The first disc of 4CD retrospective of their early mid-90s work is an embarrassment of riches. [Feb 2012, p.84]

The best tracks ooze a kind of drowsy melancholy. [Feb 2012, p.86]

With everything slathered liberally in reverb, Ester is wrong in all the right ways. [Feb 2012, p.90]

Be Strong is warm and easy comfort food for recessionary midlife ravers. [Feb 2012, p.90]

The sound's core remains Matthew Caws' candyfloss voice, but Doug Gillard's guitar adds mettle. [Feb 2012, p.94]

Strange Weekend drifts and delights. [Feb 2012, p.97]

You're left wondering how much more impressive Wilson's stroking pipes might sound with less gauche material. [Feb 2012, p.92]

The content is often too light and derivative to suggest they really are saviors in waiting. [Feb 2012, p.89]

This captures The Cure at their crowd-pleasing best, an ageless band reveling in their past. [Feb 2012, p.83]

There is, as usual, a lot of brass on cake's sixth album, a flourish that seem idiosyncratic 20 years ago but now leaves them sounding a little stale. [Feb 2012, p.83]

An album that pores over the passing and the past with such defiant, deadpan nobility. [Feb 2012, p.78]

This is a more low-key collection. [Feb 2012, p.94]

Unsophisticated but utterly infectious. [Feb 2012, p.102]

A splendid showcase of their cavalier eclecticism, [Feb 2012, p.105]

It's well-crafted, but clunky. [Feb 2012, p.105]

Quality is spotty, though. [Feb 2012, p.106]

Let's Go eat A factory is not a brilliant album and of itself, but it does cast guided By Voices in a slightly different light. [Feb 2012, p.95]

The Little Willies keep things gorgeously spartan, with barely an unnecessary note placed anywhere. [Feb 2012, p.93]

Even at its best, Given To The Wild sounds like British Sea power without the esoteric charm, which is hardly the heartiest of recommendations. [Feb 2012, p.91]

It's hard to conceive of a more thrillingly romantic record than this. [Feb 2012, p.85]

Clear Heart Full Eyes is a low-key triumph, containing some of the most emotionally satisfying work Finn has yet produced. [Feb 2012, p.82]

The album sags in the middle, descending into slick electro-rock territory worryingly reminiscent to Garbage, but the good songs are terrific. [Feb 2012, p.81]

This Is Christmas [is] neither turkey nor cracker but a sweetly silly trifle. [Jan 2012, p.86]

Pleasant, but hardly original. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Altogether, a fascinating portrait of a man making sense of both himself and his times. [Dec 2011, p.94]

As ever with such pumped up reissues, the original album is still where the value does or doesn't lie. Most of Quadrophenia has stood the test of the decades better than might be expected. [Dec 2011, p.97]

It's bookended by two tracks that pastiche liquid funk and jungle with such faithfulness they might seem pointless to anyone but nostalgic former ravers, but in between there's much to love. [Jan 2012, p.104]

All totally fine, of course, but next time a little passion and personality won't go amiss. [Jan 2012, p.103]