Sporadically great but decidedly patchy, A Moon Shaped Pool is not the sound of a great band dying, more a great band spreading themselves too thinly.

It's probably the Rolling Stones' best album ever. ... Slim pickings of the expanded vinyl package border on the insulting. [Dec 2018, p.94]

Difficult to separate the jokers from the aces. [Aug 2019, p.80]

Divorced from the visual spectacle--puppets, illusionists, avian transformations, ticker-tape poetry--and the thrill of watching actual Kate Bush actually singing, this audio recording is akin to John Lennon being resurrected to perform the Wedding Album--i.e. only mildly amazing.

Independence Day is normal for Neil: he tests the climate and the atmospherics are depressing. Terrorise Me, a response to the Bataclan outrage, is the key piece. The rest is no faffing and easy listening.

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]

Meld[s] jangles, loops, fuzzes, plucks and floaty introspections. Heavy on shoe-gaze, light on Gallagher swagger. [Apr 2022, p.83]

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

A solid addition to the canon, but not quite a classic.

Collects three albums and apposite era odds 'n' sods. [May 2021, p.97]

A case of more darkness required. [Mar 2015, p.94]

This fifth edition's half-hour documents their second collaboration with Nurse With Wound and never fully recovers. [Sep 2022, p.83]

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

The quiet/loud dynamic is an elegant partnership here. [Sep 2018, p.93]

Make no mistake, this is an angry record made by a protest singer whose rage hasn’t dimmed with age (she turns 77 this year), though there are shards of positive light sneaking through.

The album was written on the hop, Newcombe spilling his brains right onto tape, and it shows – imperfections are made into a positive, the songs allowed to just naturally come into being.

The results sound thin, contrived and ultimately laborious. [Aug 2020, p.89]

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

He delves into lesser-known parts, like Wheel, a 1973 song about tragic, rural cycles, and he sings Old Road, as a sparse holler, akin to the original. Other songs celebrate the ‘gonzo country’ aims of Jerry Jeff, but Mr Bojangles and his worn-out shoes is still best in show.

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]

It’s bashed out in an exuberant blast of piano-stonkin’ late-60s rock’n’soul that occasionally wanders into poppy, kitschy Elton John territory, but owes most of its groove to the lean, mean, stray-cat blues of Beggars Banquet.

Jazz standard Lullaby Of The Leaves begins in husky torch song mode, but gains interest with a brassy Bonamassa guitar solo, like a Bond theme played past midnight in a Chicago dive. When these rockers go reggae for Addicted, though, it is, as usual, a step too far.

His words and sentiments are left deliberately smudged and indefinite in places; sardonic Dylan phrasing sticks to some words, double-tracked Lennon wails on others.

Although micro-melody whimsy is at its heart, there’s a Tangs/Radiophonic Workshop slant that gives tracks such as Midwinter Rites a spooky Kill List/Children Of The Stones edge.

Tail-chasing indie adequacy. [Summer 2020, p.89]

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]

Plenty here to admire--if you're in your most po-faced mood. [Summer 2014, p.95]

As mood music it’s a stunner, the perfect complement to a lost weekend plotting your next Ubermensch moves in a haze of opium. But you can’t dance to it, that much is for sure.

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

COS is a lot darker and more claustrophobic than Thomas's press notes propose. [Sep 2014, p.94]

For all its flaws, Rewind The Film shows they're not ready for the glue factory just yet. [Oct 2013, p.86]

An eclectic work, Lazaretto shows off White's multi-instrumental, seasoned-producer lineage with some charismatic flashes. As a complete exercise in songcraft, however, it's a little thin. [Summer 2014, p.88]

If you’re a fan of the more raucous, high-octane twang-stompers this band are best known for, you might find this a strangely sedate, mid-tempo affair.

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

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]

While the album is destined to remain underground, you just know Childish is in his element right there amid the grit and grime. [Sep 2019, p.84]

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

Like their 60s albums, it’s a hodgepodge of self-penned songs and songs written by others, with a few vintage rave-ups thrown into the mix--‘mix’ being the operative word for this patchy affair.

They need just a little more musical and emotional grit to avoid fully surrendering to pastel-shaded midlife mellowness. [Jun 2021, p.76]

A fun album, but one in need of trimming and extra heft. [Aug 2022, p.69]

Here, White Manna have created grown-up lullabies of the most primal kind.

Some imaginative arrangements--notably on a brass-heavy Ghost Of Santa Fe--can’t disguise the fact that the transcendent qualities this music demands are too often absent.

A little unwieldy in places, but still pleasingly timeless. [Jul 2019, p.85]

This is a set of unlistenable, wigged-out, repetitive, directionless grooves in the main, but we love ’em anyway.

Padded out with uneven live albums, indifferent remixes and anodyne film soundtrack songs, this 120-track package makes for depressingly arid listening in places. That said, no anthology that includes the heart-soaring Absolute Beginners or the high-gloss Let’s Dance can be considered a total wash-out.

Thomas might have this new album down as the James Gang teaming up with Tangerine Dream, but PU exist in a world their own, one that bears only passing resemblance to reality.

