It's a warm, happy-go-lucky record dominated by rinky-dinky pianos and honey-sweet harmonies. [Nov 2025, p.105]

An appropriately joyful and celebratory eulogy.

Savages is a feisty record that returns to the familiar blend of hardcore, thrash and groove metal.

It’s messy and, true to its title, chock-full of distortion and fuzz but it’s an organised mess with great instrument placements and wide spaces between the players that allow them to revel in dynamically roaming around these songs.

Dr Robert does, admittedly, provocatively parade his influences on the celebratory, Electric Warrior-style The Sound Of Your Laughter and the Jean Genie-esque strut of The Guessing Game. Yet If Not Now, When? still exudes enough contemporary pizzazz to convince on its own terms

While it’s certainly soundtrack material, anyone with good taste would, for instance, go for the original Strauss and Ligeti over this album’s Hollywood light music take on Hal… and dare we say it, anyone with good taste should know not to attempt the latter.

One thing which has barely changed since their Psalm 69 peak is the Ministry formula of chugging metal machine grooves, newsreel samples and stuck-pig screaming. But, when it works, they can still make the apocalypse sound fun. [May 2024, p.103]

There’s good songwriting in places, but with the artist’s idiosyncrasies effectively airbrushed out by a bloated production, the result is a dull, vapid collection of songs desperate to please.

The emotional climax of The Little Things That Give You Away is one of several moments that promise more than the album as a whole can deliver.

Smith's career detour feels like a rather wan aside from a singer spread somewhat thin. [Christmas 2025, p.135]

The band sorely lacks a frontman of true rock-god proportions to transcend the silliness.

With its garage production job, loud tinny drum tracks and an overriding sparseness hanging between each instrument, Drift resembles a very promising demo tape for an album yet to come to proper fruition.

Helmed by ex-Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine producer Brian O’Shaughnessy, the band’s second release, Everybody’s Dying To Meet You is a shade more confident and fully-realised.

File under late and inessential. [Jul 2024, p.101]

Enjoyable to the core, but not to be taken too seriously as there are so many other bands doing exactly--exactly--the same thing.

Sadly, it’s a plodding, semi-acoustic dirge of little note, while When Shipman Decides--about homicidal doctor Harold--also fails to live up to the shock factor of its title. It makes for a mostly meretricious, self-important record with delusions of grandeur.

Yes, It’s True starts out along a rather pedestrian path of nod-along rock-by-numbers.

Selected Studies Vol 1 is an entirely successful undertaking on its own terms, enriched by the quiet absorption of congruent confederates who intuitively understand that all manner of gods and devils are in the detail.

Signs of progression are, admittedly, belatedly embraced by the ham-fisted, if heartfelt dub-out Serious Business and the bowel-quaking Sunn O)))-style title track, but it’s too little too late.

The main event could have been bloody genius. It isn’t, but it remains fascinating.

Movies are the best comparisons as Faun Fables’ dark yet beautiful songs are utterly cinematic.

To say it’s Stewart’s best album for more than 30 years may, ultimately, not be saying much, but it’s refreshing to hear him at the helm of a high-quality record, to hear him singing with heartfelt vigour, and--perhaps most importantly--having fun.

Re-Mit sounds alive, funny even, as if Smith has made peace with something--possibly his own genius.

The affirmative, feel-good tone is set with the mid-tempo opener, Don’t Leave Me Here, the first of two tunes the blues men co-wrote together.

Though some of the high-tech production gadgetry sounds dated now, back in 1985 it was a fiercely contemporary record. But while time might have blunted its cutting edge, Rubberband, for all its flaws, still fascinates.

With repeated listens, though, the insistent aural assault actually reveals some good ideas, but it’s hard to imagine anyone frequently listening to The Ark Work for pleasure.

What’s also not documented here are The Doors’ performances of Light My Fire and The End, from a second set. Sadly, Peña’s second reel remains buried in a box somewhere, robbing us of fascinating early glimpses of two songs which would grow to gargantuan proportions in the years to come. It’s doubtless as much a frustration for the band as it will be for fans.

Little of the imagination promised by the concept seems to have seeped through into the covers, which are remarkably sedate and faithful for a world supposedly in the grip of two opposing ideological extremes.

The Dears handle such disparate moods, genre fluidity and instrumental complexity with an architect’s precision.

Its 10 short, serrated and occasionally anthemic songs are visceral and idealistic, though the trio’s increasingly keen sense of melody keeps the existential angst in check throughout.

Hold On It’s Easy is in fact one of Cornershop’s most difficult works, for all the wrong reasons.

