All six albums for Island Records generously expanded. [Oct 2020, p.93]

It's short--11 tracks over in less than 39 minutes--but genuinely sweet. [Dec 2019, p.80]

While something more adventurous might have been the way forward, the singer and his inspirations remain unscathed. [Feb 2021, p.84]

The results is at once joyous, poignant and heartbreaking. [Feb 2021, p.86]

They Want My Soul has a spiky, timeless quality, and frontman Britt Daniel's sharply wry lyrics add a nicely acidic edge to the sweetness of their melodies. [Oct 2014, p.91]

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

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

This album is as good as we could expect from the Mary Chain in 2017.

The formula is nowhere near broke, so why fix it? Stirring stuff. [Oct 2014, p.91]

With the heft of rock and fat bottom of funk, Heavy neatly summarises the sound achieved by guitarist Dan Taylor, bassist Spencer Page and drummer Chris Ellul, while singer Kelvin Swaby adds the requisite guts and grit.

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

Acoustic is a consistent collection that works best when the songs are strongest, and it’s movingly effective on the final track, a cover of Richard Hawley’s Long Black Train.

It's not a perfect body of work--perhaps these songs stretch in too many directions to really function as a cohesive whole. [Jul 2018, p.86]

Long may they stay young. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Somewhere Under Wonderland isn't a revolution, but it is assured, interesting and quietly experimental in its own way. [Oct 2014, p.94]

While it might lack the golden glow of Shiflett's regular band, it's happy to bask in a bourbon haze a few seats along the bar from Blackberry Smoke and Whiskey Myers. [Summer 2019, p.86]

Opener Up All Night moves through the formulaic pop gears as smoothly as Don Henley cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, while Holding On is a slickly realised mid-tempo foot tapper. However, shorn of the novelty factor, such middle-of-the-road material remains better suited to balmy summer nights and drivetime radio than to repeated home listening.

It's a concoction that shouldn't work but does. ... Disarming. [Jan 2021, p.82]

It's an excellent reminder that a great band with a great back catalogue can be just as beautiful without make-up. [Summer 2014, p.99]

The haters will protest, but this is the sound of metal dragging itself into the future. [Jan 2021, p.83]

If You're a lapsed follower, this record will make you believe again. [Jul 2014, p.91]

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]

It's a little naive in its presentation and denotations of homely American Stereotypes, perhaps, but all the more powerful for that. ... Crazy Horse are in fine fettle. [Jan 2021, p.84]

An assured piece of reach-for-the-stars hard rock, sure to thrive live.

Vocals are minimal, though less processed and more prominent than usual.

A group that can shift from straight-ahead retro to effortless eclecticism in the time it takes to shift gears on a truck. [Mar 2020, p.86]

New album Hard Love is altogether more bullish, Showalter unleashing his inner rock beast on a collection of songs that seem to reach for some kind of epiphany through sheer volume.

No Taste is positively obese with ideas, street smart with a side order of Sonic Youth, a grrrlish death disco diva Banshee fest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

Yorke's minimalist fragility fits the bill entirely. [Dec 2018, p.89]

This second album brings the heft and enormity to make them serious contenders. [Jul 2022, p.78]

Feedback maestro Buck leads the layers of exultant guitar ideas, such as the T.Rex riffs deep in the mix of Shave The Cat, and they help Escovedo drink deep of his sources to climb back into the light.

Occasionally, as on Fire Storm Hotel, with its shades of an 80s hair metal anthem, he sounds at once energised and enfeebled and you find yourself willing him to reach the velocity of yore. But most of the time, you could play these tracks to an alien and they would struggle to tell them apart from Motörhead’s 90s, or even 70s, work.

A weirdly uncomfortable and exhilarating listening from start to finish. [Jan 2021, p.85]

A largely acoustic album, its haunting quality is brought out by a variety of alternative tunings and ambient drones, as well as lyrical meditations on mortality and emotional healing that are delivered with a psychedelic clarity. [Aug 2020, p.88]

Can reliably wrangle an engaging, chart-friendly rock-lite tune, yet don't sound anything like their irresistibly evocative name would suggest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

None of this is especially groundbreaking or radical, but the sound of a veteran in fine voice, making music with his pals (McGuinn and David Crosby are also along for the ride), is very persuasive indeed.

Despite all the gloom, this is a deeply enjoyable album. [Jan 2021, p.87]

The energy levels let up only on the disappointingly crowd-pleasing ballad leave On. Vocalist Jacoby Shaddix's sweat-soaked urgency feels right for these times. [May 2022, p.86]

Twee and tuneful, self-consciously oddball and so indefatigably alt. [Jun 2022, p.83]

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

It finds him in a reflective mood. It's a smart musical move, because Storm Damage showcases what a good lyricist he is. [Mar 2020, p.86]

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

The default setting of these thunderous doom lords from Sweden's far north remains the expansive, melodic, lavishly arranged anthem, layered densely with clobbering drums and shuddering riffs. [Apr 2022, p.79]

These four coloured vinyls boast 18 unreleased gems. [Jan 2021, p.95]

I Delete more than stands up on its own. [Jan 2015, p.123]

Actually, You Can is business as usual, which translates into a 'gloriously unusual racket'. [Jan 2022, p.83]

It's clear that this form of musical self-help will have even the most mixed-up fan feeling slightly zen. [Mar 2020, p.89]

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

Dawson's heavily mannered delivery and maximalist verbosity requires patience at times, but Silene is one of the most straightforwardly beautiful songs he has ever recorded. [Jan 2022, p.83]

Following the metaverse music hall of Step Outside, however, normal bombastic synthrock service resumes. [Mar 2022, p.81]

Turn It On! is the rock'n'roll equivalent of a dazzling ray of sunshine. [May 2022, p.84]

From the woozy menace of No Air and the Killing Joke-tinged Shadows through to the doomy rampage of Living In Lye, this rocks harder and smarter.