Album number three takes Anna Meredith-style neoclassical and jumbles it with a woozy mix of Broadcast, Hounds of Love and glockenspiel gamelan. [Oct 2018, p.89]

They're also still some way off leading any packs, but they're making up ground. [Feb 2020, p.90]

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

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

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]

For their fans accustomed to the clattering joyride only Mastodon provide, this will suffice for now. [Summer 2014, p.92]

There are passages of experimentation around this album’s edges, such as the post-nuclear drones of Roots Remain, and electronic effects that suggest prolonged exposure to mid-period Tangerine Dream. But Mastodon never really develop these intriguing tendencies.

Scratch the surface and nothing really shines. This nod to the past feels more like regression than a return to former glories.

It's a fine line between hypnotic and soporific, but he's usually on the right side. [Nov 2018, p.83]

It's still awesome, of course, just don't expect to enjoy it. [May 2013, p.85]

It cuts and blazes and works well live in all its kinetic abandon but, if Shining really want to lay claim to a new genre, they need to integrate their progressive elements into the mix rather than add them as a side option.

Dream Nails are the 21st-century Mambo Taxi. Who? Exactly. [May 2020, p.83]

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]

Not essential, then, but well worth a peek through the window. [Nov 2019, p.84]

It's a pleasant enough album, but not a crucial one. [Jan 2020, p.85]

Bela Lugosi's Dead was a happy accident. The rest of the material finds a band fumbling for direction, even touching on ska, before an eerie delay appeared to invent their sound for them. [Dec 2018, p.93]

This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.

It feels retro, a description you can bet Flat Worms would be proud of.

The result is both shamelessly derivative and gloriously entertaining. [Jul 2013, p.88]

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

Sweet-voiced grrrl-angst vocals meet grunge dynamics; non-committal Veruca Salt do post-Nirvana loud bit/miserable bit. I Mean, it's fine, but... meh. [Summer 2022, p.79]

It's a roguish enough distillation of Aussie rock's most okish corners. [Sep 2022, p.73]

Perfection, though, remains unattainable thanks to Barney Sumner, whose enthusiasm is such that he adds an uncommon amount of whoops and yelps to songs that really do not need any. [Aug 2013, p.89]

The Minus 5 remain a star-heavy Trojan horse for McCaughey's songwriting. [Jun 2015, p.97]

A little too shiny and over produced in places, but Life Journey is a trip worth taking. [Jul 2014, p.92]

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

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

The majority of this all star tribute treads an inappropriately conformist path. [Apr 2022, p.83]

A sultry, smouldering, non-committal vocal meanders over bass-heavy backdrops. [Apr 2021, p.89]

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

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

It grows with listens, and at its best (as on Hold On), Clark’s guitar/soul-beat fusion is smooth and stylish. But some of it is just (whisper it) a bit boring.

Bob Dylan regulars Larry Campbell and Tony Garnier pop up but this isn’t a star-studded exercise, more of a stylish platter aimed at grown-ups.

Somewhat lacking in real character of its ow, there is nevertheless a certain charm to this album, and it's sure to trigger a nostalgia trip in those who came of age at the turn of the current century. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Language Of The Dead is a 21st-century wake-up call, dismissing the knowledge of a civilised past and demanding we toss our "idols into the sea," to catch some of the rock'n'roll "lightning" slashing throughout the skies instead. At such moments, the cathedral-sized keyboards don't sound quite so fake. [Dec 2014, p.105]

Love Triangles Hate Squares is a forceful blast of passion-fired pastiche, but never quite escapes feeling like a cheap holiday in other people's history. [May 2013, p.87]

A curious curt selection with no obvious crowd-pleasers, but doubtless KC fans will rise to the challenge. [May 2015, p.107]

Despite the inclusion of unreleased material and early versions of Crime In The City and Ordinary People, there’s little here to entice anyone but the hardcore fan.

It’s well-meant but well-trodden, rarely exciting ground.

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]

Much of it's lovely, from the relaxed, melodic strumalong title track to ... well, the relaxed strumalong of just about everything else. It's the kind of album that makes you think there's nothing wrong with the world. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Social Cues feels like the sound of a great band in desperate need of some down time. [Jun 2019, p.88]

The Mule's taste and experience largely wins the day. [Oct 2013, p.87]

Anyone who spends their weekends lurking in the more pungent corners of sci-fi/horror/comic-book shops will lap it up; for everyone else it's less Star Wars, more Space Balls. [Oct 2018, p.85]

Strip away all the sumptuous studio texture and these lyrics--about savage love, violence and revolution--are sodden with adolescent gothpunk cliché. But this scarcely matters when the future arena anthems Magnetized and We Never Tell hit their stride: lusty, energised and refreshingly shallow.

Too much of Big Music seems to be reaching for a gravitas it can't back up with emotional or musical substance. [Dec 2014, p.104]

There’s nothing novel or exciting here, but at least they seem to be having a ball.

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]

It's all getting a bit too formulaic. [Apr 2022, p.83]

It's every bit as sprawling and dramatic as you'd expect from something set to be followed by a four-part comic book expanding on the story within the songs. [May 2013, p.86]

A mixed bag of variable results, then, though Reid’s voice remains consistently magnificent throughout.