While the visual presentation is a bit workaday and some of the chosen musical styles already outmoded (dubstep already being ancient history), the tracks work just fine, bristling with multi-layered mystical gibbering.

Produced by David Foster, it’s largely tremendous fun, even if the path on which it walks is rather well worn.

The band have expanded this time round, welcoming in new permanent members Tony Drummond and Walker Teret, and it’s had the effect of creating a much rawer, live-sounding album than its predecessors.

The names here deliver so much that this compilation wins the bloody bout on points.

The mild and tepid Swirling soon becomes rather repetitive, and Like A Moth gets stuck in its own saccharine, twee groove, but the majority of these eleven tracks find the band back on the right, fizzy, fuzzy, frazzled track.

Cut Copy need to learn to make music with the reckless abandon of a good night out--at whichever type of club they end up in.

The lack of personality is most strikingly felt in Kim Deal’s absence.

In its tales of life in mountain towns, of love declared and not returned, of hard decisions made, it has an honesty and a sense of wildness and isolation. It’s all quite beautiful.

An aural pool party for anyone who digs the nu-Baleric compilations of Psychemagik and Too Slow To Disco.

It’s all grimly compelling, but you won’t be whacking it on at any dinner parties. Unless you’re Andy Kaufman.

“The past is a foreign country,” sings a defiant Peters on the reliably impassioned opener In A Broken Promise Land, while both the ensuing title track and the chest-beating Return are powered by the sort of Ben Nevis-sized, heartstring-tugging Celtic guitar figures that made The Crossing such a compelling debut. It does, admittedly, fall short elsewhere.

It’s a relatively muted return, and we can only hope it’s a casual curtain-raiser to something fresher and more tangible to come.

On paper, such an ambitious sonic reinvention could easily be dismissed as an overblown conceit, yet in reality this new Classic Quadrophenia soars.

Snatches of fuzzy guitar, banjo and fiddle drift through, but the main thrust is in the singing, Carthy providing the lucid top notes while her partner is adept at shadowing her with huskier harmony.

The lines are blurred, but there’s no court ruling on whether this is cynical appropriation or genuine homage.

We’re in science fiction territory here; the dystopian synths that glide over the track’s foundations are bleak, yet comforting in their filmic familiarity. The album has its share of pacy moments, too.

Most of the stuff is catchy, with full-fat choruses on the excellent Dropping The Needle and Get On Your Knees, and while the rest of the album doesn’t push out any envelopes it offers up an energy-packed good time.

Cut down to a mini-album, We Can Do Anything would have been better worth the wait.

Hook-laden choruses and seismic riffs don’t feature heavily in the Fufanu sound--and nor should they. Like The Rapture before them, their sound is one of influences absorbed subtly.

While it believes it’s a storm of Ocean Rain-esque majesty, Meteorites fizzles out like it’s just another shower.

The overall impression is of vintage music given a modern snap and kept short and simple for maximum effect.

He and Alexander have also stayed mostly away from the slap-bass and funk drums that made Primus’ early hits so compelling, so don’t expect the usual extravagant workouts. Instead, this album is best viewed as the point where Claypool’s interests in film and music meet at a sort of psychedelic flashpoint.

They’ve now created an album which towers above the nostalgia market which could easily have been their fate.

By track 11, Let Love Lead, you feel you’ve jogged along the cliché-rich, emotion-free AOR road for longer than its 43 minutes and 57 seconds.

This is a one-joke album, but the joke is a good one, and more than a few bona fide country fans will be convinced.

All in All, a fond if sometimes overly polite farewell. [Jan 2026, p.101]

What could have been an embarrassment is a quiet triumph.

Across Six Leap Years serves the weirdest of purposes, pleasing (presumably) both band and fans. Many of these reworks are so slightly different as to possibly only truly satisfy the former, but no matter.

High on ambition, musicianship and charm the end result is a set of well-meaning if often uninspiring afro-rock.

As a Bad Religion record, it’s certainly not gold and you won’t be demanding myrrh.

It’s all very polished, if hardly challenging.

Much of the material is by-the-numbers mainstream pop-rock, which is why the mesmeric Latin jazz groove, Yo Soy La Luz, featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Santana’s drummer wife, Cindy Blackman, stands out.

Tight drums that bring The Smiths to mind hold the whole thing down, as guitars and bass sparkle, their counterpoint (not to mention reverb applied with a trowel) creating a comic-book cool atmosphere throughout. Throw a few saxes into the mix and you’ve got yourself a vintage-yet-modern rock’n’roll classic.

They’ve fashioned a rich and powerfully diverse record.

