This anthology perfectly encapsulates The Go-Betweens' irresistible, evergreen and still expanding appeal. [Jan 2020, p.34]

Exile itself remains the tour de force it's been since release in May '72. [Jun 2010, p.104]

“I Promise,” “Man Of War,” and “Lift” are the most exciting, crucial elements of this deluxe edition. ... [The B-sides are] a perfect counterpart to the three new tracks, and point towards Radiohead's convention-defying next chapter of Kid A and Amnesiac. [Aug 2017, p.44]

The Ramones, like Warhol or Lichtenstein, were masters of doing one thing brilliantly and repetitively--something reinforced by the second disc of this set, which contains singles and unreleased demos, including tracks that would appear on subsequent albums such as “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl”, “You Should Never Have Opened That Door” and “I Don’t Care” but could easily have fitted on Ramones.

As with Martin's other special edition remixes, his work is subtle and tasteful. ... Listening to this package, it's clearer than ever just how Revolver set the template for the Beatles' future. ... Their peak, as well as the end of something - can be found here. [Dec 2022, p.40]

Accompanying all this is Giles Martin's newly mixed stereo version inspired by the original mono. It means everything is fuller and better balanced. ... The Beatles never worked with such unified purpose again, but what this Pepper boxset captures is the fun, intense, playful ferment; the triumph, in other words. [Jul 2017, p.42]

Gaye's music was on the move, but it never moved quite like What's Going On: still seraphic, still turbulent. [Aug 2011, p.95]

This new mix gives Phil Lynott's poetic vocals more room to breathe but without diminishing the venom of a fiery foursome at their hard-riffing peak. [Mar 2023, p.50]

Even at 25 years remove, Doolittle's lively morsels still taste startling fresh. [Jan 2015, p.89]

Purple Rain sounds incrementally more alive. [Sep 2017, p.51]

This deluxe set showcases the vital rush and wildness that Stinson brought to the band for the last time. [Nov 2023, p.36]

Invoking and evoking just about all the spontaneity and scariness that you'd want from rock'n'roll, Tago Mago can offer experiences as spellbinding as the sequence that originally comprised side one ("Paperhouse", "Mushroom", "Oh Yeah"), or can be so extreme that you feel yourself under attack by maniacs.

Hills and valleys, warts and all, Complete Columbia is simply a singular, staggering body of work, throwing down challenges in all directions.

Not as generous with its outtakes as a leaked CD-R suggested Rhino's 20th-anniversary edition in 2006 would have been, the inevitable round-up of B-sides does at least--and this is a big plus--reuinite "Rubber Ring" and "Asleep" in an unbroken segue. ... The Mansfield gig is a worthwhile addition to the official catalogue, though collectors will notice six of the 19 songs played that night are not included. [Nov 2017, p.40]

The catch-all quality of this reissue presents a kaleidoscopic vision of what pop music could be. ... One of the most compelling and joyous albums of Prince's career, not to mention the most fun.[Oct 2020, p.44]

In this sparer setting, the extra space plays to the benefit of McCartney’s loyal co-travellers: “No Words”, which serves reminder just how vital the harmonies of Linda and the song’s co-writer Denny Laine were when it came to defining the Wings sound; Linda’s purring ARP Odyssey and MiniMoog contributions are what suddenly take centrestage on “Jet” and a rollicking vocal-free canter through “Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five”. Yet, none of that detracts from the primary energy source of Band On The Run. [Feb 2024, p.42]

This boxset – beautiful, thorough, a labour of love, offers an opportunity for many more of us to hear and to reconsider Nyro’s music; to sit there, like Alice Cooper, and go, “That’s songwriting.”

Girly-Sound to Guyville is something much more revealing than an anniversary commemoration. It's a document of an artist finding and raising er voice: a souvenir from an era that questions long-held assumptions about the sex and the business of rock'n'roll. [Jun 2018, p.38]

For all the baubles and padding presented with this definitive edition, the disc you’ll turn to again and again is the one you’ve been playing all your life.

Abbey Road is the sound of the Beatles walking into history. [Nov 2019, p.38]

It sounds both timeless and brand new. [Oct 2018, p.43]

Unreleased mixes, instrumentals and PiL's semi-legendary 1979 concert at Manchester's Factory are worthy additions, stretching the dense, dubby miasma out for four hypnotic hours. [Dec 2016, p.51]

In terms of unreleased material, the motherlode is the two-disc Live at The Matrix set, recorded on November 26 and 27, 1968 at the San Francisco venue. Of the 18 songs here, 10 are previously unreleased.... All are comprehensively bested by the 36-minute version of "Sister Ray." [Jan 2015, p.81]

The new varnish appears to add little to an already sumptuous-sounding set.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters is mostly the soundtrack of liberation, not recrimination, with Apple's piano keys, battering on the walls and barking dogs as its percussive, beating heart. [Jul 2020, p.27]

Page's notion of what might catch the ear was eccentric, but generally infallible. Duly, these remasters aren't asking you to extend your idea of the Zeppelin canon, but retract it--to realise why the albums have the power and mystery they do. [Jul 2014, p.86]

