The narrative of Five Leaves Left is long and complex. Now that it has been told, in words and music, the record’s greatness is surely only enhanced. This release is the culmination of a remarkable project for which we should all be grateful to Gabrielle Drake and the archival team.

This is a record you need to keep listening to and finding new nuances. The sheer scope of material here will keep you entertained, thrilled and occasionally a little bit freaked out for years to come.

These unreleased tracks are a nice glimpse behind Prince’s purple curtain, and provide a tantalizing hint at the potential treasures that await us within his Vault. But a discerning ear will easily identify why these songs didn’t quite make the cut for the soundtrack and remained locked away for so long. ... The original Purple Rain soundtrack, however, still sounds fresh, vital, and impassioned.

he Basement Tapes are an integral part of music history. Here they are, warts and all, the reality for once a near-match for the bloated myth.

When compared to the mixing and progression of the original, it presents the same odd feeling for the same old record: you can see one of the greatest records of the 70s held captive by a spare mistake here and there. Held together, the original and its remixes could be pieced into Band on the Run’s finest hour.

He worked tirelessly to perfect these songs. And it’s a revelation to hear just how he got there, and the compelling missteps and musical frustrations he experienced along the way.

There’s a wealth of delicious treats held within this set to more than sate your curious appetite.

Jah Wobble’s reggae influenced sub-bass lines were the perfect foil to the ice cold (let’s not say angular) riffs of Keith Levene, which gave rhythm to Lydon’s musings of death and boredom perfectly, making Metal Box a true a milestone in British rock music.

Some albums are worthy of such electric apprehension, and the chains leashing this poetic, wit-filled, ramshackle beauty should be broken. Fuck it. Fetch the bolt cutters. This feels special.

It's a tumultious mixing pot of important issues, personal emotion, raw refrains, and cotagious hooks that makes their words hammer straight home.

KID A MNESIA (including Kid A and Amnesiac in full, alongside a disc of rarities and off-cuts, which includes many pleasant discoveries, such as an uncomplicatedly majestic alternative version of “Like Spinning Plates”) suggests that Radiohead got there first, most boldly (in the context of the music that had built their ‘brand’), and arguably with the most significant creative gain.

If you want to find a remaster that’s worth your time and money, then Suede is the gem to look into at this very moment.

The result is a really excellent album: uncompromising, thoughtful, and with enough buried complexities to keep people arguing for years to come.

A rich, shifting tapestry of grief, beauty, tailspinning disorientation, and illuminating snatches of lucidity.

The 25th anniversary reissue offers a disc of live tracks, and a full set of demos and early versions--interesting historical documents for the completest. But the real joy of the reissue is how it prompts those of us who have moulded ourselves around it, or had it play for years almost subconsciously in the distance, to reconsider its place in our lives: to hold it up to the light and see that it is miraculous.

The remastering work across the whole album is more subtle than might have been feared in that it does not draw attention to itself, but simply and effectively brings out more clearly than before the (positive) group dynamics and the sonic range. .... The three records are in an attractive tri-fold sleeve, though it would have been good, for such a lavish and correspondingly expensive product, to have the paper inner sleeves for both the studio album and the live one poly-lined.

Rough and Rowdy Ways is long, intricately woven and illuminating as a medieval tapestry, and just as precious. It’ll make you cry, it’ll make you tear your hair out, it’ll make you gasp with awe.

Yes, fourteen years is a long time to wait between records. But, when the end product is this good, it might just be worth the wait.

It’s impossible to consider this release outside of its original context. With no other albums to compare this to at the time, it sounded life affirming, with its promise of white lines, gin and tonics and taking us away.

At fifteen tracks, the album’s club-friendly repetitiveness can make it a bit of a stretch to get through, especially because a few tracks feel less essential than the rest. But overall, it’s still surprisingly exceptional as a front-to-back listen.

Granted, introspection is nothing new for the Newham MC, whose past works have tackled cancer, colourism and voting abstention—but here he lays bare his own story with disarming frankness.

With A Comforting Notion, Orme moves between dejection and expostulations of lyrical and musical outrage, one moment wallowing in nihilism, the next celebrating the mysteries of birth, sex, death, and creativity. She has clearly absorbed many of popular music’s important templates, asserting a multifaceted voice that captures life’s highs, lows, and in-betweens.

Death and loss have always been topics mined by Cave, but this may be the most visceral and powerful portrait of those feelings he’s ever painted.

It’s not just that all seven albums are of serious musical worth; together, as the Sleater-Kinney back catalogue, they feel like they have some genuine historical value, too.

Motomami is the sound of an incredible voice indulging in her pop fantasy and excelling at it, but she makes sure to remind us as often as she can that really, she can do it all.

The desire she sought to turn into on the title track is fully realised in these mesmerising and wholly unique soundscapes.

On this Deluxe Edition, remixes fill out the majority of the extra material.... Yet in a way, it points to the downside of the album, and the fact that sometimes the Compass Point All Stars can steer away from Jones’ dynamic connection between an audience and herself.

One Foot in Front of the Other is joyful and unpretentious – Griff seems to have indeed found her footing in the industry and it doesn’t look like she’ll be leaving anytime soon.