As with Robed In Rareness, the music here is insular, at times verging on the claustrophobic, though Butler again looks out to his wider network, granting features on all but one of the collection's seven track. [May 2024, p.105]

As she breezes past 70, the mood of Dolly’s songs is inevitably nostalgic and retrospective.

Capsule Sickness boasts a warmer tone, if one that lacks direction, unlike the fuller sound of Crux with its sharply distorted, decidedly un-humanlike “vocals”. Other tracks stalk the no-man’s land between noise music and techno, constantly threatening to stomp on any unexploded landmines just to see how impressive a sound that might make.

Songs like Fire Burn and Close The Door show the band still have a passionately political edge, and Bounce is a worthy addition to their canon.

Motion Set has songs--channelling Blue Cheer, Crazy Horse and Velvet Underground by proxy--but they just seem like context provision for Rogers who, even this deep into his career, keeps jettisoning the most luminescent, surging six-string gymnastics since Paul Leary’s psych-pimping turns on Butthole Surfer’s exquisite Hairway To Steven.

This isn’t an album in the Simon & Garfunkel mould, a folk-tinged duo with a good-humoured foray into the past. There’s barely a guitar in sight, instead all violins and cellos, just a touch of electro going on amid the orchestrations that make it, at times, dark and moody, and always thoughtful and imaginative. The orchestrations are deftly arranged, far from simply a star singing with strings attached. [Christmas 2024, p.128]

Tull’s strangely titled 24th studio effort breaks no new ground, yet would fit seamlessly into the band’s run of polished 80s albums like Crest Of A Knave and Rock Island. [Mar 2025, p.105]

The leaping chorus of Exile Rag’s hysterical country-rock, Jon Spencer-ish juke-joint holler of Belmont (One Trick Pony), the Dylan-indebted Slice & Delta Queen and fell-off-a-barstool theatre of Fake Magic Angel are vivacious vagabond story-songs with vim and character to spare. A colourful cast of wayward angels and thrill-seeking beatniks populates their fringes vividly.

There doesn’t appear to be much of a connection between any of the songs, and you’ll have to be fairly willing to wander through the wreckage to find much of any delight.

Angels & Ghosts won’t draw you in immediately and it does contain several lumbering, repetitive tracks that neither move nor entertain. But after a few listens, you may begin to see the light.

Once more riotous than riot grrrl, Luscious Jackson return as a welcome blast of old school New York grit, happily still brandishing their smouldering, idiosyncratic magic.

Overflowing with gnarled pop melodies and stuttering beats, Sweatbox Dynasty may be decidedly askew, but the manipulations and distortions simply add character to what is in fact a very listenable album.

Aureate Gloom continues in this vein but, while Sylvianbriar was Barnes’ most mellow offering yet, this album is more aggressive and troubled.

There’s nothing here as inventive as the ambient electro, hip-hop, psych, and string-orchestra versions made by the amateurs and semi-pros who embraced the project 18 months ago. There are, however, some very good takes indeed.

Hexadisc is, for the most part, a difficult listen that doesn’t really seem particularly groundbreaking.

It took several listens for the potions on Move Through The Dawn to take effect. ... Sometimes, slow burners provide the best flames.

These eight experimental tunes combine the old and the new, but funnel the former through the latter to such an extent there’s very little distinction between them. It’s an approach that’s much more successful on the shorter tracks here.

The works of a mature band with a confident mix of musical hooks, earworm choruses and a direct beat.

True, goofy lyrics are littered about, and the questionable Babble On seems a misfiring pot-shot at global religion/terrorism, but Subculture is a surprisingly potent cocktail: far more insightful and balanced than it might first get mistaken for.

The result is that each side cancels the other out, rendering it somewhat ineffective.

An album of adroitly chosen covers and something more. Poke around in its shadows and the songs often investigate the idea of putting on a front as a kind of catharsis, their ravaged depths trawled for high drama.

Acoustic At The Ryman is an unplugged album done right. A live record that’s not just for hardcore fans, it’s a must for all lovers of alt.country.

