While it does start to get a little repetitive, it's good to hear a band straying off the beaten track too play timeless music just for the sheer hell of it. [Dec 2021, p.72]

His joy at being reacquainted with his music is obvious right from lively opener One More Time. [Dec 2021, p.74]

The instrumental How To Disappear Into Strings adds a stentorian dimension to How To Disappear Completely, while Fog ascends to a whole new level of mystery in its Again Again version. Radiohead’s loving tending of their back catalogue wins out again.

A stunning stripped-to-the-bone reinvention. [Nov 2021, p.83]

An absolute must. [Nov 2021, p.83]

Alice In Chains fans should prepare to love this, but expect more echoes of Jar Of Flies than of Dirt.

This is a work of beauty and beastliness in equal measure. [Nov 2021, p.71]

TWOD finds fresh spark on the Springsteen-esque Wasted and the title track. [Nov 2021, p.77]

Existence Is Futile is vintage latterday Filth. [Nov 2021, p.72]

It's an incredibly busy, dense record, with few moments to come up for air from the maelstrom. [Nov 2021, p.73]

A more polished and less primal prospect. ... Nichols' dusty acoustic fingerstyle and burnished voice shares little of Eric Bibb's barbed eloquence, and the album grows angrier as it unfolds. [Nov 2021, p.75]

Beautiful in style and intent, The Myth Of The Happily Ever After has magic written into every note. [Nov 2021, p.70]

The heaviest tracks of a surprisingly rocking outing find Santana sounding more energised than he has in years.

This feels like the album of a group recharged; lent a new perspective by the pandemic, perhaps. [Nov 2021, p.73]

Not just faster, but harder, too. ... Best of the lot is Loud. [Nov 2021, p.75]

The Roadside EP is every bit as cool and continues to the unexpected good form that the Rebel Yell legend displayed on his last studio records. [Nov 2021, p.77]

What metal's fundamentalists will think of it is anyone's guess, but this is the sound of the genre's future. [Nov 2021, p.77]

All told, a crowd-fuelled triumph. [Nov 2021, p.75]

The band's heart-grabbing riff hooks found on Into The Blue and sultry Siouxsie Farrago are in short supply, but as closer Left Too Soon grows from astral acoustic ballad to customary cataclysm, there's no let-up in their seductive assault. [Nov 2021, p.70]

The rest of the album is all over the map, from electro-rocker Let’s Get The Party Started (featuring Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon) to Charmed I’m Sure’s dub-step metal. It’s fun hearing Morello stretch out, though all but the most broadminded RATM fans are unlikely to feel the same way.

At no points does the listener throw up their arms and shout, “My God! Let It Be is the greatest Beatles album ever made!” but this larger, panoramic overview does wonders for the record, giving us a bird’s-eye view of the sessions. Buy it and you’ll play it a lot. [Nov 2021, p.82]

Chunky, repetitive stun-gun guitars, sore-throat howls, throbbing digital backbeats, check, check, check.

Howlin Rain have fashioned an album that eschews the harder rocking moves of predecessor The Alligator Bride for a mellower although no less impactful approach. [Oct 2021, p.74]

A richly dense experience that also channels syncopated avant-pop, semi-symphonic prog and luxuriant soft-rock. [Sep 2021, p.74]

Hearing Southern Man played on a single acoustic guitar as opposed to the thrash of the album is one epiphany, while the windswept Don’t Let It Bring You Down is cataclysmic. ... Magnificent.

The real surprise is how graceful this lockdown-inspired album is. [Oct 2021, p.74]

[A] blend of instrumental moods, torpid 80s indie and self-regarding songs that never entirely clear their launchpad. [Oct 2021, p.79]

While nothing here is wrong, very little - unlike the VU themselves - is unexpected or thrilling. [Oct 2021, p.74]

Despite lofty ambitions to write a letter 'from God to humanity' on Restless Souls, these are counter-attacked by Rebel Girl, an overstuffed, over-sweetened, male gaze-heavy, lovelorn confection that completely overrides the potential of its title. ... nevertheless, Lifeforms is beautifully produced and catchy as hell, earning itself a spot on any intergalactic playlist. [Oct 2021, p.73]

Overall these Merseyside extreme-metal veterans sound a little unfocused and uninspired on this record, falling back on tired retro-metal tropes. [Oct 2021, p.72]

It's surprisingly excellent. [Oct 2021, p.79]

For all its retrospection and melancholy there's a determination on Saloman's part to relight past fires, face down the miseries of This Britain. [Oct 2021, p.77]

