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.