This year's 'Stankonia.' [Sep 2001, p.96] [Review of UK version]

Inside there’s one masterpiece and three very fine records, all remastered. ... As on most of Hard Luck Stories, the remastering is barely noticeable, but the previously unreleased bonus tracks are more notable.

The band shift tempos and settings constantly, veering into the space rock of Tangerine Dream and the kosmische jams of Can. In these juxtapositions between styles, Blood Incantation find an operatic drama as big as all outer space. [Oct 2024, p.33]

This slice of weird-rock from a more contented American decade is playful and preposterous in equal measure. [Feb 2009, p.89]

It’s astonishing that they managed to come up with several of the most thrilling pieces of primal UK R’n’B, before going on to invent the rock opera, following one of the more creatively intriguing examples of ’60s pop’s transition from mod to psychedelia.

It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]

The complete recording reveals many (until-now) hidden delights that we can enjoy in full. [Nov 2008, p.89]

The best rapper this country's ever produced, period.... Next to Dizzee Rascal everybody looks pale, uninteresting and irrelevant. [Sep 2003, p.98]

The 23-track set--material oft-mired in legal entanglements--which range from hit for others, to darkly melodic deep catalogue gems. Diamond himself provides highly entertaining liner notes. [Jul 2011, p.82]

It's become a cliche to treat every latter-day Cohen album like a potential swansong but it's hard to imagine a richer, finer or more satisfying finale than this. [Nov 2016, p.18]

There’s more, too much more, to come, but for now, Volume One will do just fine.

This is second-tier Sabbath, arriving at the waning of their imperial phase. But that’s still a formidable prospect. ... Also included is a mostly unheard North American show from 1975 that proves the band were still bringing the goods live, especially on a surging “Children Of The Grave”. [Jul 2021, p.41]

Though disparate, it's some legacy. [May 2016, p.90]

This is still music with a lot of virtuosity, and a great many notes, but it and its players are living its adaptability, as the evidence reveals all we have previously believed this composition to be, a confluence of free improvisation and what later became “spiritual jazz”. [Dec 2021, p.43]

Laced with enough blue-eyed longing to make the most diehard Gram Parsons fan weep with wonder and the sort of verbal acuity that would give even Dylanologists pause for thought, Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record. [May 2003, p.94]

Dove Ellis arrives fully formed on this self-produced debut. [Jan 2026, p.30]

This is the best Raw Power has sounded since it was first humiliating people's turntables in the 1970s.

The larger-than-life Elton of the live stage gets a workout on "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and "Benny And The Jets," pounding rockers on the most impressively diverse collection in his catalogued. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Tightly structured, lavishly orchestrated, brilliantly realised. [May 2019, p.18]

Simple, graceful, moving, tender. [Nov 2024, p.26]

Compared with the highly structured Ghosteen (a double album meditation on grief and spirituality, complete with intermission), Carnage is a more concise though no less ordered record. Much as the Bad Seeds’ songs now push into oceanic drift, Cave’s narratives move between worlds fictional and not, the horrific and the consoling. [Mar 2021, p.20]

The Love Below... comprises the most sublime pop music heard on record this year. [Dec 2003, p.118]

Sumptuous and sprawling, his major label debut comfortably backs up the hype. [Oct 2012, p.86]

Here are profound expressions of timeless love, nostalgic memories of relationships past, reflections on fulfillment, grief, desire, belonging and habitual non-belonging. [Aug 2023, p.35]

These delectable hookfests metaphorically parallel Hadreas's move from the gloom of his Seattle hometown to his new base in sunswept L.A. [Jul 2020, p.33]

Though the variable recording quality of the later tracks can hinder their impact, the performance captured at First Ave and newly restored by engineer Beau Sorenson roars and gnashes and seethes with enough intensity to collapse the 40-year gap between then and now. [Dec 2025, p.45]

The performance of a lifetime. [Dec 2020, p.27]

An uncommonly thoughtful victory lap, which deserves--and has received--a handsome recorded memorial.