Another winner with their seventh album. A big part of its success is down to smart collaborations. [Christmas 2024, p.131]

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

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]

There are subtler, sometimes surprising, details lurking in the main maelstrom. Also in contrast to that cathartically apocalyptic racket, the duo have added some nice warm brass parts. [Christmas 2024, p.131]

An album that's one long masterstroke. [Christmas 2024, p.132]

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]

Campbell'n'Lanegan-ish duet Driving Nowhere (with Pat Dam Smyth) could use more tension, but the guitar spiked likes of Daily Rituals and Ceremony sow determination and fortitude. [Dec 2024, p.109]

This new remix of the album’s original 11 songs is subtle rather than headline-grabbing, thanks to the sympathetic diligence of triple Grammy-winner Paul Hicks, a longtime friend of the Harrison family. That’s borne out by the softly-softly handling of the previously unheard outtakes, polished for public consumption but never at the expense of their embryonic intimacy. [Christmas 2024, p.123]

Once you’ve finished playing spot the difference it’s a blast. .... And the mono mixes have a vitality and punch often lacking from recent remixes. [Christmas 2024, p.120]

In terms of the original nine-track album, a new stereo mix is designed to bring a warmer ambience to proceedings, and it succeeds especially on The Night Comes Down’s clearly defined separations of May’s many multi-layered guitars, a fuller in-your-face theatricality to Freddie Mercury’s voice (on Great King Rat and Jesus most effectively), and more organically resonant drums throughout. .... This is a record that continues to impress as a groundbreaking hybrid of heavy rock, prog and glam. [Dec 2024, p.97]

The cumulative effect of the 81 tracks that make up Retrospective’s five themed discs – The Best Of Bryan Ferry, Compositions, Interpretations, The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, Rare And Unreleased – is to create less a timelessness than a no-time in which Ferry hangs suspended, a woman hovering over his shoulder… leaving, staying, it’s all the same to the man who’s observing the “in” crowd even as he stands within it, replaying its antics in the projection room of his mind. [Nov 2024, p.89]

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

Orzabel and Smith still superbly soundtrack our mad world. [Dec 2024, p.109]

Here's he's reimagining his own work, and not necessarily the best known. [Dec 2024, p.98]

It captures her on spine tinging versions of 60s mod club favourites. [Dec 2024, p.90]

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

With the hollering title track even lamenting astronomical energy bills, it seems Warmduscher have fuel left in the tank yet. [Dec 2024, p.109]

By the time the album ends with a sprawling I Don't Live Here Anymore, which boasts sparkling keyboards and chiming riffs the emotional catharsis is deeply satisfying. [Dec 2024, p.109]

This wide-ranging collection is a reminder of why Kim deal remains such a powerful inspiration. [Dec 2024, p.106]

It's a record built to last, from an artist both asserting his footing and opening himself wide, embracing the demands of changes big or small. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Community and self-realisation win out on Our Girl's sublime second album. [Dec 2024, p.108]

There's a tight band of bluegrass/country players and the music takes off accordingly. erudite picking alongside intelligent lyrics with subtle rock sensibility. [Dec 2024, p.107]

It's Efterklang's lushest, most straightforward and earwormy album to date. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Gillespie's words can sound like platitudes when they're written down, but his sincerity and the music's sonic freshness and influence-exposing urgency elevate the material, evoking the Primal Scream of 30 years ago. [Dec 2024, p.104]

The quality doesn't let up. [Dec 2024, p.109]

Treated and more elaborately arranged vocals are the fore on Strawberry Hotel. [Dec 2024, p.109]

With the help of collaborators, showcases the full spectrum of a unique talent. [Dec 2024, p.109]

The buoyant Abigail and the jangly dream-pop of Some Sunny Day lend the album some welcome lightness in the face of the melancholy that we all have to endure at times. [Dec 2024, p.108]