What's missing from these pastiches is a sense of Walrus's own identity. [Jan 2020, p.88]

While on first listen Perida will surprise some STP fans and disappoint others. It’s an album that with repeated listens could well come to be seen by many as being among the band’s best.

Sad And Beautiful Worlds finds him showing off those songwriting skills, delivering country-tinged ballads, bubblegum pop and twinkling Americana in typically effortless fashion. It's when he lets his guard down, however, that Malin is at his most impressive. [Oct 2021, p.72]

Couldn’t Love You More begins like Blackbird and has McCartneyish vocals, with Ringo on drums. Rock guitar royalty includes Brian May on Floating In Heaven, Hank Marvin on When You Find Love, and Albert Lee pops up on an Everlys-inspired number. [Summer 2024, p.73]

Diggle has done his old friend proud with the Buzzcocks' new normal. [Mar 2026, p.81]

Their music, while distinctive, is a rather rudimentary and static thing, with a limited melodic spectrum. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Uber-producer Youth adds a sleaze-funk swagger to a valedictory Nine Lives, while standouts Losing Sleep and Money Burns could almost be outtakes from the Mondays’ commercial peak Pills ’n’ Thrills And Bellyaches. Lyrically, Ryder remains in a league of his own.

The record oozes confidence and spunky attitude--a far cry from her more recent country records thanks to the partnership with past collaborators Jeff Trott and Tchad Blake.

From the ‘na-na-na’s of Telegraph Avenue to the fist-in-the-air anthem Make It Out Alive and the arena-sized chorus of Farewell Lola Blue, this album is a solid reminder of what Rancid are capable of.

Cutting their teeth in New York’s surviving venues, the quintet (first signings to Daptone’s new Wick offshoot) arrive like a most welcome anachronism.

It has given a cerebral clarity and garage pop edge to tracks that would otherwise be buried in slaughterhouse riffs under inaudibly angry lyrics. [Summer 2014, p.93]

The energy levels are astounding too, with producer Julian Raymond extracting a sonic attack that makes Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson and Daxx Nielsen sound like they’ve been locked in an industrial hangar with a bunch of AK-47s.

Overwhelmingly, Weller's songs are durable enough to bear their new setting. [Jan 2022, p.81]

For those who remain strangely tickled by their frivolous, heart-felt one-offmanship, every track here will prick your ears. Easter might be cancelled, but for rock fans Christmas has come early. [Oct 2019, p.86]

They find the sweet spot between Dinosaur Jr's nagging noise and The Posies' woozy power-pop charm. [Apr 2015, p.101]

A homage to the alchemical combination of Stills, the late Mike Bloomfield and Blood, Sweat And Tears keyboardist Al Kooper, it has all the hallmarks of a venture guided by pure nostalgia. However, on Can't Get enough, Stills, largely pulls it off. [Aug 2013, p.84]

There's enough brittle punch to Blood & Lemonade to freshen even the stuffiest cliche. [Oct 2014, p.93]

It finds them on classic BJM form--a warm, densely analogue journey through inner space punctuated by churchy keyboards and tambourines that rattle like bones. [Summer 2018, p.86]

This album feels like something of a transitional one for Starcrawler, as they find themselves torn between their residual instinct to rock and a desire to roll into new creative areas. [Sep 2022, p.76]

While the results haven’t got the near-reckless zeal of the young Yorn’s records, the sense of longing reflects the broken-down feel--strumming acoustic guitars, the light thrum of a snare--of some of the material he was writing back in the early 2000s.

While we can probably do without his appropriation of You Are My Sunshine, the covers of Edgar Winter's Dying To Live and Tell 'Em I'm Gone are both moving and powerful. [Dec 2014, p.104]

A fine album by any standards, not least the Chili Peppers' own. [Oct 2022, p.70]

Volume X is not a dud album, just a little short on X Factor. [Aug 2014, p. 206]

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]

At the heart of the album is Brooker’s dextrous keyboard work, his pristine piano-playing embellished in all the right places by Josh Phillips’s Hammond organ. What’s equally impressive is the might of Brooker’s voice, which has lost none of its vigour in the 50 years since he first skipped the light fandango.

A handful of solo piano interludes also summon inescapable echoes of Spinal Tap’s Lick My Love Pump. Overall, though, Synthesis feels like a successful experiment.

This is just an especially focused, varied set of entertaining Bonamassa tunes. [Sep 2018, p.90]