It's the sound of an endlessly curious mind in love with the possibilities of sonics and melody and a very welcome reinvention. [Apr 2024, p.103]

And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is a rich, nuanced and brilliant reflection of a world in turmoil.

Purple Mountains is no return to form – Berman left us in 2009 with no discernible lapse in quality – but a surprisingly welcome return, given the shift in quality contained herein. A purple patch, if you will, but a far deeper one than you would expect. Deep purple it is, then.

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.

Her most assured album yet and one that will undoubtedly garner her some well-deserved attention.

Like Hacquard, Fussell has the gift of the gab, born to tell his tales with a dark humour that raises these fabulous fables up to splendid life.

One of the most remarkable albums of an inimitable career.

Four decades on, the enduring tales of ego clashes and drug-fuelled disarray have overshadowed the shows themselves, yet this painstakingly compiled set comes as something of a revelation.

With hints of minimalism, psych rock, and even Gregorian chant to be found, Reaching For Indigo is rich, dark and incisive; a work of immense beauty.

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.

Lloyd creates sound tapestries that are by turns ethereal (Abide With Me), haunting (Desolation Sound), and imbued with the evocative earthiness of the blues (Chulahoma). [Dec 2025, p.90]

The finest album of Tillman’s career to date, it should have the staying power to make the end-of-year lists.

They remained off all save the hippest of radars, yet this exhaustive 80-track anthology incorporating their complete studio recordings and an exuberant bonus live set shows that they nonetheless amassed a fearsome catalogue.

Wet Leg’s debut album is simultaneously of its time, ahead of its time, and evokes past times.

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.

Dalton gets her dues and other voices gain welcome exposure.

It’s worth reminding yourself that the swarming deeps, lo-fi thumbprints and careworn erudition of Bowler Hat Soup--released in a limited run of 500 vinyl copies--would represent a career-best achievement for a preternatural craftsman of any age.

Witty, wise and wonderful. [Dec 2024, p.108]

The album manages to transcend genre, but never once feels disjointed. Any mis-steps are quickly developed into something bigger, and no single noise ever outstays its welcome.

With diss track No Fruit as a droll closing note, the result is a seductively shape-shifting affair: sometimes affecting, sometimes witty, always captivating. [Aug 2025, p.105]

The real gold is in tracks that didn’t make the final album, such as the funked-up Autologic and a jazz workout, Darkness Of Greed.

This is a great place to start--and possibly to end.

Another deceptively sparse collection, the sonic progression has been developed still further, several songs enhanced by hushed, brooding electronica. But the words surprise and dazzle like never before. [Jun 2026, p.102]

Even if Clapton is the only member surviving to see it, at last they get to say goodbye on a suitably representative monument.

Arguably The Horrors’ best album yet. V, it would seem, is for Victory.

While some may sneer at the glitches and production tricks that pepper the record, thinking them mere gimmicks, those who stick around long enough will be rewarded by a string of mature, thoughtful songs emerging from their concealment, gradually revealing a little more of themselves with each play.

The attendant singles, EPs and B-sides distil their career into manageable chunks that tell the surface story, but the real gems lie in the albums themselves--each of which is also being reissued singly.

Rawlings emerges from his usual behind-the-scenes role with considerable originality and quiet authority on an album of entirely original songs.

Such is the unrelenting flood of language and emotion from this remarkable performance that it’s difficult to take everything in on first viewing and repeated listens become essential to experiencing the fullness of it all. ... We can just be glad that this particular spell of lightning was bottled so beautifully.

Their unpredictability and magnetic power remain undimmed by the years.

There’s an ethereal feel, something that transcends the boundaries of folk, a gentleness yet something more, helped by the guitar of Richard.

Surgical Steel is both muscular and accessible enough to appeal to metal fans of almost all stripes.

Nightmare Logic says it all over eight tracks in a damn near perfect 35 minutes.

Simz takes on several different genres, handling punk, samba and soul. The atmosphere is dark at times, but emotional honesty is always the priority: whatever style Simz tackles, she delivers it with impressive commitment. [Jun 2025, p.103]

These are stripped-back songs rich in detail and full of heart, studded with everyday moments and cultural references. [Apr 2025, p.101]

As ever, a warm and humane kind of marvel

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.

