Acoustic is a consistent collection that works best when the songs are strongest, and it’s movingly effective on the final track, a cover of Richard Hawley’s Long Black Train.

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]

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

Somewhere Under Wonderland isn't a revolution, but it is assured, interesting and quietly experimental in its own way. [Oct 2014, p.94]

While it might lack the golden glow of Shiflett's regular band, it's happy to bask in a bourbon haze a few seats along the bar from Blackberry Smoke and Whiskey Myers. [Summer 2019, p.86]

Opener Up All Night moves through the formulaic pop gears as smoothly as Don Henley cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, while Holding On is a slickly realised mid-tempo foot tapper. However, shorn of the novelty factor, such middle-of-the-road material remains better suited to balmy summer nights and drivetime radio than to repeated home listening.

It's a concoction that shouldn't work but does. ... Disarming. [Jan 2021, p.82]

It's an excellent reminder that a great band with a great back catalogue can be just as beautiful without make-up. [Summer 2014, p.99]

The haters will protest, but this is the sound of metal dragging itself into the future. [Jan 2021, p.83]

If You're a lapsed follower, this record will make you believe again. [Jul 2014, p.91]

Reason To Live is full of a warmth and pleasure in life that suits his growing maturity as songwriter and raconteur well. [Jul 2021, p.80]

It's a little naive in its presentation and denotations of homely American Stereotypes, perhaps, but all the more powerful for that. ... Crazy Horse are in fine fettle. [Jan 2021, p.84]

An assured piece of reach-for-the-stars hard rock, sure to thrive live.

Vocals are minimal, though less processed and more prominent than usual.

A group that can shift from straight-ahead retro to effortless eclecticism in the time it takes to shift gears on a truck. [Mar 2020, p.86]

New album Hard Love is altogether more bullish, Showalter unleashing his inner rock beast on a collection of songs that seem to reach for some kind of epiphany through sheer volume.

No Taste is positively obese with ideas, street smart with a side order of Sonic Youth, a grrrlish death disco diva Banshee fest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

The Charlatans of this 14th album have evolved into a far richer and more reflective band, as much concerned with inner as outer spaces. [Dec 2025, p.75]

Yorke's minimalist fragility fits the bill entirely. [Dec 2018, p.89]

This second album brings the heft and enormity to make them serious contenders. [Jul 2022, p.78]

Feedback maestro Buck leads the layers of exultant guitar ideas, such as the T.Rex riffs deep in the mix of Shave The Cat, and they help Escovedo drink deep of his sources to climb back into the light.

Occasionally, as on Fire Storm Hotel, with its shades of an 80s hair metal anthem, he sounds at once energised and enfeebled and you find yourself willing him to reach the velocity of yore. But most of the time, you could play these tracks to an alien and they would struggle to tell them apart from Motörhead’s 90s, or even 70s, work.

A weirdly uncomfortable and exhilarating listening from start to finish. [Jan 2021, p.85]

A largely acoustic album, its haunting quality is brought out by a variety of alternative tunings and ambient drones, as well as lyrical meditations on mortality and emotional healing that are delivered with a psychedelic clarity. [Aug 2020, p.88]

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]

None of this is especially groundbreaking or radical, but the sound of a veteran in fine voice, making music with his pals (McGuinn and David Crosby are also along for the ride), is very persuasive indeed.

Despite all the gloom, this is a deeply enjoyable album. [Jan 2021, p.87]