It takes a few listens to hook in its claws, but when it does they're fixed forever. [Feb 2015, p.98]

It’s the pastoral style of Pentangle overlaid with crazed early-70s wah-wah duelling--think a pistols-at-dawn affaire d’honneur between Larry Wallis and Mick Bolton--and it’s very good indeed.

There's a straight-forward brilliance to this covers set. [May 2022, p.85]

Lovely flamenco guitars, the slightest rhythms and subtle splashes of steel guitar and accordion are the backdrop for a voice that remains as pristine as when he made his mark in Blighty touring with The Clash.

Album of the month. [May 2020, p.83]

With their warm, evocative, hot fuzz production, muted vocals and keening atmospherics that set them down somewhere between Slowdive, Mew and early Radiohead (see the surely deliberate echo of Creep in Eaten By Worms for evidence of the latter), they sigh their way through a set of tracks that are simply billowing with maudlin beauty.

Suede sound like Suede again. [Apr 2013, p.97]

Boris are still finding new ways to discomfort, disorient, and discombobulate. [Summer 2014, p.92]

His joy at being reacquainted with his music is obvious right from lively opener One More Time. [Dec 2021, p.74]

Locating the sweet spot where spontaneity and polish meet, Widdershins swings in all the right directions.

The Leeds-launched provocateurs still sound sharp and lean. [May 2019, p.88]

You sense in his raw outpourings the memories of the joy they had in making the original record and the joy it has at last seen the light of day. [Oct 2018, p.93]

As Clark wraps up with the formulaic 12-bar of Dirty Dishes Blues, you realise how much the rest of the album pushes the envelope and applaud him for it. [Mar 2019, p.88]

A fine album by any standards, not least the Chili Peppers' own. [Oct 2022, p.70]

Williams’ anger is reflected in the music, which tempers her primal electric blues and country with garagey punk and heaving rock. Yet there’s also empathy, hope and an unyielding sense of humanity at work here.

Whether he's musing insightfully over alcoholism or parenthood, his band are blazing and Isbell takes a tired format and charges it up with passion and perceptiveness. [Jul 2020, p.88]

The result is masterful: unsettling, retro-futuristic, beautiful and intense, but deeply immersive and listenable.

Starcatcher feels like their most consistent and complete record yet. [Aug 2023, p.74]

It has given a cerebral clarity and garage pop edge to tracks that would otherwise be buried in slaughterhouse riffs under inaudibly angry lyrics. [Summer 2014, p.93]

Mountains finds the 71-year-old Lofgren railing at a world in which the progressive values of the 60s have been superseded by Trumpian self-interest, all in typically melodic fashion. [Aug 2023, p.75]

With a golden voice at work, this is luscious sunshine-filled Californian rock with storm clouds on the horizons. [Oct 2014, p.91]

The volcanic glass the album takes its title from is said to protect against negative energy, and here Paradise Lost pull the same trick by turning the bleakness in on itself to create something beautiful.

III is the sound of a less restless McCartney simply doing what he does best. [Jan 2021, p.86]

There's enough brittle punch to Blood & Lemonade to freshen even the stuffiest cliche. [Oct 2014, p.93]

All are multi-layered, offering moments of both beautiful intimacy and blazing rage. For most bands, attempting this juxtaposition would be disastrous, but here it sounds sublime, seamless.

Jones’s vocal has gutsed-up, gained a gravel-gargling Waits-ian weight that suits TRM’s swampland boogie perfectly. Elsewhere No Fool swaggers loutishly, Aldecide sows a Bad Seed vibe and Boil Yer Blood delivers on its promise. Righteous stuff and then some.

Their interplay of conventional instruments is unconventionally jagged, pastoral, abrasive, exotic, heavy and light in equal measure. [Jan 2021, p.82]

They ramp up the melodicism and play with all the gusto of musicians who have been separated for far too long.

