Bolder and more confident in its experimentation. [Jun 2024, p.77]

The widescreen sound suits this career solo artist, and standouts like Boombox and Ten Watt whip up a rollicking hoedown ambience. [Jun 2024, p.75]

At times, like on Hero, King's healing process leads him into R&B slushies that make you miss the crunch of old cuts like Hard Working Man. But this record is real, raw and often beautiful. [Jun 2024, p.75]

It's a very New York record, It's an energetic record, and while the older listener would enjoy some guitar playing frm Gordon - that sort of thing seems to be supplied by Raisen and engineer Anthony Paul Lopez - it's her attitude. not the glitchy beats, that really give The Collective its aggression and fun. [Jun 2024, p.74]

It's been expertly manicured so you can either lie back and float up, up and away on a breeze of pedal steel, or get up close to the speakers and check the references. [Jun 2024, p.80]

Young and Crazy Horse never perform their songs in quite the same way each night, of course, and Fu##in’ Up exemplifies that spontaneous, exploratory spirit. Listening to these geezers whipping up a hurricane of monolithic thud and skronk is always irresistible. [Jun 2024, p.74]

Trademark intimate ballads shine again on startling subway tragedy The Third Rail, Beck uncurling dramatic punctuation, and What Would I Do Without You reaffirming Hunter’s love for wife Trudi with Williams’s counter vocal, closing the set with Hope’s widescreen optimism. [Jun 2024, p.76]

They have directly inspired some truly dire pretenders to the throne in the intervening years, but Dark Matter sees them sweep those bands away, and reset and reclaim their own signature sound. [May 2024, p.72]

It's a complete, rounded work; the 13 tracks dovetail into each other perfectly. [May 2024, p.74]

This eighteenth album, continuing the sophisticated air of their second era with its merger of plush future-rock, graceful gospel folk and organic electro-pop. [May 2024, p.74]

Well worth seeking out. A cracker. [May 2024, p.79]

One Deep River is one of Knopfler's best. These are gorgeous songs, sung in a voice that sounds like it's lived a life that's full. [May 2024, p.74]

This stellar collection of rough, rustic songs will make urbanites cream over its earthly authenticity. [May 2024, p.75]

Bob Vylan have become the loudest, most vital voice of righteous rage in a beaten-down nation. [May 2024, p.78]

Steadily onwards through a flawless second side worth of classic, never-more-accessible Libertines in excelsis, before Songs They Never Play On The Radio causally encapsulates everything The Libertines were and, thankfully, still very much are. [Apr 2024, p.79]

He elects to drag his material through the dirt, and the ramped layers of fuzz and distortion actually improves on the originals. [May 2024, p.75]

[Beautiful People (Stay High) is] a tearaway slice of white-boy soul, so immediate that you'll join the cast-of-thousands vocal by the second chorus. the rest of Ohio Players is almost as good. [May 2024, p.75]

Playing Favorites lacks the career-defining standout that will catapult them into a bigger league, and sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its intriguing parts. They're well on their way, tough. [May 2024, p.73]

This album is the high point of his career, and it could be one of the finest albums you'll hear this year too. [May 2024, p.76]

Alcohol And Cocainemarijuananicotine, is borderline endearing, while Love Thyself reminds us that Taylor-Taylor can still write pop hooks whenever he can be bothered. [May 2024, p.77]

Crow redeems herself somewhat with the useful chorus of the I-love-my-kids closer Waiting In The Wings, but only somewhat. Some good singles, as always, but unfortunately a long way from career highlights Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions. [May 2024, p.79]

Heaven is an adrenalin-charged barrage of intelligently crafted, hook-heavy material, enlivened with hairpin tempo twists, and impressively free of punk cliches. As Hell surges into action with Rise Up's thrusting fusion of shout-along punk chorus and metallic riffing, it's clear they're not playing their heavy side for laughs, using it instead to inject their characteristic sound with well-suited darker aspects on It's All Me and You Wanted War. [May 2024, p.79]

The energy and buoyancy never sacrifice Elbow's innate knack for emotional impact, as Garvey sings with poetic accuracy of the abyss, various hallelujahs and the meaning of love. [Apr 2024, p.82]

He enlists a pan-generational wish list and lets them shine. [Apr 2024, p.81]

It may have been a long wait, but The Mandrake Project is easily one of Bruce Dickinson’s boldest projects, and it goes to show there is almost nothing that this band frontman/fencer/pilot/author can’t turn his hand to. [Apr 2024, p.82]

Mesmerises with tales of sobriety and redemption (it says here) that sound more unapologetically stoned and out there than ever. [Apr 2024, p.83]

