It's become a cliche to treat every latter-day Cohen album like a potential swansong but it's hard to imagine a richer, finer or more satisfying finale than this. [Nov 2016, p.18]

There’s more, too much more, to come, but for now, Volume One will do just fine.

This is second-tier Sabbath, arriving at the waning of their imperial phase. But that’s still a formidable prospect. ... Also included is a mostly unheard North American show from 1975 that proves the band were still bringing the goods live, especially on a surging “Children Of The Grave”. [Jul 2021, p.41]

Sumptuous and sprawling, his major label debut comfortably backs up the hype. [Oct 2012, p.86]

Though disparate, it's some legacy. [May 2016, p.90]

This is still music with a lot of virtuosity, and a great many notes, but it and its players are living its adaptability, as the evidence reveals all we have previously believed this composition to be, a confluence of free improvisation and what later became “spiritual jazz”. [Dec 2021, p.43]

Laced with enough blue-eyed longing to make the most diehard Gram Parsons fan weep with wonder and the sort of verbal acuity that would give even Dylanologists pause for thought, Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record. [May 2003, p.94]

This is the best Raw Power has sounded since it was first humiliating people's turntables in the 1970s.

The larger-than-life Elton of the live stage gets a workout on "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and "Benny And The Jets," pounding rockers on the most impressively diverse collection in his catalogued. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Tightly structured, lavishly orchestrated, brilliantly realised. [May 2019, p.18]

Compared with the highly structured Ghosteen (a double album meditation on grief and spirituality, complete with intermission), Carnage is a more concise though no less ordered record. Much as the Bad Seeds’ songs now push into oceanic drift, Cave’s narratives move between worlds fictional and not, the horrific and the consoling. [Mar 2021, p.20]

The Love Below... comprises the most sublime pop music heard on record this year. [Dec 2003, p.118]

Here are profound expressions of timeless love, nostalgic memories of relationships past, reflections on fulfillment, grief, desire, belonging and habitual non-belonging. [Aug 2023, p.35]

These delectable hookfests metaphorically parallel Hadreas's move from the gloom of his Seattle hometown to his new base in sunswept L.A. [Jul 2020, p.33]

The performance of a lifetime. [Dec 2020, p.27]

An uncommonly thoughtful victory lap, which deserves--and has received--a handsome recorded memorial.

Every track is a precision-tooled triumph. [Mar 2012, p.81]

This set is a confirmation and welcome addition to the catalogue of recorded Alice Coltrane music and spiritual jazz. [May 2024, p.48]

An essential listen for anyone interested in where music might take them. [Jun 2004, p.86]

There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni's early albums.... Unfortunately, Joni's Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus.

For all the stray premonitions of patchouli-scented funk-rock, these are less jazz-rock meltdowns and more muscular free improv sessions, ones which suggest a very different direction from Bitches Brew. [Mar 2013, p.89]

You may well own these already, but the value of this collection is as a portrait of the artist through time, and a compilation of the irresistible outpourings of a man who never really knew who he was. [Nov 2013, p.83]

It may be the most accurate representation of her vision yet, a singular blend of abrasively charming feel-bad noir rock. [Jan 2024, p.28]

This is Cheap Trick at their purest: a fierce, streamlined rock'n'roll gang. [Feb 2023, p.44]

Does the reissue/repacking thing properly. Forty years after they kicked-off post-punk in a blaze of punk, funk and revolutionary praxis, Gang of Four bow out with a box that deserves a place in the history books. [Apr 2021, p.38]

Beyoncé's seventh solo album is a flawlessly structured feast. [Oct 2022, p.25]

An inspired left turn. [Oct 2023, p.25]

Despite remarkable playing and energy that charges through much of this record, it’s also contemplative, varied and tender at times, with the gentle sway of tracks like “Takoba” hitting as hard as the noise and fury of “Sousoume Tamachek”. [May 2024, p.38]