Sound System gives the full, eclectic picture. [Oct 2013, p.116]

You plug it in your ears in June and three months later you've barely listened to anything else. Highly recommended. [Nov 2013, p.104]

No two tracks are the same, none could be anyone else. This is one irresistible party: the joy Adebimpe was looking for is right here. A great, great record. [Oct 2008, p.154]

The vindication of this luxury raw Power is it bestows still greater kudos on Ron's band. [Jun 2010, p.140]

Newly-remixed outtakes reveal Clark's progress and a posh limited-edition box set version gives this excellent album the treatment it deserves. [Dec 2019, p.117]

Simply, what this amounts to is the best U2 album since "Achtung Baby. [Apr 2009, p.94]

The greatest family jam you'll ever hear and an absolutely essential album. [Jan 2015, p.132]

Blue Lines doesn't need [extras]. It was a classic in the truest sense, and unimprovable template that sound like it was recorded yesterday--or tomorrow. [Dec 2012, p.118]

Music this uplifting, this inspirational, belongs among the stars. [Dec 2011, p.120]

Doolittle was a breakthrough.... The Peel Sessions and B-sides aren't essential, but the previously unreleased demos are fascinating. [Jan 2015, p.134]

Rather than succumb to difficult second album syndrome, Fontaines D.C. have emerged frontrunners in an already crowded field of vital, important young bands. A Hero's Death is a resounding victory. [Aug 2020, p.100]

Perfectly encapsulate what Astronaut Buzz Aldrin described as space's "magnificent desolation." Includes new LP, All Mankind, making it truly indispensable. [Aug 2019, p.119]

So let any indie bands planning a trip to the keyboard shop take note: this is how it's done, with a desire to surprise and be surprised. [May 2009, p.104]

This six-disc "Super Deluxe" edition rescues the treasure, including alternative mixes, a complete live concert and nearly two discs' worth of unheard brilliance. [Jan 2020, p.117]

This reissue underlines how much Achtung Baby's high-wire triumph owed to an era in flux and it's as excessive as it needs to be. [Dec. 2011 p. 138]

Quiet Signs is an utterly captivating record from its first second to its last. [Mar 2019, p.116]

Magnificent. [Nov 2013, p.121]

This remaster makes it glisten like the first time you heard it, while three unreleased tracks show that their vision didn't properly take shape until well into recording. [Aug 2017, p.113]

The remaster reveals The Joshua Tree in all its sonic wonder, and its capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle imperfections, which makes it all the more real and riveting listening experience. ... Thirty years on, it's a complete picture of The Joshua Tree, past and present. [Jul 2017, p.116]

The best album of 2004 so far, and by some distance. [Jun 2004, p.92]

The original beats are still as fresh and inviting as a newly changed bed. At 10 tracks, Illmatic is satisfying lean and cohesive--remarkably so for a hip-hop album with five producers. [May 2014, p.125]

Upon its release in 1994, Definitely Maybe sounded messy and thrilling. Now, of course, it sounds like a classic. [Jun 2014, p.127]

The production values here exceed most of the finished works: not so much blueprints as purpleprints. [Summer 2019, p.118]

Daft Punk's best album in a career that's already redefined dance music at least twice. It is, in short, a mind-blower. [Jun 2013, p.88]

A masterpiece in mood setting, the apocalyptic Punisher aches with sadness, but Bridgers doesn't wallow. ... The end of the world rarely sounds this good. [Summer 2020, p.106]

A fantastic record, full of wonder. [Aug. 2002, p.118]

Abbey Road showed The Beatles at the very peak of their collective powers. ... It's certainly not the sound of a band who were sick of the sight of one another. This is something echoed in the unreleased takes and demos included here. [Nov 2019, p.119]

Damn. is an almost flawless hip-hop masterclass that crunches Kendrick's consuming concerns--life and death, pride and guilt, fate and freewill--into the tightest, most explosive package yet. [Jul 2017, p.102]

George Martin's son Giles's work here is superb. It helps you hear an album you know inside-out as if for the first time. [Jul 2017, p.116]

By breathing life into Richey Edwards's own last words, his friends have crafted not a memorial but a celebration. [Jun 2009, p.120]

