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]