a modern rock melting pot, Medicine certainly sounds like a spirit rediscovered. [Mar 2021, p.84]

A murky modern masterpiece. [Oct 2019, p.87]

In Another World is a remarkable album and another marvellous continuation: power and pop. [May 2021, p.88]

The instrumental How To Disappear Into Strings adds a stentorian dimension to How To Disappear Completely, while Fog ascends to a whole new level of mystery in its Again Again version. Radiohead’s loving tending of their back catalogue wins out again.

A highly more-ish record with real soul and class. [Mar 2015, p.88]

Their creative studio peak might have (just) been behind them, but for a taste of the Stones at their down-and-dirtiest, Goats Head Soup will always be the dish of the day.

If that’s code for giving the people what they want, he’s delivered. From the moment Edin opens proceedings with 83 seconds of fearless fretwork, there’s guitar everywhere. Sighommi gallops like Iron Maiden taking on Black Sabbath, Goeth The Fall overflows with cascading hooks, and 999 is a reminder that Smashing Pumpkins were always masters of a slow-burner. [Oct 2024, p.74]

[Beautiful People (Stay High) is] a tearaway slice of white-boy soul, so immediate that you'll join the cast-of-thousands vocal by the second chorus. the rest of Ohio Players is almost as good. [May 2024, p.75]

This album is a heart-breaking but jubilant exploration of joy, honesty, fragility and expression as our most powerful means of human resistance. [Sep 2018, p.88]