Hard to find fault with, and much to find pleasure with.

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]

A wall of noise delivered with cinematic intent. [Nov 2018, p.83]

There won't be a better record released this month, and very few this year. This is one for the ages. [Nov 2018, p.84]

Seething with anxiety and frontman Jesse Lacey’s trademark sarcastic self‑flagellation, and with a gorgeous production that gives the music space to breathe, it’s an emotional, intelligent work of grace and beauty.

Homegrown was strong enough to have been released in 1975 and Young is right to exhume it now. But that doesn’t mean he was necessarily wrong then. He may have been baring his soul, but he was smart enough to know just how rotten that soul had fleetingly become.

This is simply stunning. [Jun 2023, p.79]

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

Gabriel’s most consistent and cohesive post-80s record and the most philosophical of his life. [Jan 2024, p.78]

An absolute must. [Nov 2021, p.83]

The sound that would soon seduce millions was already here. There's Buckingham's unique Flamenco-tinged guitar sound, evident throughout, for a start, as well as Nicks' already assured songwriting. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Even more than The Next Day, these seven tracks suggest the sounds inside his head are in sync with his long-time soul brother Scott Walker, though thankfully he remains on warmer terms with old-fashioned melody and emotion.

MBV is no great leap forward, though it's still aeons ahead of its 21st century competition. [Apr 2013, p.98]

A Pound Of Feathers is not quite as immediate, then, as Happiness Bastards, but repeated listens pay off. Its relationship to that record is similar to the way recently re-released Amorica sits alongside The Southern Harmony. The Crowes’ blessed resurrection keeps rolling. [Apr 2026, p.74]

With Life Is But A Dream… Avenged Sevenfold haven’t just transcended their metal peers for good, they’ve also created their definitive artistic statement. And it’s bloody fantastic. [Jul 2023, p.80]

This time around it's less epic overload and more barebones, twitching drum machines and sparse, discordant guitars, [Apr 2026, p.76]

If this is a weird nightmare its one that no one will be in a rush to wake up from. [Jun 2026, p.71]

Producers Andy Zax and Steve Woolard have considerably expanded available sets by Richie Havens, Sha Na Na, Janis Joplin, Mountain and dying-a-death Incredible String Band; but analysis reveals more often just adding one extra track, albiet good ones. [Aug 2019, p.90]

Dawson's heavily mannered delivery and maximalist verbosity requires patience at times, but Silene is one of the most straightforwardly beautiful songs he has ever recorded. [Jan 2022, p.83]

Michael Brauer’s interpretation – same songs, different mix – alters the texture of familiar songs like Love Sick, the spectral Cold Irons Bound and Make You Feel My Love, now something of a standard thanks to Adele, Michael Bublé and, er, Nick Knowles. ... The live pieces are more informative, with songs performed between 1998 and 2001.

Don't be intimidated by the heft; this is a tremendous thing. [Oct 2013, p.97]

Daughters have never sounded so strong and they've never got it so right. [Dec 2018, p.86]

Weighing in at 133 tracks, Feel Flows' bulk may be harder to validate than existing sets for the Pet Sounds/Smile era, but as a locked-down summer's soundtrack its mellifluous existential musings are hard to fault. [Aug 2021, p.86]

Live At The Hollywood Bowl is back, with new mixes by Giles Martin that sharpen the sound but don’t ditch the screams, plus extra tracks, including a wonderful I Want To Hold Your Hand. The great lost Beatles album just became the essential new Beatles album.

This is a fine monument to Sonic Youth's undimmed, anarchic, arthouse rock'n'roll fury. [Oct 2023, p.82]

All the songs get the live treatment from an already available concert recorded in Montreal. Work tapes and a live Sweet Jane and Walk On The Wild Side add heft, but the main work is the thing here.

A gift for completists, music historians and obsessives. Even for them, approaching it in one sitting is a challenge. Instead it’s better to savour it episodically, because each segment ends on something of a cliffhanger: you can hear her evolve from gamine coffee-shop folkie into a masterful, angel-voiced singer-songwriter as the collection develops.

Forty years on, these are still songs and performances few have equaled, let alone bettered. [Sep 2014, p.99]