LA Woman is at times a raw and bluesy affair, but still one of exquisite taste and judgement. [Feb 2012, p.84]

From the moment you heard her with Our Native Daughters, you knew it was only a matter of time before she made her album for the ages. The Returner is that album. [Oct 2023, p.27]

It hardly needs saying that this mammoth box is not intended for the casual Dylan listener. Even committed fans might think twice. Essentially, what you get is the same songs played in the same order over 23 nights. But, by God, how they are played.

The film and its astutely assembled soundtrack didn't just ride grunge's momentum, it pumped up the volume by capturing the scene in context. [Jun 2017, p.51]

My Dusty Road is facinating as an archive set. [Oct 2009, p.120]

80 minutes of astonishingly powerful and beautifully preserved music. [Sep 2023, p.43]

Start Walkin’ emphasises the team’s many deviations from the mean, demonstrating how inventive and subversive Sinatra’s music could be even before her music with Hazlewood took a more avidly idiosyncratic direction with Nancy & Lee. ... 23 concise chapters that are thrilling, surprising and sometimes sublime.

And Justice For All remains their most pivotal and arguably their most divisive album. ... Lots of demos, rough mixes, studio jams and live numbers that show how powerful the new lineup sounded away from the studio. [Jan 2019, p.37]

Soul Mining is arguably Johnson's defining work: ambitious, strange, exciting. And, 30-odd years on, remarkably fresh. [Aug 2014, p.86]

A cornucopia of delights from a band with an unerring ear for melody, undervalued in their heyday. [Mar 2020, p.49]

The Pylon Box is filled with moments that are equally exhilarating; evidently, what was feasible for Pylon was extraordinary by anyone else’s measure.

You don't get bands like Blur very often. They deserve great boxsets, and this feels like one. [Aug 2012, p.85]

Their full engagement in the creative task was never in doubt, and more than 40 years later the result compels close listening. [Apr 2014, p.88]

Two years on, her sound is equally ambitious but more committed: here are modern, maximalist pop songs with top notes of R&B, Trap and Afrobeat, plus experimental detailing. As ever, Taylor's lyrics convince. [Nov 2021, p.32]

The bonus material proves just as revelatory as the remastered albums, as Against The Odds doubles as a shadow history of the city’s creative heyday. [Sep 2022, p.39]

Never short on vocal confidence, here, she trades divadom for arresting, unconventional shapes. [Jul 2016, p.69]

Time is squeezed and stretched in new ways, exotic timbres are distilled on the spot, and this freeform funk still scorches the air. [Aug 2015, p.91]

Ants From Up There is often beautiful, but its not an album you can listen to casually. Its relentless emotional pummelling is quite an experience, a rollercoaster ride for the soul that is likely to leave you feeling distinctly and permanently rearranged. [Mar 2022, p.18]

Young Americans is one monster hit album, but stripped of "Fame," the record's pre-Lennon form as The Gouster makes an immersive, alternate take on Bowie's Sigma sessions. [Nov 2016, p.49]

Few tracks aside, this Volume 2 contains very little trace of the jazz pivot her music would take later in the decade. The outtakes covering that period are going to make fascinating listening. Meanwhile, this feels like a completist’s dream –because even Joni Mitchell’s storeroom sweepings are spangled with diamond dust.

In the transition from imitator to originator, the old boy has made one of his best albums ever. [Oct 2011, p.83]

This year's 'Stankonia.' [Sep 2001, p.96] [Review of UK version]

Inside there’s one masterpiece and three very fine records, all remastered. ... As on most of Hard Luck Stories, the remastering is barely noticeable, but the previously unreleased bonus tracks are more notable.

This slice of weird-rock from a more contented American decade is playful and preposterous in equal measure. [Feb 2009, p.89]

It’s astonishing that they managed to come up with several of the most thrilling pieces of primal UK R’n’B, before going on to invent the rock opera, following one of the more creatively intriguing examples of ’60s pop’s transition from mod to psychedelia.

It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]

The three-disc set brings the artist's life and times into sharp focus. [Dec 2012, p.87]

The complete recording reveals many (until-now) hidden delights that we can enjoy in full. [Nov 2008, p.89]