Marvellous album. .... A rock'n'roll record that's funkier than a tramp's kacks, more soulful than a gospel convention, warmer than a mother's love and groovier than the Grand Canyon. [Apr 2024, p.78]

Halford and the latest incarnation of Judas Priest are still rattling rafters with this new album of pristine and dauntingly powerful heavy metal. [Apr 2024, p.76]

This is Ministry’s best record since we were all young and good-looking. [Apr 2024, p.78]

The results rock with dynamic, dramatic vigour on Put It Right and Rubicon, while Soord’s ability to tug melodically at heart strings remains in emotive evidence when the storm clouds part on Now It’s Yours and To Forget. [Apr 2024, p.80]

Exposes his long-standing flaws: lyrics with the depth and insight of an astrology column, and songwriting that flashes on brilliance. .... Tracks are redeemed, though, by some spectacularly muscular riffing from guitarist Liam Tyson. [Apr 2023, p.83]

This is fine work indeed. [Apr 2024, p.80]

An iron-clad structural damage-inducing delight from start to finish. Early contender for punk album of the year. [Apr 2024, p.79]

Alkaline Trio temper napalm guitars with a keen sense of melody, placed front and centre on Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs by Hot For Preacher's dark, dramatic opening flourish, and continued with impressive consistency throughout its 11 tracks. [Apr 24, p.76]

The record ends with a burst of Velvets fuzz-rock titled Hey Lou Reid - but it's only fitting on a record that burnishes their legend with such sizzling acid. [Apr 2024, p.76]

There’s a freshness in both words and attitude that’s more than welcome in a world of heritage and excessive respect. So until the long-awaited collaboration between Noel Gallagher and Ian Brown emerges, feast your ears on this hugely enjoyable album. [May 2024, p.78]

Be Right Here retains the simple formula that has made the band such a success: songs, tons of songs.

Despite its subject matter, the Bristol tykes are still sonically and vocally as visceral as ever. [Mar 2024, p.81]

So engaging, you might even forget your phone for 40 minutes. [Mar 2024, p.83]

On a record full of sprawling, guitar solos, textural acoustics and steady drums, J Mascis's plaintive howl of a vocal tops off everything, adding one more layer of poignancy. [Mar 2024, p.81]

At points it's jazzy, then psychedelic, then with the sort of undulating groove that makes you wonder what it might have sounded like if Booker T jammed with the Average White Band. [Mar 2024, p.81]

Quality workmanship. [Mar 2024, p.82]

For the most part, though, Saviors is the sound of reassuring rebellion from the midst of the 21st Century breakdown. [Mar 2024, p.80]

There’s a charming vulnerability to it all, and although they still amp up the rock when necessary – a riff at the heart of Brambles is fittingly prickly – Dark Rainbows is a brooding, subtle, ballad-stuffed affair from a band that refuses to be hemmed in by their own history. [Apr 2024, p.76]

The singer and guitarist's seventh album is a sparkling gem in its own right. [Jan 2024, p.78]

This regular release offers reminder enough of just how special this band is when they're on form. [Jan 2024, p.86]

Disc one's the gold. [Jan 2024, p.87]

Where classic and post rock meet experimentalism, the brooding soundscapes portrayed by the theme of LA's dark underbelly is one of 2023's most inventive surprises. [Jan 2024, p.80]

It's a singularly engaging soundscape you're strongly recommended to sample. [Jan 2024, p.80]

Perhaps not the new studio recording some were hoping for, but a fascinating and compelling deep dive into Young’s past. [Mar 2024, p.80]

All nine studio albums are covered, although the sequencing defies logic. [Dec 2023, p.85]

Gabriel’s most consistent and cohesive post-80s record and the most philosophical of his life. [Jan 2024, p.78]

The roaring 20s has finally arrived. [Dec 2023, p.79]

Now up to seven discs with live set, it's even harder to resist. [Dec 2023, p.85]

The Complete Budokan 1978 is hardly likely to convert Dylan doubters, but it's an interesting curio all the same. [Dec 2023, p.83]

Maintains In//Parallel's intrinsic style and pan-genre forward momentum, a seamless, pop-literate/prog-friendly fusion positively peppered with an abundance of barbed hooks. [Dec 2023, p.74]

An urgent half-hour adrenaline surge that will lodge itself in your brain after just one listen. Impressive. [Dec 2023, p.73]

Ultimately a completist's set. [Dec 2023, p.84]

A triumph. [Dec 2023, p.76]

A monumentally hideous, yet strangely glorious album. Some might say it goes up to 11... [Dec 2023, p.72]

Finley applies versatile pipes and stinging licks to extraordinary songs of broad experience. [Dec 2023, p.79]

