Finding inspiration in the current climate, Taylor has created a modern blues masterpiece for troubled times.

With its cohesive vision, it also proves that, properly curated, the material in Prince’s Vault contains a body of work that would rival Dylan’s Bootleg Series for both quality control and cultural importance. The next volume can’t come quick enough.

Painful itself remains essential listening. The extra tracks add context and plenty of magical moments; fans will be beside themselves.

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.

While there’s plenty of thrilling rock’n’roll here, his faith also gives us some flat-out gorgeous moments.

If music that sounds as if it might come off the rails at any moment is your cup of tea, this album is for you. [Oct 2024, p.103]

Mbongwana Star concoct an abrasive sound barrage of heavily distorted rumba grooves, here accompanied by post-punk guitar slashings. Channelled through Farrell’s electro blender on the likes of Nganshe, Masobele and the jaw-droppingly brilliant single Malukayi, it becomes a modernised, starkly original strain of dub that suggests fresh tributaries for a rapidly evolving music.

Might be his best effort yet. [Oct 2024, p.102]

Mavis Staples is an international musical treasure, and here you’ll find the recordings that cemented her standing as a living legend.

The Irish singer's third album smartly juxtaposes the traditional and the modern. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Throughout the album, vibrant melodies and guitars come accompanied by gnawing doubts and dense, agitated settings. Even the dreamy Capricorn wears its soundscape like a shroud, while Hope's plea for release evokes The National at their most elegantly fraught. [May 2024, p.105]

If you only buy one multi-disc set by soul legends whose work spans seven decades, make it this one.

Testing her vocals as much as her songwriting, Howard emerges as one of the boldest talents around. [Feb 2024, p.101]

Although Alex Farrar's production is slightly more refined, that only means vocalist Karly Hartzman's conspiratorial storytelling is crystal clear and the North Carolina band's musicianship is thrown in sharp relief. [Oct 2025, p.133]

Making up for lost time, Strut have produced a collection that’s broad in scope, detailed in its sleevenotes and packed with a raft of outstanding music.

All in all, it’s an exhaustive trawl through this proud provincial stronghold’s extraordinary creative archive and arguably the definitive guide to our trends in the north.

Sorrows Away is a landmark album by an extraordinary band, full of brutal truths, hope, and moments of musical transcendence that will resonate for generations to come.

Handled with a care the world has refused them, these characters' tales make for devastatingly immersive listening. [Feb 2025, p. 103]

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]

They’ve created an album that manages to combine grief, self-loathing and a realisation that life’s better played honest, with a fine-tuned, brutal sound: something like bent sheet metal being hammered straight. Yet it remains listenable, so very listenable.

It finds House on spine-chilling form with clear vocals and stunning slide guitar on tracks such as Pony Blues, Preachin’ Blues and Death Letter. The re-mastering, courtesy of The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, is also superb.

Songs reflect on his outsider past (The Ballad Of The Hulk, Young Icarus), deal directly with the writer’s block he feared happiness would bring (Writing) but now boast a welcome immediacy and intimacy as he lays his new life proudly bare. ... It sure took a while, but the Smog has finally lifted.

12 is a bright, fresh joy, lovingly tooled for pure uplift. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

Between fleeting romances and the railroad, the result serves robust snapshots of self-discovery in resilient motion: nodding to the climax of Titanic in closer Ogallala, The Past ... clings to life in the face of loss. [Feb 2024, p.101]

It’s a record to fall in love with.

The passion in ANOHNI’s voice lifts meandering mid-album cuts Can’t and Scapegoat. But the Marvin Gaye-indebted Why Am I Alive Now is the standout.

From Wanna Sip’s opening videogame blitzkrieg to the Blade Runner drones of Mustn’t Hurry, Plunge is a complete thrill.

i/o is an impeccable reawakening.