It's a slow-burn of an album, sounding more layered with each listen, the strain of a pedal steel woven into the fabric of the songs. [Oct 2021, p.79]

The Vaccines' retro rock'n'roll clearly suits this kind of next-generation upgrade. [Oct 2021, p.79]

Quiet Town and Runaway Horses exhibit tender lyrical themes, and there's brief respite in the dreamy haze of Sleepwalker and Pressure Machine. However, nostalgia and the shattering of childhood idylls reoccur through In the Car Outside and In Another Life. [Oct 2021, p.78]

Infinite Granite resounds with delights in its own ingenuity. [Oct 2021, p.78]

As elegiac, brutally minimalist, silent and hymnal, disturbingly open and ultimately rewarding as before. [Oct 2021, p.77]

It's a dazzler, a dynamic folk-pop record steeped in style and bristling with modern touches. [Oct 2021, p.76]

More highly flammable melodic buzz-punk, now with added flecks of Stranglers atmospherics. [Oct 2021, p.72]

The classically trained musician's virtuosity - he plays all the instruments - is impressive, and it's matched by his lyrical themes, which are infused with quasi-spiritual belief in positive energy. [Oct 2021, p.72]

Regardless of the personnel on it, this album sounds like the Stranglers: both nice and sleazy. [Sep 2021, p.81]

predictable guests like Royal Blood, Biffy Clyro and Slipknot's Corey Taylor deliver disappointingly straight, dutifully respectful covers. Fortunately, artists less bound by metal convention fare better. ... The album's less celebrated deep cuts also encourage adventurous reworkings. [Sep 2021, p.84]

This is a remarkable album from a band that still has plenty to say and to offer. Its high point, Death Of The Celts, a fruity 10-minute-plus guitar showcase for the Three Amigos that could be the Iron Maiden equivalent of Thin Lizzy’s celebrated Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend, is little short of jaw-dropping.

Solo piano pieces drag, but with a floating line-up in intuitive complementary support his trademark guitar tones soar. [Sep 2021, p.81]

Weighing in at 133 tracks, Feel Flows' bulk may be harder to validate than existing sets for the Pet Sounds/Smile era, but as a locked-down summer's soundtrack its mellifluous existential musings are hard to fault. [Aug 2021, p.86]

COVID fog has infected even our sharpest minds. Thank heaven so much of Ultra Vivid Lament sounds like a mirror ball at the end of the tunnel. [Sep 2021, p.78]

The first half of the album is a collection of unfiltered, no-frills hardcore. ... A pitch shift in the middle demonstrates just how much more there is going on here. [Sep 2021, p.77]

Even if their calculated brand of mullet-haired kitchen-sink amateurism occasionally feels like unshaven drunken shambling, TFS are consistently inventive, thrillingly unpredictable and steeped in deadpan Australian humour. [Sep 2021, p.78]

The 10 tracks here prove that the trio truly feel the Dog under their fingernails. [Sep 2021, p.77]

The original triple set contained an Apple Jam disc, featuring the notorious It’s Johnny’s Birthday sung to the tune of Cliff Richard’s Congratulations. Whether you need this is up for debate, but the jamming with pals such as Derek And The Dominos and Badfinger feels cleansing, exciting. Rolling Stone called All Things “the War And Peace of rock and roll”. That might be going a little far, but there’s no denying its pull and charm 50 years down the line.

Hi is a renewed statement of intent. [Jul 2021, p.87]

The sound is basic, raw, bitingly sarcastic. [Summer 2021, p.82]

As ever, they paint from the broadest of palettes to create a portrait of a city rich in cultural and musical diversity. [Aug 2021, p.80]

These lost gems from the garage are given great care and attention by a band that clearly holds them close to their heart. [Aug 2021, p.80]

For Free is anything but indulgent. ... David Crosby's late-career purple patch continues. Aug 2021, p.82]

Continues to make some of the sweetest and most self-assured AOR-inflected power-pop going. [Aug 2021, p.82]

Musically, tracks like My Cleveland Heart achieve an effortless quintessence with the swing of a practised elbow. [Aug 2021, p.81]

A fearsome riffstorm of therapeutic venting. [Summer 2021, p.87]

An album full of lo-fi pop-tinged melodies sugarcoating a bitter centre. [Summer 2021, p.86]

Altogether, tons of twang for your buck. [Summer 2021, p.83]

The Nightmare OF Being is up with the Swedes' finest albums. [Summer 2021, p.87]