The album endures as a bequest to the bogglement of the ages. [Mar 2015, p.95]

The more menacing "Fuzzbuster #09" could almost be an interlude on Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex. A few other discoveries are equally astonishing. [Jul 2023, p.48]

A unique and unlikely moment of retrieval, restoration and renaissance. [Nov 2004, p.98]

White's willfully basic approach is what gives Van Lear Rose its freshness.... If you thought Rick Rubin's Johnny Cash reinvention was impressive, wait 'til you grab a fistful of this. [Album of the Month, June 2004, p.84]

With hindsight, the Rough Trade album with its seamless mix of folk, blues country, cajun and rock can be seen as the album that launched the phenomenon we would come to know as alt.country. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Weighty and impressive. [Dec 2016, p.49]

Extra disc Kid Amnesiae mostly puts a fresh spin on pre-existing material, with just a handful of previously unheard compositions. Hearing them again two decade later, the shock of the new has faded, but the sonic richness and meticulous attention to detail endures. Behind the fizz and crunch and crackle lies a surprisingly lush, soulful beauty. [Dec 2021, p.40]

The extraordinary power and jaded romance of Suede, which has been given renewed depth and sparkle in this new version. [Sep 2023, p.49]

Page's notion of what might catch the ear was eccentric, but generally infallible. Duly, these remasters aren't asking you to extend your idea of the Zeppelin canon, but retract it--to realise why the albums have the power and mystery they do. [Jul 2014, p.86]

Jaw-dropping. [Jul 2003, p.136]

Hendrix's genius really was for compact, tightly honed pop-rock, where his playing could court restraint, embracing a kind of flinty, tensile groove. The psychedelic drift of "Rainy Day, Dream Away" is the highlight; the extra live and demo material will keep fans happy, but adds little of note tot he story. [Dec 2018, p.42]

A genuine 2015 classic. [Jun 2015, p.77]

It is raw, but also synthetic. There are a number of very long songs,m verbal rambles, but the music fills in, disturbing the melancholy of Cave's piano with static interruptions that owe as much to cave and Warren's film soundtracks as they do to the Bad Seeds' more conventional songcraft. [Dec 2019, p.18]

This 50th anniversary reissue of their faultless second LP still digs deep to find six unreleased studio cuts. [Jan 2020, p.39]

These commercial frailties have come to be seen, quite rightly, as cultish strengths. But it all goes to make Keep An Eye On The Sky much more than a repository of extraordinary music; it acts as the most thorough and articulate explanation of why Big Star never became superstars.

The self-lacerating starkness of "Drive" still freezes the blood, while at the other end of the emotional scale, "Nightswimming" finds solace in snapshots of a lost summer. [Dec 2017, p.42]

Never did the Pumpkins build more sonically gorgeous than this...For those that haven't plumbed the depths of the Pumpkins catalog, it's a fair brace. [Jan 2012, p.97]

Pete Townshend’s songwriting reaches deeper and wider with the unveiling of left field gem “Sunrise”, celebrated pocket opera “Rael” and the mighty “I Can See For Miles”. The band’s playful spirit also means it carries its conceptual weight lightly. [May 2021, p.46]

From the ominous beatless fog of recent tracks "State Forest" and "Beachfires"-the compilation is sequenced for flow, rather than chronologically-emerge some unexpected shapes. [Feb 2020, p.43]

Folk-rock masterpiece of quietly influential Northern miserabilism. [May 2011, p.80]

Between the orderly new overview. with its 15 previously unissued tracks, and McLagan's engagingly hodgepodge insider's portrait, we have as complete picture as we're likely to get. [Oct 2015, p.95]

It's blend of whispered poesy, free-form rock, and orchestration, by Jean Claude Vannier, is much celebrated and sampled. this reissue provides a definitive account of its making. [May 2009, p.86]

The Smile Sessions fits into no present-day category, context or franchise. [Nov 2011, p.105]

Starts loud, alienated and proudly rockist, and stays right there. [Jan 2012, p. 93]

Guthrie's work here gives birth to social conscience in pop culture, and this 157-track set, gets it all down in the context it deserves. [Dec 2013, p.82]

DAMN. is a showcase for a rapper at his peak, blessed with a flow, nuance and unostentatious authority that currently feels unparalleled. [Jul 2017, p.32]

Page's notion of what might catch the ear was eccentric, but generally infallible. Duly, these remasters aren't asking you to extend your idea of the Zeppelin canon, but retract it--to realise why the albums have the power and mystery they do. [Jul 2014, p.86]

The bulk of the material comes from Crosby, Nash and especially Stills. These include early versions of several tracks that would soon appear on the trio’s own solo albums. ... There are more Stills rarities – “Same Old Song”, “Right On Rock’N’Roll” – and the musician accounts for seven of the eleven songs on the outtakes CD, making this something of a Stills mother lode. Added to these are several completed CSN tracks, complete with the harmonies that brought them together in the first place.