It finds them on classic BJM form--a warm, densely analogue journey through inner space punctuated by churchy keyboards and tambourines that rattle like bones. [Summer 2018, p.86]

Passwords is full of lustrous folk, as on My Greatest Invention and I Can't Love, with the odd innocuous AOR moment, though there's hidden bite. [Summer 2018, p.89]

It's highly agreeable background music for those who prefer to keep the curtains closed. [Nov 2014, p.91]

Eschewing Young’s work recorded with Promise Of The Real – or indeed anything written this side of 1995 – Noise & Flowers’ nine crowd pleasers offer exactly what that brilliant title suggests.

Chuck is Berry’s last inimitable flare, delivered in the nick of time.

Their seventh album doesn’t stint on the Wagnerian bombast, from the Ritalin-powered kick drum assault of Astral Empire to the epic Guitar Hero duels of, well, pretty much everything on here. But there are pop smarts amid the silliness.

Earns its place. [Jul 2023, p.87]

[It picks] up precisely where they left off in 1990. [Sep 2013, p.88]

It’s not all hits--there’s the borderline derivative glam-metal of Two Birds, and the wholly less arresting pop-punk of Side Effects--but this is loud, proficient punk rock which should leave even the most curmudgeonly listener fist-punching with glee.

A good chunk of this Comet is heaven-bound. [Summer 2018, p.92]

[Doesn't] reinvent any wheels but flesh out the blues/pub-rock format with quick wit and keen observation. [Oct 2018, p.86]

Clever without being too clever, but only just. [May 2020, p.83]

No-wave dislocations take the B-52's around the back of CBGB to be savaged by Le Tigre. [Jan 2022, p.85]

Manson’s nihilistic take on 2017 is interwoven with glimpses of personal darkness, wrapped up in mutually constrictive and damaging relationships on epic dirge Blood Honey and the closing Threats Of Romance, ordering a partner to do his murderous bidding on the Muse disco blues Kill4Me, and mourning the loss of his father on the seven-minute centrepiece Saturnalia. But even here there’s a renewed crackle to Manson’s attack--a viper regaining its bite.

What they lack in scope is more than made up for by the physicality of their attack, chopping out jagged chords and rank fumes of garage-y noise. [Sep 2013, p.89]

The electronic drive and mildly gothic atmospherics of 2018's acclaimed Call The Comet survive, albeit transferred away from songs of Trumpian horror and sci-fi utopia on to tracks about friendship and empathy (Ariel) and staying strong through the pandemic (Spirit Power & Soul). All These Days intrigues. [Jan 2022, p.82]

Envisioning sci-fi detective themes (Chasing The Tail Of A Dream), mariachi manhunts (It’s You) and Wall-E Of Arabia (Connector), it’s an imaginative if one-level album, animating only for the scuzzy motorik blues pop of Million Eyes, Fear Machine and Holy Revelation or the crisp, catchy psych-pop of Miss Fortune.

Torture, disgust and danger are all here, but so too are some sharp-barbed observations on screwed-up modern living. [Sep 2013, p.90]

This album reflects its maker--a restless spirit that now and then stumbles on something special.

There are plenty of great songs on here, but no stone-cold classic. [May 2018, p.86]

[L7] still sound as toxic and ornery as ever, their songs sharp and savage, their solos short and sweet, their vocals still capable of freezing testicles at 50 paces. [Summer 2019, p.82]

Visceral stuff, but here's hoping their post-Fitzsimmons (RIP) era takes The Hives on further unexpected journeys. [Sep 2023, p.80]

With Shooter Jening's outlaw holler and Sheryl Crow doing her backing-singer bit, the results are country slick but the execution is flawless. [Summer 2019, p.82]

So J did his usual effortless stand-in thang on guitar, and with Lou writing two beautiful soft rockers and Murph powering away on drums created another album to stand if not quite the equal of the original Dinosaur albums that around the end of the 80s helped change the face of US alternative rock, then somewhere close.

While the album Widow's Weed has all the usual heavily layered atmospherics, there's an even inkier feel than before. [Summer 2019, p.83]

It’s 1984 forever for the Scorpions, a return to slick, semi-hard rock and power ballads.

Taken in a single sitting, the rewards from this record are manifold. [Summer 2019, p.83]

This overdue follow up to debut What Is? proves that years of touring a live show described as an "aural orgasm" hasn't blunted their sense of humour. [Sep 2013, p.92]

The music is taut, compressed and, in places, vulnerable and beautifully resonant. [May 2018, p.90]