Twenty years, five discs, but Nevermind is always more than the sum of its parts. [Oct 2011, p.133]

In A Poem Unlimited never preaches its messages--it purrs them, the melodies letting them percolate slowly. Remy has taken on today's biggest topic and made it sparkle. [Mar 2018, p.105]

Modest and muted they may be, but after the mid-'80s bombast, what comes through is the nuance and intimacy of the songs. [Jul 2018, p.121]

With the exception of Bob Dylan, there isn't a single artist, living or dead, who has managed a record this audacious 30-plus-years into a career. Wake Up The Nation is that good. [May 2010, p.114]

These lavish Deluxe Editions are fat with rare tracks and live performances on accompanying DVDs - they are all the Beat anyone could ever wish for. [Aug 2012, p.112]

Junk is deeply uncool, uncoolly deep, and utterly magnifique. [May 2016, p.115]

It makes the case for some long-forgotten virtues: fast songs, staccato chords, songs about trysts in squalid apartments. You know, the good stuff.

It's not just the songs that have improved, but also their delivery. [May 2007, p.115]

Hedben crafts the best album of his career. [Dec 2017, p.112]

Perspicacious and personal, cool and colossally enjoyable, Sawayama is both a triumph over trauma and a paean to the power of effervescent pop in practically all its forms. [Jun 2020, p.98]

Upgrading previous remasterings, Page's personal touch brings out even more detail.... Each album's companion disc supplies both pleasure and an education. [Jul 2014, p.120]

Their chemistry seeped into the post-punk water table but Pere Ubu still dance alone. [Oct 2015, p.121]

Upgrading previous remasterings, Page's personal touch brings out even more detail.... Each album's companion disc supplies both pleasure and an education. [Jul 2014, p.120]

The studio out-takes are where the real action is: a strummy Julia sounds like it could have been on Rubber Soul, the Take 17 version of Helter Skelter is thrillingly raw and there's a spectral early take of While My Guitar... he Beatles were clearly having a ball here. [Dec 2018, p.117]

Upgrading previous remasterings, Page's personal touch brings out even more detail.... Each album's companion disc supplies both pleasure and an education. [Jul 2014, p.120]

A magical kingdom of noise that's equal parts Disney's Fantasia and Echo & The Bunnymen's lavish Ocean Rain. [Apr 2007, p.107]

It's the voice that carries it all: rawer and more rousing by the minute. [Jun 2020, p.108]

This 25th anniversary deluxe edition includes a collection of curious demos and live takes. ... The record itself remains a masterpiece, a cross-generational smash hit from which they'd never truly recover. [Dec 2017, p.115]

There was nothing like "Demon Days" before and there's been nothing like it since. Until now.[...] Plastic Beach picks up several steps on from where its predecessor left off. [Apr 2010, p.104]

A Brief Inquiry... feel not just hugely entertaining and moving, but necessary. [Jan 2019, p.104]

This is a sheer visceral delight. [May 2002, p.124]

What burns from the music is The Clash's defining characteristic: the fact that they were insatiable omnivores. [Oct 2004, p.136]

Not big, not clever, not hip, not trendy. Just fantastic.

Stick to the main text: until they invent time travel, there's no better way to inhale the decadent air of the early '70s. [Jun 210, p.137]

No moment of Discovery is left unfilled with an idea, a sonic joke, a spark of brilliance.... a towering, persuasive tour de force which ultimately transcends the dance label.

It's a strange, wonderful album, one that almost feels like Arctic Monkeys have embarked on their own full-band side-project. [Jul 2018, p.106]

An album so rich, complex and dazzlingly fluid. [Jul 2015, p.103]

They may well have delivered their masterpiece. [Sept. 2010, p. 110]

Represents a career high for the Chili Peppers. [Jun 2006, p.106]

Fierce, honest and a challenge to the forces of obsolescence, Dirty Computer feels like a vital upgrade from a true renegade. [Jul 2018, p.110]

A snapshot of one of the most vital, intellectual, breathlessly thrilling bands Britain's ever produced. [Dec. 2011 p. 143]

28 [demos] are included in all their fascinating what-if promise, some heralds of later solo recording. ... This collection catches the band at their peak of their powers, the space between the tension and the tenderness still full of revelation. [Jan 2020, p.116]