Thirty years later, the heaviness of these songs has intensified rather than abated. [Dec 2017, p.40][Album: 9/10, Extras: 7/10]

What should have been the next step in Branch's innovative career became a tragically beautiful final document that captured an artist cresting a peak. [Oct 2023, p.30]

The 10 tracks eventually sliced from Wildflowers don’t seem to have been culled for any coherent rhyme or reason: the virtues of the original album are abundant among the omitted tracks. ... Of the three further discs available for big spenders, the home demos and alternate versions are – as is usually the way of these things – mostly likely to be listened to once, out of curiosity. But there are charming moments among the demos.

Demonstrates that PSB are without peer as exponents of the pop single. [Aug 2023, p.50]

If Definitely Maybe still sounds pretty much as Noel envisaged, that's certainly to do with the quality of the songs, the delivery and the timing. [Jun 2014, p.95]

This collection makes clear that there are still many more stories to tell, more beauty and evil left to uncover. [Jun 2017, p.40]

It's a mind-boggling assemblage of swingin' 50s "space-bop" like "Soft Talk" and "Super Blonde," processional chants such as "Rocket #9" and "Journey To Saturn." and electronic keyboard voyages like "The Perfect Man" and "Disco 2021," an edited taster of the monumental "Disco 3000." [Jan 2017, p.46]

This fine reissue includes remarkably fully formed demos of the entire LP. [Dec 2014, p.89]

A Boy From Tupelo is ultimately a necessary and revealing addition to Presley's vast catalogue, one that spins a fascinating yarn about a pimply kid who transformed into something unprecedented: a rock star. [Sep 2017, p.50]

Thirty years later, these songs have lost neither their grandeur nor their menace. A wealth of live tracks, rarities and covers. [Sep 2018, p.47]

There's not a weak moment to be found. [Jul 2020, p.34]

An impassioned and resolute statement imbued with clarity of vision, emotional depth and the hum of boundless creativity. [Apr 2024, p.33]

The songs are pillowed by vaporous electronic backing that recalls the slow-moving, aquatic drift of Push The Sky Away and the sonic explorations of Cave and Ellis' Minimalist Soundtracks. [Dec 2016, p.26]

Copper Blue combined Hüsker Dü's passionate intensity with a new, steely pop resolve.

This reissue eschews context and explanation to let their catalogue stand as its won defiant rock monolith, And as it should. [Dec 2014, p.93]

The group's commitment and almost minimalistic sense of repetition resulting in a metal longplayer of unrivaled scope. [Jul 2012, p.96]

Though recorded during the same extended sessions, this archival LP is the polar opposite of its fraternal twin: big, bold, vibrantly coloured and laced with sweeping chorus hooks and towering middle eights. In a word, spectacular.

West is far from rap's deftest lyricist but his neurotic grandstanding is compelling and often pretty funny to boot. [Feb 2011, p.84]

Their 1993 debut, remastered by Bob Weston with b-sides and rarities, treads similar--of less self-consciously clever--ground to Crooked rain-era Pavement, with dissonant, spiky guitars piercing surprisingly melodic college radio favorites. [Sep 2011, p.79]

Some will prefer the stripped-back, elemental performances that are compiled on the extra disc, and they are certainly magnificent recordings in their own right. But part of No Other's magic is its ambition. [Dec 2019, p.36]

The sheer length and repetitions make end-to-end listening of these six sides something for the dedicated, but as a tribute to a still-missed talent, it testifies.

The Livelong Day is dark, powerful and disquieting stuff that resonates long after its final note has subsided. [Nov 2019, p.31]

Dion's unknown recordings are a lavish tour de force of folk-into-rock and blues-into pop. [Jul 2017, p.50]

[An] exhilarating companion piece. [Nov 2020, p.49]

What Archives II does, then, is not just celebrate a wealth of great music - but those who helped make it. [Jan 2021, p.34]

R.E.M. were already walking head and shoulders taller than most by now, but Life's Rich Pageant was nevertheless a startlingly great leap forward. [Aug 2011, p.102]

Overwhelming and beautiful. [May 2017, p.35]

The proof is in the music; it sounds juts great. [Jan 2012, p.98]

This gradual sense of revelation is reflected in Gas’ musical development. Each album has its own characteristics.

Nightclubbing is the album that came to define Jones as the complete performer, in her own way, as singer, muse, actress, alien and androgyne. [Jun 2014, p.90]

This is a fierce live performance by a band who didn’t always manage to hold things together onstage. It catches Nirvana at maximum intensity, aware of, but not disabled by, the contradictions that tormented Cobain and would eventually tear him asunder.

Terrifically thorough. [Nov 2004, p.131]

Two decades on, it remains U2's brightest, darkest, finest hour. [Nov 2011, p.100]

As primers go, it's close to definitive. [Mar 2006, p.112]

It is a cornucopia of delights for audiophiles and there are more than enough quirks and insights to make it invaluable to even the most causal Lennon fan. [Nov 2018, p.46]

Loveless holds it own as one of the great rock albums, period. [Jun 2012, p.90]

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]