Not her best, but never dull. [Jun 2024, p.103]

Throughout the curation of his archives, all but two of these recordings – that slower Sedan Delivery and the regretful Too Far Gone – have already been released elsewhere, across original albums and newly restored collections, making this official Chrome Dreams an exercise in fan service that would have been a worthy Record Store Day title – or, we hope, an indication that the Archives Vol III box set is approaching.

An official release of lost song Sunshine Woman will please completists, but it’s difficult to escape the niggling doubt that this is little more than a cash-in opportunity, with lost versions tacked on the end of what was a perfectly good record first time around.

Led by Paul Janeway's dramatic vocals, the Birmingham band's material is more hook-laden, partly due to their collaboration with Eg White. [Nov 2025, p.105]

It's clear that the lines so easily drawn between this and the Fleetwood Mac epics to come give this not only a familiarity but a slightly spurious contemporary feel. [Nov 2025, p.90]

My Woman is an odd, somewhat mismatched collection of good and then great songs that could have been more ghostly.

The 10CD version is a patchy collection of familiar highlights and sometimes enjoyable outtakes.

This reissue’s seven bonus tracks will excite completists and include Waco, initially slated for inclusion on the album’s 2002 release before being given away online. But, in truth, the original album’s heartfelt, immediate and tape-hissing guitars and cutely executed melodies excite the most.

By its very nature, RTVD is eclectic, and there is an obvious element of hit or miss to contend with. The sequencing isn’t fantastic, and the compilation does lose focus at times. It does however do what it sets out to do; it explores, and gives a good sense of the ways in which African-American music of the late 60s and 70s splintered off in different directions and absorbed outside influences.

Ultimately, you don’t quite get the sky-scraping, genre-blending bangers mustered in the past, nor the negative synergy and diminishing returns of many collaboration-heavy, late-career albums.

While the music is frequently revelatory, capturing the post-Cale line-up chilled and stretching out, as on the 40-minute Sister Ray with Lou’s guitar on overdrive, most tracks have appeared before; on 1974’s 1969 Live, 2001’s The Quine Tapes and the third album reissue.

More abstruse and cerebral.

It’s true, Love & Hate will win no prizes for innovation. But this s more than just gussied up heritage soul to peddle to nostalgic baby-boomers.

In between more scattered wibblings, (sometimes overly) damaged yet lush textures abound on this long but often rather good and shoegazing-influenced record, the vocalist’s true worth finally being illustrated on the naked Purpose (Is No Country).

Fans will have all these recordings already, but it’s nonetheless fascinating to chart the band’s shift in sound over this time period.

Focusing at times on loss and life's cruelty, the tone is often sombre though always dignified. [Aug 2025, p.103]

This material represents the label’s least easily translatable zone, startling to--and still held dear by--an 80s audience only just adjusting to drum machine funk, but now dated in a way that Adrian Sherwood’s more earthy reggae recordings and totemic pieces with name acts are not. That is not to say that it is unworthy of investigation, though.

There’s a taut, garage-like sensibility to the arrangements, a discipline lacking from the originals, in a satisfying, worthwhile salvage expedition. [Jan 2026, p.101]

The album would have benefitted from a slightly wider variation in pace, with an additional up-tempo song or two. [Jun 2024, p.103]

It becomes quickly apparent that Weirdo is a more personal record - gut-punchingly so, at times - but for all the pain that inspired it, it feels like a celebration too. [Jun 2025, p.105]

If there’s a sense that some of Kouyate’s charm has been lost through his newfound worldliness, the experiments bear exquisite fruit on Ayé Sira Bla.

While certainly not all things to all comers, this deluxe edition makes a good fist of it.

A third of the way in, there’s a sequence of up-tempo dreampunk numbers harbouring brattier attitudes and melodies of a more generically slapdash nature, at which point this reviewer’s notebook became overly burdened with ditto marks. The quality picks up later with a couple of shimmering near-ballads. As far as power duos go, that’s not a bad ratio and it certainly beats those impotent hacks known as The Black Stripes or The White Keys or whatever they were called.

At their best when the music fires along to match Chubb's lyrical catharsis, Sprints occasionally falter when the pace drops: even Chubb sounds anonymous among Literary Mind's more considered atmospherics, while Shadow Of A Doubt promises to build to a crescendo that never quite arrives. [Jan 2024, p.101]

It’s disjointed--clumsy, even--with only glimmers of consistency, but the hardcore will appreciate that this is the way the band works: nothing comes easy and rewards are hard-won. Those listening out for singalongs, heartbreak and any solidity are better directed to the best of.

While MVOTC doesn’t represent a seismic leap from their earlier material, the general feeling is of a much more considered collection, with greater emphasis on song craft.

Iris Silver Mist gently wafts through the metal space of a listener. [Jun 2025, p.103]

While the lyrics are typically sharp, reflecting righteously on "Systemic Extortion", the parlous state of truth and more, the music unspools along almost cosily familiar tracks. [Jun 2025, p.105]