In time, as this 2LP Best Of shows, they mellowed, eventually got political, then split up, leaving behind a perfectly formed legacy. [Apr 2020, p.118]

Skeleton Tree is untouchable. [Dec 2016, p.108]

Throughout, quality doesn't waver; always sensually and intellectually rigorous, her songs touch on degrees of romantic disaffection and beyond with a sometimes uncomfortable gaze, and still sound freshly minted. [Jan 2013, p.119]

Pretty much everything a second album needs to be, it's like Is This It but more emotional, more colourful, slightly better. [Nov 2003, p.102]

The overall impression is one of a band who are now masterfully in control of their craft. [Apr 2014, p.111]

Once again, Radiohead have proven themselves priceless. [Dec 2007, p.107]

The work of a man kitted out with a full array of emotional surveillance equipment, its expansive space-rock and cosmic lyrics zooming in and out on humanity in all its rich chaos. [Jun 2020, p.92]

A work of dazzling scope and grandeur... It is impossible to imagine any other band making music quite like this. [Aug 2006, p.106]

A substantially more visceral and emotionally rewarding experience than both its predecessors. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Ceremonials is quite some achievement: an accomplished pop record infused with intelligence and imagination... It offers the final, conclusive evidence that she's a pop star to believe in. [Dec. 2011 p. 118]

This is spectacular. [Jul 2015, p.115]

They've revealed themselves as a rare, brilliant talent. [Summer 2018, p.104]

In its progress from raw ambition to actual intent, this mirrors U2's great leap forward from Boy and October to War. [Aug 2006, p.108]

The Hunter represents them at both their most concise and their thrilling best. [Nov. 2011, p. 135]

Everything you love about the band is here, along with anything you don't. ... The demos drive home just how beautifully The Smiths played together. [Nov 2017, p.116]

Her state-of-the-nation address. Stunning. [Feb. 2011, p. 112]

One of the best yet: a sprawling 19-track min-movie, which takes in obscure left-field rock, creepy children's choirs, bucolic ambient and sombre Celtic poetry. [Dec 2016, p.117]

For the umpteenth time, hats off, gents. [Dec 2012, p.122]

Beery, teary, rootsy and rollicking: it's singalong genius at play. [Dec 2014, p.122]

Highly eccentric and blisteringly beautiful--a record destined to worm its way deep under the skin. [Jun 2019, p.117]

Familiarity hasn't taken all the shine off Led Zeppelin IV, because once you get past the aforementioned over-exposed "hits," there's still the frantic Four Sticks and When The Levee Break's big lumbering blues to knock you off your feet again. [Nov 2014, p.125]

Led Zeepelin would get bigger, louder and very imperious very soon. But they'd rarely sound like they were having as much fun as they do here. [Nov 2014, p.125]

Magnificent. ... Kiwanuka rewards your commitment from the first second to the last. [Dec 2019, p.104]

Presents Led Zeppelin in all their ragged glory and heavy splendour. [Jul 2003, p.119]

While 1992-2012 is no substitute for the seamless ebb and flow of dubnobasswith myheadman and Second Toughest In the Infants, there are some glorious moments. [Mar 2012, p.114]

Reissued with a raft of extras, it remains a masterpiece of uneasy listening. [Dec 2016, p.117]

It's a landmark album for REM and the fans who stayed faithful, a shot in the arm for music in 2001 and - unless they're too foolish to accept it - a long-awaited treat for all the listeners who bailed out after Monster.

The finest alt-country album this side of Gram Parsons. [Jan 2005, p.129]

The Next Day is a loud, thrilling, steamrollingly confident rock and roll album full of noise, energy, and words that--if as cryptic as ever they were--sound like they desperately need to be sung. [Apr 2013, p.92]

The world's finest rock'n'roll combo. [Jul 2015, p.119]

The bonus material on both albums offer up further evidence that this was the Pumpkins' purple path. [Jan 2012, p.130]

This is the sound of a superstar in the making. [Nov 2003, p.107]

The musical scope is breathtaking. [Dec 2003, p.139]

A sublime collection that surpasses its predecessor. [Apr 2004, p.121]

This is Adams at his most concise and focused. [Jan 2006, p.122]

Nothing short of remarkable. [Jun 2004, p.102]