settle back, we'll be here a while. [Jan 2022, p.85]

Hynde may not win over many new converts with this old-school collection, but the rich soil of classic Americana is a fine place for one of our greatest rock voices to find fresh inspiration.

Cable Ties are invariably at their best when teetering on the very brink. [Summer 2023, p.79]

Swampy southern sounds are their stock-in-trade but it’s a soulful brew with all the authentic trappings you’d expect of a recording from Woodland Studios, Nashville.

It's an album that rewards repeated immersion within its layers of acoustic guitar, questing strings and Mellotron. [Oct 2023, p.87]

It makes for a lustrous, laid-back return that will frustrate those pining for Costello's brutal youth, but it befits his gracious age beautifully. [Oct 2018, p.85]

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

It's a joy to discover that not only is he refusing to mellow with age, but also the output from this trio is so heavy. [Apr 2015, p.95]

It's an incredibly busy, dense record, with few moments to come up for air from the maelstrom. [Nov 2021, p.73]

They can still craft the odd pop-rock banger. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Borrell tiptoes his trademark line between the wry and the ridiculous. U Can Call Me is a slice of Bowie-esque sass pop about how much he hates cocaine, Empire Service a slab of buzzsaw rock that argues with itself about what is and is not the ocean. [Nov 2024, p.76]

Lightning Bolt could do with a bit more of that hot-wired sound. But its brutally hard-won optimism is satisfying enough. [Nov 2013, p.88]

It's a slow-burn of an album, sounding more layered with each listen, the strain of a pedal steel woven into the fabric of the songs. [Oct 2021, p.79]

They approach this fourth album with typical irreverence. [Jan 2019, p.89]

The band venture away from their own back yard for the first time, recording this new album in El Paso. It results in a pleasingly broader palette, from the redneck power pop of Sandlot, to the melodic and bouncy Madness-like closer We’ll Meet Again.

He might be a slippery customer, but his music couldn’t be more reliable.

Skunk Anansie find their groove in the album’s latter half with arena-sized anthems like Bullets, a gnarly funk-rock bruiser which erupts into a landslide of guitars and voices.

Decidedly queasy listening throughout. [Apr 2015, p.98]

Lucero's honest, gritty Americana feels like a welcome dose of the real stuff. [Aug 2018, p.91]

Add one of 2015’s swooniest ballads in Trouble and you’ve got an album that’s not exactly pretty, but is definitely a keeper.

If this is the last resurrected Hendrix studio material the world will see, then it’s a creditable send-off, yet we doubt it’s the last gasp it occasionally resembles.

A couple of other unremarkable tracks leave this album just short of being a stunner, but for the most part Blackberry Smoke have done Georgia proud once again. [Jul 2021, p.80]

His vocal range and tone might now haunt the hinterlands often visited by Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, but the rasp from those hard-lived years adds a wonderful lustre to the songs and subjects he’s addressing and the things he’s chosen to write about now. [Jul 2023, p.82]

Glossy arrangements sometimes owe more to Foreigner than to Focus, but this is a prog affair. [Mar 2014, p.100]

Still scuzzy, still weird, long may Jon Spencer walk his own unique path. [Nov 2018, p.82]

Stripped of the sonic chaos of Mastodon and ATD-I, the rhythm section are free to just let go and pummel, proving a perfect foil for Sanders’ caveman roar. Meanwhile, the frequent quieter, more considered moments, such as the creeping, ghostly Dublin, have an underlying sense of spaced-out dread.

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

Historically priceless, but intrinsically one for the fans. [May 2019, p.94]