Together they craft a devastatingly detailed fictional portrait of a married couple falling apart in a maelstrom of drugs, regret and the sort of silence that "murders the heart." [Summer 2021, p.87]

It's good to hear an artist who shuffles through the undergrowth. [Summer 2021, p.81]

A debut rich in raw potential.[Summer 2021, p.87]

It's their finest by some distance. [Summer 2021, p.84]

Here Hiatt's palette tends a little towards country, but the best cuts still fall to the blues. [Summer 2021, p.83]

The nine-song eulogy assumes the quality of a heady elixir. All told, a very wonderful thing. [Summer 2021, p.83]

Outstanding. [Summer 2021, p.82]

Preaching positivity, the woozy dream-pop melodies flutter and float on the air like the butterfly the record takes its name from. [Summer 2021, p.80]

Van Weezer is a Lightweight guilty pleasure, but mostly delicious pleasure. [Summer 2021, p.80]

Aggression Continuum sounds as it should, like the next last word in extreme metal futurism. [Jul 2021, p.80]

Cinematic, evocative and potently trippy. [Jun 2021, p.83]

Big Mess is dense and discordant and wilfully ugly at times, but also a richly original and impressively ambitious musical response to a nightmarish pandemic. [Jul 2021, p.84]

An elegant set of sweeping rock anthems, not a rough edge to be found, and yet there' soul amid the aural perfection. [Jul 2021, p.85]

His vocals might lack memorable character, but right now the forceful energy he throws into his songs is enough. [Jul 2021, p.86]

This ominous set of industrial ire and theatrical brooding sees him in his element, prioritising atmosphere over tunes, both coldly alien and vulnerably human. [Jul 2021, p.82]

It's not exactly in Rikki's nadir, but neither is it exactly rock. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Once the album stops yelling and stamping for attention, the strong suits of this outfit come through, and dark, sinister atmospheres trademarked by Depeche Mode and The Banshees are allowed to thrive. [Jul 2021, p.81]

The sloganeering surfs in on a wave of ultra-catchy punk melodies, dragging the listener along in its wake. [Jul 2021, p.85]

The highlights have lost none of their lustre. ... What's abundantly clear is that each of the band members was squirrelling away material for their respective solo projects. [Jul 2021, p.90]

Each of its five segments finds nascent chaos metamorphosing into funk-fuelled crescendo as if by inspired osmosis. [Jul 2021, p.93]

Red Fang might not take themselves too seriously, but thankfully Arrows rocks pleasingly hard indeed.

While he’s not straying too far from the mothership, nothing here is phoned-in. As befits the craftsman he’s always been, he’s taken the time and trouble to fashion a bunch of songs worthy of standing alongside anything in his catalogue. Hats off.

Finds their former highs trapped behind glass, blurred and beclouded like the past year has been for all of us. [Jul 2021, p.86]

Not just euphoric but also important music, and another near-faultless Wolf Alice wonder. [Jul 2021, p.84]

The Width Of A Circle displays brilliantly, he's not so much planning his next move as constantly shape-shifting. [Jul 2021, p.92]

While long-term fans might initially be disappointed by the marked absence of the bar-room swagger of yore, repeated listens bear fruit. [Jun 2021, p.80]

Reason To Live is full of a warmth and pleasure in life that suits his growing maturity as songwriter and raconteur well. [Jul 2021, p.80]

A couple of other unremarkable tracks leave this album just short of being a stunner, but for the most part Blackberry Smoke have done Georgia proud once again. [Jul 2021, p.80]

The cumulative result is an album accessible enough to provide an entry point for the curious, while having just the right amount of wiggy to satisfy paid-up members of the Motorpsycho cult.

This slender exercise in flimsy whimsy boasts plenty f charm but few substantial songs. [Jun 2021, p.78]

If him being grumpy over excellent R&B riffs isn't too much of a shock for the listener, then this is an enjoyable album. [Jun 2021, p.78]

It's ace, but he's not a man you'd trust with secateurs. [Jun 2021, p.83]

The Boston boozers’ tenth album is a triple shot of euphoria with a Guinness chaser.

Such is the attention to detail that it evokes an eerie world of rattling ghost trains and deserted penny arcades as successfully as a windswept day-trip to Blackpool. [Jun 2021, p.81]

Not a great comeback, but just good enough. [Jun 2021, p.81]

With its gentle, unwaveringly steady, never-changing tone and rhythm, it demands work on the part of the listener. [Jun 2021, p.79]

The Million Masks Of God is way less heavy going than a concept album centred on explorations of faith and existence inspired by the death of a parent has any right to be. [Jun 2021, p.79]