Bob Stinson wouldn’t see out the rest of the year as a Replacement as his damaging behaviour got the better of him, but he’s on fire here, showboating around with utter joie de vivre – Color Me Impressed is a riot of total abandon, check his solo on a raucous Favorite Thing. The irritating sorts who witnessed The Replacements in their wild pomp will never tire of reminding you of the fact. This explains why.

A richly rewarding set from a songwriter growing with each release.

Overall, the album's sense of play is strong and, like its predecessor, the good ultimately wins out. [Mar 2024, p.102]

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.

Later songs Bear and Cleaning Out The Rooms are rewoven to even more emotional effect than in their previous guises, on the Zeus EP and Valhalla Dancehall long-player respectively.

Iit’s actually every bit as tantalising, sumptuous and fully-realised as its illustrious predecessor.

As anyone cognisant with the likes of Tuff Life Boogie, Putta Block and Butterflies 4 Brains already knows, these discs aren’t without their misfires, but when doubled with their respective A-side partners, the likes of No Bulbs, Wings, Lucifer Over Lancashire and Brix’s majestic LA all lend their weight to the argument that--regardless of their chart positions--The Fall are long overdue recognition as one of the great British singles bands of the past 40 years.

This is a thoughtful, and thought-provoking, set of songs from a writer whose responses to the world around him illustrate an ever-deepening maturity, which is intriguing to chart across his four solo releases to date.

Highlights come thick and fast, but toe-tapping and self-referential opener Enjoy The Ride, the 70s funk of 1972 and the exquisitely expressive Let it Burn do a good job of framing this exciting release. [Sep 2024, p.130]

The set ends with a trio of songs from a 1964 BBC session; the sound quality may be poor but those voices shine through, utterly peerless nearly 50 years on.

Harking back to Automatic Midnight and Suicide Invoice more than it resembles its immediate predecessor, this is one electrifying comeback. In short, Jericho Sirens absolutely smokes.

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).

On Teens Of Denial, Car Seat Headrest makes his case for being leader of the pack.

True, tangible contrasts in their approaches to singing emerge, with Katie’s voice often soaring above the backdrop and Allison’s delivery more often immersed in the arrangements. Yet when they harmonise, as on supremely confident album standout Wasteland, they sound innately simpatico. [Christmas 2025, p.134]

The meditatively plodding drums are off-putting if focused on too deliberately, but there is little else to fault here for those who like to zone out into infinity, with the 17-minute long closer being particularly peachy.

The Night Chancers tackles big themes within tight restrictions – namely, masculinity at the start of the 2020s. But though filmic in its scope, these 10 vignettes are economically plotted (the album is just 30 minutes long), with a through-line that takes you just far enough before leaving you to your own conclusions about these characters’ motives.

Once I Was An Eagle represents a bold, adventurous step forward that’s resulted in her most fulfilling work yet.

Heart’s Ease is ample evidence that Shirley Collins still has the ambition, passion and guts to not only document where folk has come from but where it’s going. A lodestar, indeed.

It all adds up to a life well-lived, in affecting songs.

Despite the sheer weight of material on offer you’ll struggle to find an inch of fat. With its forward-thinking, deep-searching nature counterbalanced by a natural warmth and populist, groove-heavy approach, it’s another hugely accomplished work by a man whose prolific run of form shows no signs of abating.

Rising above the occasion, Rickie is still getting up close and personal with the listener.

Highlights abound, but it's hard to beat the sorrowful strains of Double Business Bound and its swirl of piano and steel guitar, or the overhauled Tom Petty jangle of Taught By Experts. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

Elusive but unerringly questing and beautiful, Camelot thinks bigger than any billboard. [Christmas 2024, p.130]

It's an edgy, sometimes brilliant, jazz-meets-art-rock mash-up. [Nov 2025, p.92]

2002’s Title TK was a gentler, more measured and still wholly satisfying record, but its predecessor still holds pride of place in most fans’ strawberry hearts.

This is a proper major work, revealing an artist at ease with himself without resting on his laurels. In short, it is the sound of confidence. A Kind Revolution could well be Paul Weller’s greatest album to date.

Joy In Repetition carries on where last year's augmentation of their debut album, Coming On Strongerer, left off. [Oct 2025, p.122]

If ever a record sounded like a herd of elephants, this is it.