Five CDs is probably too much intensity for anyone to take, but Superunknown itself is a pitch-black delight. [Summer 2014, p.95]

This is a cavalcade of curiosities, a den of delight, a whole other world where grunge stayed open-hearted and open to misinterpretation. [Aug 2023, p.75]

The songs are deceptive, displaying a rare sense of craft and erudition. [Oct 2014, p.94]

Overall it's a psychedelic delight. [Jul 2020, p.89]

Hi is a renewed statement of intent. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Although there are 16 tracks here from four sessions at the BBC's Maida Vale studios between that date [June 8, 1994] and August 2001, there's something about the four tracks they recorded while riding high o Dookie's success that crackle with extra force. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Grounded by explorations into dark electronica and swathes of cascading guitars. ... A coherent journey. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Magical. [Jun 2023, p.74]

Daughters have never sounded so strong and they've never got it so right. [Dec 2018, p.86]

Raitt has once more demonstrated her ability to distill the essence of human emotion down to its most potent form.

Even if Earle occasionally falls back on roots music autopilot, the power of this work is undeniable. [Jul 2020, p.89]

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]

Bottom line is that live they sound life-affirming. [Jan 2021, p.85]

Throughout, this album is a defiantly un-laddish joy. [Aug 2023, p.78]

A worthy addition to one of alt.rock's greatest canons. [Jul 2014, p.92]

Lanegan is on daring and seductive form throughout. The Passenger-lite Emperor misfires but that’s forgivable with a strike rate this high.

They rely on their own successful turbo-operatic formula for large sections of this 80-minute-plus double album, and from the moment five minutes in when Music gets over its overtures and bursts into anthemic flame, the blend of guttural riffing, machine-gun bass drum and Floor Jansen’s perennially startled soprano is always captivating.

All told, this is a finely detailed and lovingly curated tribute to one of the true greats.

Simulation Theory treads a thin line between cheesy chart-chasing and genuinely innovative pop rock. [Dec 2018, p.86]

Mariani's ear for melody lifts it above the ordinary. ... Terrific. [Jun 2020, p.86]

Tumultuous, trippy and brilliantly untamed, Sonancy is a magnificent comeback.

Live, earlier material, Welcome To The Occupation and Me In Honey especially, benefits from an increased aural muscular density, while several songs from Monster itself pack a greater punch than the studio versions. [Dec 2019, p.90]

Avenged Sevenfold have lost any previous limitations and inhibitions, and they’ve crafted a landmark metal album.

Drive-By Truckers have never been angrier, but, just as crucially, they've never been more musically eloquent. [Mar 2020, p.86]

Unfeigned and irresistible.

Plenty of pallid indie math-rock imitators--from Godspeed! downwards--have attempted to do what Boris do here, and all have failed. Boris abide.

It's no surprise party - and less giant leap than consolidatory glide - but Can We Please Have Fun has its fair share of high times. [Jun 2024, p.74]

In its second half, Crawler takes brave experimental swerves. [Jan 2022, p.82]

Their best album yet. [Apr 2023, p.78]

Simms certainly knows how to deliver Wire energy - compact, disciplined, no waste, no spray, as on Primed And Ready. There are also lovely moments of Wire pop here. [Mar 2020, p.87]

Ash still put out heart and reliable joy. [Oct 2023, p.86]

A fearsome riffstorm of therapeutic venting. [Summer 2021, p.87]

Michael Brauer’s interpretation – same songs, different mix – alters the texture of familiar songs like Love Sick, the spectral Cold Irons Bound and Make You Feel My Love, now something of a standard thanks to Adele, Michael Bublé and, er, Nick Knowles. ... The live pieces are more informative, with songs performed between 1998 and 2001.

While Larkin Poe are worthy, though, they’re never dull. [Jun 2020, p.87]

A mad, florid knockout. Strength through absurdity.

It’s a bold, bombastic rock album that really chimes with our troubled times. Alter Bridge got issues, and that’s a good thing.

Throw in the odd ambient curveball and you’ve got an album fizzing with life from experts in their field.

It’s a deeply intimate, deeply beautiful examination of regret, loss, disappointment, solitude and personal demons, made all the more alluring by his warm, frank, subtly emotional vocals.

The result is a compact and highly combustible album that packs 10 songs into just 22 minutes. [Aug 2022, p.86]

You've got another classic BJM album. [Apr 2023, p.79]

The DIY arrangements--treated guitars, keyboards, the odd banjo--sometimes sound like they’ve been fixed up with gaffer tape, adding to the immediacy of songs like Boy Band, a comedic tale about has-beens on a dodgy comeback trail, and the autobiographical, genuinely affecting Property Shows.