'Zingers exhibit a whole lotta heart. But sometimes heart alone's not enough. [Dec 2023, p.79]

Hard Light works so well because rather than cling on to relevance during the wilderness years, Drop Nineteen have simply waited and let the world catch up with them. [Dec 2023, p.77]

Bare-chested canyon rock is present and correct, but so too is much introspection, melancholia, hurt and hope. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Some nifty tricks - mashing their own Lonely In Your Nightmare into Rick James's Super Freak, for example - but not enough treat. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Throughout, Morrison makes old songs sound new and brings the enthusiasm of a teenager to an old man’s record. [Dec 2023, p.78]

Now And Then, the last Beatles song has finally arrived, and it’s more than worth the wait.

Devoid of cynicism or sarcasm, The Silver Cord - Extended Mix revels in the sheer euphoria of unashamed hedonism. [Nov 2023, p.81]

The mood varies across the record. [Nov 2023, p.81]

He's still creating an introspective mood, even if the threat of hardcore eruption seems to bubble under the surface. [Nov 2023, p.78]

It is an embarrassment of riches, not least the variety of exceptional live material. [Nov 2023, p.87]

There's way more Breeders-reminiscent 90s alt. meat on the bones. [Nov 2023, p.81]

Encapsulates shoegaze, garage, grunge, self-analytical Gen Z catharsis and off-the-leash, anything-goes, fourth-album-itch experimentation, yet still retains its key pop core. [Nov 2023, p.81]

If you've followed his career the evolution makes perfect sense. .... Roll on Vol.3. [Nov 2023, p.79]

Art Dealers hums with life, its garage rock'n'soul bolstered by female backing vocals straight from the Phil Spector school. [Nov 2023, p.79]

It’s the Medicine we need, and it works best when they up the dosage. [Nov 2023, p.77]

The Ballad Of Spook And Mercy sounds like Kill Bill spliced with From Dusk Til Dawn, while piano lament More Than Death closes the story drenched in blood, regret and a little romantic redemption. [Nov 2023, p.79]

A heartfelt hymn to a national treasure, this is the acceptable face of patriotism, the evergreen sound of England's dreaming. [Oct 2023, p.85]

It’s a 21st-century record for a 21st-century audience that, with an old-school 48-minute duration, only ever leaves the listener hungry for more.

Redux is well thought out, and it works. [Nov 2023, p.76]

This is primarily a curio, but a fascinating one as it indicates directions Young could have taken if the weather had been different that day. [Oct 2023, p.91]

There's a lot to love here. But there's an awful lot of attention paid to the Life House concept, when the actual key to Who's Next enduring brilliance is Riger Daltrey attaining his ultimate incarnation as an exemplary rock vocalist. [Oct 2023, p.92]

What it lacks is a pulse-quickening ‘showcase track’ – a Fire And Water, a Mr Big, a Running With The Pack, a Burning Sky… a (to continue the 12 o’clock theme) Midnight Moonlight, even. It’s all rather countrified and subdued. [Oct 2023, p.84]

Nothing Last Forever might even be the closest approximation yet of what the 60s actually sounded like. [Oct 2023, p.83]

It's a disorienting yet potently addictive mix, reflective of industrial metal's labyrinthine roots in electronica, new wave and beyond. [Oct 2023, p.86]

Ash still put out heart and reliable joy. [Oct 2023, p.86]

A modest masterpiece. [Oct 2023, p.86]

It's an album that rewards repeated immersion within its layers of acoustic guitar, questing strings and Mellotron. [Oct 2023, p.87]

Easily the best since their debut, but there's still a way to go before they produce an LP as fine as that again. [Oct 2023, p.87]

It gets a touch ploddy in the middle, but the motorik of Shanty and electric pulse of Chained To A Cloud channel sanguine sunshine. Thriving. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Predictable as this dynamic may be, EITS are never ponderous, never less than beautiful. [Oct 2023, p.84]

This is a fine monument to Sonic Youth's undimmed, anarchic, arthouse rock'n'roll fury. [Oct 2023, p.82]

It takes a few listens, but once it swims into focus it's another knockout. [Oct 2023, p.82]

Double down on revitalising their music while finding new logs to throw on the philosophical fire. [Oct 2023, p.81]

The best showcase yet for a candid performer for whom the warts are the best bit. [Sep 2023, p.79]

This anthology is front-to-back brilliant. [Sep 2023, p.79]

Allen provides a genre-defining pulse. [Sep 2023, p.81]

Visceral stuff, but here's hoping their post-Fitzsimmons (RIP) era takes The Hives on further unexpected journeys. [Sep 2023, p.80]