California is too long, but has the humour, pace, emotion and huge choruses of a classic Blink record. Mission accomplished.

While Hercules and Neon Neon took their dance nostalgia and turned it into something smart and new, Sam Sparro too often sounds like it's come straight out of an electro-funk generator--perfect reference points intact, but not developed or built upon or made unique.

The sound of a pioneer who refuses to stop innovating. [8 Oct 2005, p.45]

‘Feed The Beast’ is a tremendously entertaining showcase for a pop star who can go deep when she wants to, but is also smart enough to understand the visceral thrill of dumb escapism.

This is not his finest hour nor his most groundbreaking, but just having him on the scene is enough--even if all he’s able to do is spread joy.

It’s all nicely polished, but there’s nothing underneath.

One of the strongest punk debuts of 2015.

At its most cute, on the sublime ‘Intrusive Thoughts’, it’s a gauzy roll in summer hay, but when the guitars start to scowl it quickly turns from fey to feral.

He has some bangers, despite being pretty hit or miss. This second stab at musical longevity is exactly what it says on the label: all over the place. But at this point in his musical career, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Yesterday Was Forever was a record paid for by fans, and made for the fans.

It quickly grows dreary when there’s not a knowing smirk to match the intensity.

Departure isn't merely a psychedelia record cut with Suicide-aping proto-punk. These eight songs wrestle free of that assumption, flying off in myriad directions.

Athlete's lyrical content is shockingly mundane.

[Their] penchant for pastiche has evolved... into full-blown plagiarism. [9 Oct 2004, p.57]

The Christmas album can risk being a sonic Round Robin, of interest to few but its creators, dispossessed of all perspective as they've mired themselves deep in their icky, cosy world.

Every single one of the lyrics is either a really, really lame Spacemen Zero drug innuendo (the – hey! – 10-minute epic ‘’Half-State’), about ‘twisted’ love (the – hey! – ‘stripped down’ ‘Sweet Feeling’s Gone’) or mentions “highways”.

'Mythnomer’'s nightmarish pitch-shifted vocal and claustrophobic beats are a misjudged move, but on the whole Breathing Statues is a world that's ripe for sinking into.

This is a flawed, sometimes absurd, but always intriguing album that repeatedly approaches being something special.

His choices are faultless and his sense of fun is very apparent.

A not-bad record. [11 Mar 2006, p.43]

This is an impeccable debut: two feet in the past and one open mouth pointing towards a very bright future.

Like their last, Only By The Night is front-loaded with world-beaters but then gradually ebbs back to more interchangeable moments. More than ever its strengths, when it succeeds, later become its weaknesses. It tries a mite too hard.

The title track is 11 minutes of painfully celestial balladeering self-indulgence, a mess of standard-Sufjan jittering flutes mixed with the most offensive noise from his best-avoided early electronic period.

They do their best to distance themselves from Actual Sabbath, but too often it’s by slouching through their Satanic netherworld, Dio’s cabaret bludgeoned down by lurching riffs and over-egged orchestration.

Rhe majority of this 46-minute album is gripping, a sickening start to the year that makes Saul’s temporary departure all the more understandable.

The very fact long-time collaborator Rick Rubin is at the helm is proof enough that while the production is mostly immaculate, I'm With You is an exercise in how a multi-million selling rock behemoth plays it safe.

Somewhere beneath the unconvincing sheen of these songs there’s a great band trying to break out. Maybe next time.