With just a couple of standout tracks, this isn’t earth-shattering stuff--but it will resonate with existing Warpaint admirers, introducing Lindberg’s intoxicating siren call and reminding of the unique potency of her pin-sharp bass playing.

While this is a project of inherently limited appeal, many of its 14 tracks certainly work better than one might otherwise expect.

The band’s writing and performance is so tight it’s actually become uptight and as one accessible masher follows another, Only Ghosts reveals itself to be regrettably one-dimensional.

They focus on the mundane without giving much life to it, leaving the songs hypnotic when they’re playing, but hard to remember when they’re not.

While not entirely lacking new ideas (the louche, second version of Infinite Content would make Wilco proud), Everything Now feels like a brainstorming idea with one too many executives in the boardroom.

The result, unsurprisingly, is a record that’s both maudlin and wistful.

While fans can rest assured that rampage is still on the menu, be prepared to well up, too.

Plenty for 80s collectors to appreciate, then, but this deserves a wider hearing.

Their legs haven't gone entirely, but this feels more weathered warhorse than Warhol. [Apr 2024, p.103]

Following austere lament Ruins is the album’s final track, Death of the Ego. Calmingly sparse, its dignified strums bring to a close an album of great sensitivity.

Particularly bad is For The Kids, which could come straight from an amateur production of High School Musical (complete with repellent husky spoken-word middle eight), while the just up-to-scratch Beck track, Time Wind, and his presence on the record as a whole, only really serves to illustrate how poor the songs now are.

The songs aren’t a huge departure from Folds’ regular style, with sweet melodies, vocal harmonies and lyrics that switch between the quirky and the emotional.

Words To The Blind doesn’t really stand for anything. Nor are its interludes or passages particularly interesting or exciting. Perhaps that’s the most Dada thing about it.

If you want to hear the emphasis of some of Callahan’s most satisfyingly minimalist lyrics shift slightly in this foreign landscape, this is a keeper. Otherwise, it’s merely a cool, respectful diversion that’s way better in practice than it looks on paper.

Over the 20 tracks spread over two discs, Steve lives every subtle nuance he wrings out of his voice or guitar. Now one of our most articulate links to a vanishing past, he deserves to be treasured.

As Light Return pushes The Telescopes’ sound to newer, often much darker places. It’s a bracing and occasionally totally disarming listen, but utterly compelling throughout.

While there isn’t anything here that leaps out with quite the immediacy of Dunn slam-dunks such as Face The Nation, everything has the assured touch of a master, and will undoubtedly re-establish Dunn among the sea of young pretenders currently working in this zone.

I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss is the work of neither dominatrix nor diva. It is, however, Sinéad O’Connor’s most emotive, accessible work in years and could well thrust her back into the limelight all over again.

There are a couple of tracks that veer rather too close for comfort to boy band and eurovision territory, but for the most part, assuming you like the better end of synth-pop, you won’t be disappointed.

Power Of Peace is exactly what it is; people old enough to have long packed up this business, getting down to it, having enormous enjoyment doing it. No one would expect it to touch either artists’ greatest work, but at times, it certainly comes close.

While La Costa Perdida was worth the wait, El Camino Real leaves the listener having enjoyed the trip, but glad to be getting home.

As expected, these 13 tracks live up to Fairport’s high musicianship, and are greatly helped by their rich variety, the maturity in song choices and the breadth of moods they evoke.

Though clearly indebted to Joy Division and Metal Box-era PiL, the band’s two official 45s, Final Achievement and the IV Songs EP, remain compellingly bleak post-punk snapshots, while their lone John Peel session (posthumously released as the Fin EP, and featuring the intense, 11-minute The Fatal Day) reveals just how formidable a unit In Camera were developing into on their own terms.

This suite of songs, from Infestation Of Grey Death and Tower Of Silence to The Last Laugh, sets out Cathedral’s stall once and for all: a metal band whose palette of influences made their songs more than merely headbanging opportunities.

The whole caboodle comes to an interesting end with Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer. An unexpected change of pace, its seven minutes of mid-tempo atmospheric desert rock is wholly at odds with everything that preceded it.

