Ten songs in all, played on acoustic and electric guitar and occasional banjo, with a perfectly understated band. [Aug 2025, p.80]

Albini's hardline technical/philosophical missive is the tastiest 'discovery' in this inevitable 20th anniversary box set--tastier, indeed than any of the unheard music. [Nov 2013, p.101]

The Record is beautifully integrated, each song feeling like an ongoing conversation, a harmonious thread they can pick up any time. It’s very much worth getting to know it. [Jun 2023, p.85]

Its raw, emotional heartbeat is laid bare at the onset. [Dec 2017, p.94]

As with Daptone's soul projects, the emphasis is on authenticity and integrity and the result is spot-on. [Jun 2018, p.94]

From a brilliantly tense 1977 cover of the Detroit Emeralds’ 1972 disco hit Feel The Need, to a Velvets-drone re-murking of Dylan’s She Belongs To Me and his recent doomy techno-goth NIN collaboration Star, these rough, raw and unfinished gems remind us that Ferry’s art was never just about surface perfection but always in what lies beneath. [Dec 2024, p.99]

Perhaps the most uncomplicated and joyous of them all. [Jul 2025, p.80]

A glorious snapshot of Silver in his prime. [Dec 2025, p.99]

Each member is the main player in their sphere, while remaining part of the whole. [Jul 2021, p.92]

A tightly coiled album, covering 17 tracks in 45 minutes, Maps leaves much to unpick. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Thirty years, 170 shows, a repertoire of 400 songs in 3,509 performances: from that motherlode we have 48 nuggets chronicling the live career of the South's Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

If there's one complaint about Exterminator, apart from Bobby's rubbish rapping on Pills, it's that much of it feels like reworked outtakes from Vanishing Point.

Eight long-deleted vinyls 45s and EPs bring back prized gems by The Congos, Linval Thompson and Freddy McKay, the 24-page large-format booklet putting everything into perspective. [Jan 2020, p.104]

Only relenting for the odd Tinariwen-esque chill moment (Takoba; Imajughen), this one's an amps-on-11 polemical masterpiece that warrants worldwide respect. [Jun 2024, p.90]

It results in an intimate album shuddering in the blast of an icy onslaught of crisp, wintery piano. [Dec 2013, p.87]

This is a fine celebration of a finely poetic band. [Feb 2015, p.103]

From labyrinthine opener Men In Bed, the material is inimitably Smith-esque, and if it is tempting to dig for premonitions of mortality, the Frank Zappa-via Hanna-Barbera thrills of Busty Beez or Skating feel like the work of a very much living artist. [Nov 2025, p.89]

A thorough pre-history, ending just before the release of first studio album, Everything Falls Apart. [Dec 2017, p.104]

There is piquancy in Mogwai's elegiac mix of Super, and the programmed beats heresy of Stephen Morris and Gabe Gurnsey's re-rub of Hallogallo, but the real miracles begin with the LPs proper. [Oct 2022, p.102]

With Z, My Morning Jacket have left their comfort zone, assumed the mantle of firebrands, and delivered a truly momentous work. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Interesting as the Wallace mixes are, the band is most compelling thrashing through Talent Show and I Won't, live in Milwaukee. [Nov 2019, p.102]

A useful and thoroughly entertaining precis of one of the great 21st century rock projects. [Jan 2021, p.101]

Clark has whittled a motley crew of characters who sit inside taut, ever so slightly paranoid, Byrne-influenced P-funk.... Wonderful. [Mar 2014, p.88]

This quick-fire sequel brutally updates the sabre-sharp formula. [Dec 2014, p.93]

Since I Left You fuses dozens of different styles -- and over 600 lovingly reconfigured samples -- into one riotously enthusiastic, awesomely seamless whole. [May 2001, p.116]

An album that's thoughtful, emotional, expertly crafted and often sublime. [Nov 2019, p.84]

It ranks among the best work of a major innovator and his unfeasibly talented Magic Bands. [Dec 2014, p.106]

Crudely put, it is the sequel to Love And Theft, which is to say that a great deal of it is split between 12-bar treatises about love and lust and croonsome ballads about much the same themes.... That said, it is not quite as sharply focused as that record. [Oct 2006, p.94]