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]

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]

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

'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]

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]

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

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]

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

It's invariably over-punctuated by hyperactive prog-metallic drumming and paradiddly percussion that leaves little space for their ideas to breath, while memorable hooks or riffs get buried in the chaos. [Sep 2023, p.79]

Matches vintage MaximumRock'N'Roll short, sharp, DIY hardcore blurts with kindergarten puppetry to baffling effect. [Aug 2023, p.79]

Romy Vager's vocals are raw, earnest, and Tambourine is Brain Worms distilled, a taut memoir of remote mourning. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Those with sensitive ears will find its more extreme moments indigestible, but it remains impressive stuff. [May 2023, p.78]

The album reveals it's the breadth of his influences - Latin as well as Led Zeppelin - that accounts for his own style. But you will need to be a drum fan. [Jun 2023, p.74]

High Flyin' is fine, a romp, a moment captured in time. ... It remains more a curiosity than a necessity, though. [Jun 2023, p.82]

It's elegiac, claustrophobic and contagiously disturbed. [Apr 2023, p.79]

Four discs of heavy-lidded, slope-shouldered, shoe-gazing aural opioids. [May 2023, p.89]

While this ninth starts well it ultimately nags 'could do better'. And they have. [May 2023, p.81]

It makes sense with the book on your lap, but otherwise, the album may not convince. The acoustics are peculiar on tracks like Pride and the vocal mic seems compressed, rather than expansive. Something to do with surrender, perhaps. What remains of it, when you give yourself away. [May 2023, p.80]

They revisit a previous concept. ... Floating along on a wave of jazzy good vibes. [Nov 2022, p.75]

Past Lives is a wilfully uncommercial record, made for the sheer love of the tight-knit scene that spawned them. [Dec 2022, p.74]

Where Is The Water twists and meanders hazily before shifting into gear with a riff from the Jack White school of thud, while opener Needles is excitable garage rock with a stiff, post-punk edge. And over in the kaleidoscopic corner, Wheels Within Wheels flips merrily from one psychedelic landscape to the next and includes a wriggling organ solo that sounds as if it's being squeezed from a tube. All in all, it's quite the adventure. [Dec 2022, p.75]

There are many less rewarding experiences than hearing Springsteen thirstily sing his favourite songs, but there’s a sense here that all concerned hope it would catch fire and amount to something more. [Dec 2022, p.76]

The result borders on easy listening with a yacht-pop vibe, before the psychedelic starbursts come out to play. [Nov 2022, p.75]

As displayed by the title track and the pumping Brutalism, Oxymore feels stuck in the 90s rather than the work of two trailblazers, though at least Epica’s hands-in-the-air dynamics feels fresher. [Nov 2022, p.71]

It's been effectively produced to death. A cold, clinical experience. [Oct 2022, p.77]

Despite a handful of anodyne plodders, it is difficult to dislike Simple Minds in this nostalgic late-career mode, elder statesmen with nothing left to prove. [Nov 2022, p.71]

This album feels like something of a transitional one for Starcrawler, as they find themselves torn between their residual instinct to rock and a desire to roll into new creative areas. [Sep 2022, p.76]