The results are messy, fascinating and frustrating all at once.

His tongue may be in his cheek at least some of the time, but parts of this album feel like the worst excesses of rock opera as applied to dance music.

Santana IV rolls back the years to the time when the band melded spicy percussive Latin grooves with searing blues-rock. Seraphic-voiced Ron Isley fronts a couple of tunes but it’s the spacey, psychedelic instrumental, Fillmore East, and addictive salsa-rock of Anywhere You Want To Go, that impress the most.

While rockers such as Mr Policeman are sufficiently rambunctious (only descending to barroom romping on Willie Dixon’s over-played My Babe), The Rides shine brightest on slower outings such as Stills’ poignant There Was A Place (which sees him lamenting lost friends), Shepherd’s intimate By My Side and Goldberg’s riveting I’ve Got To Use My Imagination, which he wrote in 1973 with Gerry Goffin and became a hit for Gladys Knight & The Pips.

A sequence of aural art installations carved out of sound, a Tate Modern exhibition mounted on a shiny disc, spacious and sparse, repetitive and insistent, haunting and inspired. That makes it disjointed perhaps, but that’s just the diverse nature of its multiple outlooks.

The slower songs could sometimes do with more polish but there's enough doomy intent to keep the devoted happy. [Dec 2025, p.103]

The bleak lyrics are countered by a perky tempo, setting up an interesting tension. If much of the album runs on familiar, well-oiled tracks, The Waves shows what Villagers can achieve when they stretch themselves.

Insular, yes, but in being laid bare it speaks with a strong purpose.

You become mesmerised by Der Kaffee Kocht, its contagious rhythm produced by the rasp of a file, or the clanging Sur Le Ventre, with Peron exhorting in French.

Walk Dance Talk Sing documents something that may work best in the live arena.

Bursting with in-the-moment vitality, it applies a neon topcoat to Gong’s long-established ley lines.

Winter has a distorted, almost industrial grind, fitting incongruously with an uplifting chorus, but saving the best for last, closer After Something is a rather beautiful ballad.

Temple Of I & I is the most rounded and enjoyable album of theirs to date.

Despite the wide range of often contrasting material on offer it hangs together as an exceptionally unified and hugely accessible body of work. [Nov 2024, p.130]

It’s difficult to determine why one session of abstract noise is more thrilling and less tedious than when your mate’s “avant-garde project” bash their instruments discordantly for 50 minutes. It’s not just down to the names on display. There’s a difference. Moore and Hayward play the good kind.

Frontman Jake Webb’s lyrics are often as intricate and tangled as his weaving guitar lines.

The best moments recall Dan Sartain, a man whose moustachioed fashion victim look Pearson seems to have lifted, but whose freewheeling punk rockacountrybilly essence he hasn’t quite distilled.

Some tracks inspire more amusement than may perhaps have been intended.

Summer Of ’13 is a welcome changing of the guard from an occasionally miserablist stalwart and hero. Disregard it at your peril.

It all makes for a low-key effort, which sometimes showcases the band’s skill at crafting neat, 21st-century pop, but all too often fails to spark into life.

This album digs beneath the taut skins of White's kit, charting a mutually invigorating relationship between player and instrument, alternating from visceral frolics to pointillist sensitivity at the drop of a beat. [Jul 2024, p.107]

Await Barbarians largely sounds like a sketchbook, or even an EP, with Taylor working through ideas.

The voice has held up well, the fingers are still nimble and, if you’re a devoted fan, you won’t be disappointed.

Across nine tracks both men stamp their respective identities on the album, with mutual admiration and respect echoing through every bar. The occasional Kinksian flourish sneaks through the speakers, most notably when Dave sounds uncannily like his elder sibling on King Of Diamonds, but in the main this is a generations-spanning love letter written in familial blood.

He breathily conjures up memories of the excellent recent Anohni album, and drops an ominous-sounding male voice choir into the mix for good measure. The industrial vibes are there in the rhythms, but softened immensely by clean Scandi strings. One to keep an eye on.