Not since Bon Iver’s aforementioned reinvention or even Radiohead’s Kid A have a relatively mainstream band made such an assured volte-face, wilfully pushing their audience away while they revisit, remake and remodel the tension that made them so very precious in the first place. Fierce and beautiful. Low are back.

Records of this clout and calibre are ringing endorsements that Crowell is his own man.

Ultimately, it's yet another great set of songs from one of America's best. [May 2026, p.102]

It pulses with synths and electronic soundscapes overlaid by harp and violin, as if the early, experimental Pulp re-emerged as an electro Velvet Underground.

Respectful, then, but not set in aspic.

Far more than an indulgent side project, A Light For Attracting Attention deserves to be taken on its own merits as a daring, invigorating and often very moving piece of work in its own right.

The cloistered and unwilling girls’ father’s attempts to get them to do a Herman’s Hermits left them more in line with enjoyably sloppy garage rock. In fact, they went so far out as to prefigure post-punk’s plangency and jittery inclusivity: they were essentially The Raincoats, a decade ahead of time.

Soul Of A Woman finds Jones bowing out in the finest form, somehow filling the space between Gladys Knight and Etta James.

The innate beauty of The Beta Band [is] unfulfilled potential aligned to a stubbornness that would never betray artistic ideals; a punch in the guts followed by a raspberry in the face.

Perhaps their most impressive, consistent and varied offering to date.

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

Lament For Nepal is one of three love letters to the earthquake-ravaged Kathmandu Valley. A stark Nepali bell opens and closes this haunting piece, though as is so often the case with Chapman, the English pastoral qualities of the composition are equally compelling.

Everything works. .... Genius. [May 2025, p.105]

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

Racing through 13 tracks in just 30 minutes, their third album (and first for new label, Domino) is no less succinctly potent. [Christmas 2025, p.135]

The Mountain is a rich, rewarding take on living with and after loss, brimming with feeling, character and vibrant pop purpose. [Feb 2026, p.100]

Inevitably, it’s a time capsule, rather than a new album proper, though the best moments make you wonder what might have been.

There are moments of relative sonic reserve here (the understated The Ceiling Underground; the lithe indie-pop of Inhospitable/Hospital; the bending shoegaze riff of Chestwound To The Chest), but – as with the tumultuous finale of TV People Still Throwing TVs At People – it’s an album which is largely turned up to 11, emotionally and sonically. [Mar 2026, p.104]

Disc One harbours new material, and the second some of their gems from the last few years; the quality is generally very high and there is much creativity, leaving the mind racing to catch up.

In a way, Simple Songs picks up where Insignificance left us: a smooth, heavily layered and structured approach to the craft (betraying the album title) underpinned with some of the most biting, surreal and often hilarious lyrics indie rock currently offers.

Old sweetens the deal, with tracks as good as anything from previous releases. However it’s New that intrigues, confuses, saddens and ultimately tempts you back with its sheer vulnerability--this is far deeper than the cash grab landfill this reunion could’ve spawned.

An album of layered, witty and fully felt elisions. [Sep 2025, p.105]

Tillman sounds abundantly alive: flushed with wit and luminous melodies, his songcraft remains an inexhaustible pleasure. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Luminescent Creatures confirms Aoba as one of folk music's most consistently beguiling artists. [Feb 2025, p.102]

Saving Grace may sound organic, but make no mistake; this carefully curated mix of British and American influences, both ancient and modern, clearly bears Plant’s personal stamp. [Oct 2025, p.128]

It’s difficult to imagine many better rock albums being released this year; it’s the record Springsteen fans wish he had in him.

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.

More than the sum of its parts. ... In returning to half-finished songs of the past with the renewed verve of the present, Callahan is constructing a future that looks likely to provide some of his best work.

This follow-up to 2012’s magnificent Poor Moon is no less exemplary than its predecessor.

Beautiful, dark and mischievous, this is an album which is sure to baffle and delight in equal measures.

The phenomenal Revolutionary Spirit reveals that while Manchester copped the lion’s share of the critical plaudits during this epochal post-punk period, the quality of Mersey was also second to none.

For the Can-curious, a remarkable place to start. .... Thoroughly recommended. [Dec 2024, p.94]