Shrigley’s work is not for everyone, and Middleton has only a cult following; while Words And Music won’t change either of those facts, the prospect of someone stumbling across this record by mistake makes it more than a worthwhile endeavour.

Storytone’s deluxe edition carries an extra disc of solo takes: mostly Young and ukulele. It’s more palatable, but perhaps doesn’t reveal any more depth to the material.

Elements of it are among the boldest, most enjoyable experiments of his career. .... There are clunkers too. [Christmas 2025, p.132]

Low occasionally summons enough leavening fervour to make a Morrissey album seem worth the time: no small achievement after his dreaded political blather.

It’s loud, crunchy, cacophonous, and a subtlety-free zone--and sometimes that’s more than enough.

Some of these quiet reworks are extremely good indeed; all highlight Burchill’s prowess with an acoustic guitar.

The fun again sometimes tips over into irritating self-indulgence. [Nov 2024, p.101]

As a writer, Dave has always inevitably been overshadowed by Ray, but the album features some of his most articulate and inspired songs to date.

Recorded in Sheffield with crack producer Andy Bell, Afterglow is an ambitious addition to the sounds of a city that is fast becoming the central hub for the UK’s best folk talent.

Sometimes predictably frustrating, sometimes pleasingly fresh, Make-up Is A Lie is a reminder that Morrissey probably couldn’t stop at this stage of the game, much less change. [Mar 2026, p.100]

Sequel To The Prequel’s catchy riffs also induce a sense of familiarity, making it addictive from the off.

A record that struggles to catch fire.

Purists may regard the project as a desecration, but the Flips could have pushed it even further with no complaints from this jury.

If ever an album begs repeated listening, it’s this one, which manages to surprise and reassure at the same time; you’ll want to return to it more than any other post-’83 Floyd album.

Lyrics apart, the opening title track features lush orchestration and twinkling piano used to nice effect throughout. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Never mind that his soulful balladeering doesn’t manage to inhabit all the covers (the buoyant funk of Everyday People in particular), this is a glittering display of a powerful talent lost too soon. Hallelujah for its release.

Despite his heavy pedigree, the poppier songs are some of the best here, the only blot being an honourable but lacklustre run through 20th Century Boy.

The entire programme is executed with credibility and verve.

The opening song Love Is, which he sings with a touch of the Gaelic, could almost be a track by The Waterboys and might easily soundbed one of those ghastly Irish cider ads where implausibly airbrushed Hibernians flaunt their trendy facial hair. He recovers from this false start to concentrate on some ex-pat musings with a side order of standard US FM rock punctuated with bursts of mariachi on Please.

No Pier Pressure is another patchy collection that includes some of his best recent work alongside his most risible.

Global is as pastiche-y as the album’s cartoon-styled portrait sleeve, but no less enjoyable for that.

Walls are punched, tapes are stolen, idols are desecrated... but somewhere in this chaos are tunes worthy of the reputation Chilton tried so hard to ruin.

Despite scoring plenty of high moments, there is a sameness to this collection, which can become trying on repeat listens.

An often flat-out beautiful curio from an inspired mind.

Unexpectedly enjoyable, the only real misfire comes with If God Made Everyone, which starts off like a Quadrophenia outtake before verging into unpalatable mid-90s U2 territory.

It’s experimental in a kitchen sink (including Chris Isaak) way rather than studied and arty à la Everything Everything. Too often, the results are a bit of a mess.

Some of the bombastic stadium moments are so silly they’re fun but the more rustic pieces are where this Starr shines brightest. Speed Of Sound and Shake It Up have good-time rockabilly swagger, while the record’s highlight is So Wrong For So Long: a pedal-steel breakup tune which reaffirms Starr’s scouse-cowboy croon as one of the great lost voices of country music.

Only the hushed Living Lux, which closes the album in delicate velvet drifts, escapes unscathed. It is, sadly, not enough to give Bloc Party redemption.

Theis ruminative reminder that at their core they're equal parts inspired by Cohen and Bowie is a shrewd, often stirring step. [Jun 2025, p.103]

The 16th studio album by the former singer of punk band The Adverts sees a typically fierce set of lyrics set to a bunch of poppy tracks to excellent effect.

Fans of ST’s metal era (basically everything from the late 80s on) will appreciate Lombardo’s solid presence, though there’s a feeling that the master is slightly under-utilised here, more of his Cuban influences would have freshened up the slightly over-familiar sound a bit.

The album may not provoke the US Spring the band hopes for but, as an expression of rancour and frustration, it’s a teeth-baring smasher.

Move on, there’s nothing to see here.