A hit/miss curio of a record. [Jan 2025, p.104]

These reinventions work best when Campbell's invention pushes Allison's gorgeous voice to the fore. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Praying at the church of Eighties pop and boingy synths - from Madonna to Tears For Fears - they add just enough heavy-ish rock detail to prevent it getting sickly-sweet, and the beaming bravado wins you over. [Feb 2026, p.101]

It’s certainly the best down-to-earth storytelling item to emerge in ages.

While not as refreshing as the previous album, it still feels on occasion as if multiple pop crossovers could theoretically beckon, especially the songs fronted by guest vocalists, including Molly Schnick of early 90s riot grrrls Raooul.

Alt-J’s retelling of this age-old tale of ill repute has less edge than a mesh sack of Babybel cheeses.

It rattles along at a fine old pace, awash with cheek and charm, and is genuinely touching on paean to lifelong friendships The Lads. [Mar 2024, p.103]

Without You, Death To The Lovers and We Are The Flames--showcase Skin’s still-gobsmacking voice and will be welcomed by fans of earlier, underrated heartstring- pluckers like Infidelity (Only You) from the 1996 album Stoosh. The rest of the album is much rowdier, powered by Cass Lewis’s immense, distorted bass and punk-indebted riffs from unsurnamed guitarist Ace.

As a whole it’s all rather wearing; it’s a space oddity that doesn’t quite have lift-off.

That this is a good album should surprise no one; that she managed to make it at all is another matter.

With Bovell subjecting the nimble Pure Ones to his spacy, Channel One-esque trickery and City Of Eyes’ monster groove capable of electrifying the most torpid dancefloor, Honeymoon On Mars is never in danger of getting lost in space.

On the whole, it all helps to convey the peripatetic atmosphere that flows through these two dozen tunes. At the same time, it means the album feels less complete and whole than most ...Trail Of Dead records, but there are moments, such as closer Before The Swim, where it shines bold and bright.

Krieger still has an ear for organists, and moody interplay with Ed Roth, as on the track Samosas & Kingfishers, remains his comfort zone. More genteel than their name would suggest, The Savages are nonetheless consummate players, with textured grooves at their dexterous fingertips. [Mar 2024, p.104]

Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk rarely comes down from the krautrock klouds over the course of its 30-minute running time.

Grey’s skills are undeniable, but this feels too all-encompassing to pass muster as a perfectly rounded album.

[Shivers is] the only weak moment on an otherwise enjoyable release, it sounds phoney, purposely strung-out, as if self-consciously aping Neil Young’s wracked-out Tonight’s The Night.

Although multi-instrumentalist Scott Jacoby’s production reduces the wall of sound to a digital prism, the starker backdrops provide an unobtrusive frame for that towering voice which, while displaying some Marianne Faithfull-style gritty life experience, still sends vintage shivers on her respectful renditions of Sandie Shaw’s Girl Don’t Come, The Beatles’ I’ll Follow The Sun, Ray Davies’ Tired Of Waiting, Gerry Marsden’s Don’t let the Sun Catch You Crying and Lulu’s Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby).

42 minutes of rewarding new music for those who still believe.

Fans of any of the artists involved will be satisfied.

Clearly, Bartos carries the romance and self-aware humour of the “classic” Kraftwerk in his genetic code: the sweet, buoyant, dignified and melodious Nachtfahrt and Hausmusik, for example, breathe the same rarefied European air which rendered The Man Machine and Trans-Europe Express such heady and immaculate touchstones.

A record that’s strongest when at its most unassuming.

Bloodlust is close to being a political metal manifesto of sorts, and a convincing one too--but the gangsta tropes have long outstayed their welcome.

Matador is a multi-part opus of gothic indie via The Stranglers in smacked-out mode, and Walking Home’s classic early 60s feel is enhanced by a splendid end-of-the-pier Hammond organ swell, before falling into wimoweh silliness.

An uninspiring audio fluff. Cruel, after having previously reached such satisfying heights.

A fantastic and powerful rock album, Idol’s return commands attention.