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.