This lone soldier is at his best when the cavalry arrives, with Jagger honking on a languid You Di The Crime, and Keef tussling with Jeff Beck over a fine Cognac. [Summer 2018, p.89]

Inevitably, the two extra discs are thick with superfluous alternative and extended mixes. But there are fine non-album singles here too, notably the glossy synth-funk stomper European Son and a plastic-soul remake of Smokey Robinson’s I Second That Emotion. Also included is the four-track Live In Japan EP first released in 1980, and a full live album recorded at the same show. ... Glorious.

A carefree antidote to worrying times. [Summer 2018, p.91]

Despite, or because of, its aptly era-appropriate brevity, English Heart is immaculate, and a lot better than it needs to be. Warm and beautiful.

Thirty-four years and 16 albums in, Therapy? still sound as vital and hungry as they did when they dropped their debut. [Jun 2023, p.72]

This album skips by far lighter than more ponderous collections like 2004's Together We're Heavy. [Sep 2013, p.88]

A cohesively themed album lathered in muti-tiered guitars, anthemic chouses and high-density power riffage, tempered by road-honed dynamism and built for the stage. [Sep 2023, p.76]

The album really benefits from Buck's undimmed musical sensibility. [Apr 2020, p.88]

This ominous set of industrial ire and theatrical brooding sees him in his element, prioritising atmosphere over tunes, both coldly alien and vulnerably human. [Jul 2021, p.82]

Though their trademark dynamics of rise and fall, and tension and release are firmly in evidence, there remains a mesmerising sheen throughout that’s utterly hypnotic.

Delivering the goods with considerably more venom than you might expect at this stage in the game, Lamb of God remain hard to b(l)eat. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Playing those and more top-drawer songs including The River and Born To Run (previously mothballed footage of 10 songs from the two shows are included) and a superb E Street Band behind him, Springsteen gives it his usual all, at arguably the peak period of his career and live performances.

A rich feast for connoisseurs, a rewarding research project for curious casual fans. [Dec 2021, p.78]

There's much to love here, with the jangle-crunch of Buckle Under Pressure and prefer To Lose proving he has the ideas as well as the gear. [Apr 2023, p.75]

Still producing some of their best material. And on this form there's plenty of bite in this cranky old dog yet. [Sep 2023, p.78]

Hard truths are faced down and bad voodoo gets annihilated throughout in unflinching, life-affirming, hard-rocking glory.

The songs are tight and feisty, with guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof and Rick Van Zandt trading off each other with flexibility and style, Howe giving full vent to his range and depth.

Intense and stripped back, with only his own art to fall back on, Cave cuts a truly formidable figure. This is an album you will return to again and again. [Dec 2020, p.85]

Singer Britt Daniel still knows less is more, though, and the tracks are lean and pared, every stab counting. [Mar 2022, p.83]

Cohesive, diverse and swollen with hidden depths. [Jul 2020, p.88]

This album will leave you so wobbly and weak-kneed, you might have to take a few days off work to recover. Headphone melter of the year so far, for sure.

A spellbynding brew. [Nov 2020, p.87]

The ramshackle mix of lyrical longing, acoustic guitars and glacial synths would ordinarily be described as Americana, but the lyrics are still as British as fish and chips. [Sep 2023, p.76]

An hour in her company is still time well spent. [Sep 2023, p.79]

It's a disorienting yet potently addictive mix, reflective of industrial metal's labyrinthine roots in electronica, new wave and beyond. [Oct 2023, p.86]

A distinguished, intriguing return. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Washes of keyboards, a thunderous tattooing of drums and great, empty atmospheric spaces make for an inestimable, all-consuming listen, not least in the fragile-sounding Lacuna/Sunrise and the roiling I.M.S.

It's another record to follow deep into the bayou, chasing the will-o-the-wisp harmonies. [Dec 2021, p.70]

The quartet's explosive indignation is undeniably thrilling, as is their deft mastery of the genre's roaring dynamics. [Sep 2013, p.91]