Brilliantly original. [Aug 2003, p.106]

This is a fine celebration of a finely poetic band. [Feb 2015, p.103]

This album was Williams' breakthrough, with excellent songs.... A 20-track bonus CD offers a 14-song live set from that time and some very nice radio performances. [Mar 2014, p.105]

Exhaustive box set. ... Very much like a portrait artist will make numerous sketches, so we see the evolution of these songs as Bowie rewrites lyrics, improves melodies, tweaks arrangements, each stage an improvement on the previous. [Jan 2023, p.94]

Astounding... More even than his Exile On Main St., this is Tom Waits' Basement Tapes. [Dec 2006, p.104]

Dream River may be Callahan's most beguiling album yet. [Oct 2013, p.89]

If you're the kind of listener who has come to associate outtakes from classic albums with meagre, dryly forensic spoils, prepare to be very pleasantly surprised by Disc 3.... Rumours reminds us why we should continue to indulge them. [Mar 2013, p.100]

Sparely and intuitively performed, it's simply excellent. [Aug. 2011, p. 94]

there are shivers galore on this box. [Jan 2020, p.96]

It's the sound of a band at the absolute peak if its powers. [Jul 2015, p.100]

The gold standard rock double LP, Ladyland now boasts 12 solo demos, eight studio outtakes (notably the stunning Angel Caterina, alias 1983), plus a September '68 Hollywood Bowl show. [Dec 2018, p.104]

Like Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man's Out Of Season, say I'm A Harmony operates on a different plane. [Dec 2017, p.93]

The Magic Numbers have made one of the records--perhaps the record--that 2005 is destined to be remembered for. [Jul 2005, p.110]

A magnificent record. [Jan 2004, p.104]

The seething, sweat-drenched yet shiny Doolittle is the complete package--and still a reason to believe. [Jan 2015, p.108]

This is long-form drone perfection. [Sep 2019, p.91]

It's remarkable how organic and right (as opposed to gimmicky) the church voices sound on these 14 melodic folk, spare soul and various-tempo blues songs. [Apr 2006, p.98]

Even Russell's most intimate recordings could make him feel like a phantom; as details are filled in, the phantom expands. [Aug 2023, p.94]

Brooklyn duo deliver shock psychedelic masterpiece. [May 2010, p. 96]

It sears through the essence of what makes this band special, the brave voice and ebullient delivery of singer-songwriter-guitarist James Mercer. [Apr 2004, p.98]

Who's Next may not have been Pete Townshend's chose destination, but it encapsulates The Who better than anything before or since. It's the art=school provocateur, the bare-chested rock god and their virtuoso, brandy-soaked rhythm section at their peak. [Nov 2023, p.96]

Songs terrific, band sensational, and -- big plus -- Costello's voice late-developing way beyond that pinched whine into an instrument of substance and character. [Oct 2004, p.97]

From experimental to twisted pop, drill to R&B, techno to Ambient, James draws a precise and brilliant musical Venn diagram. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Life Is People is superb. [Sep 2012, p.84]

The live disc's souped-up version of Drive notwithstanding, what comes across is that AFTP is at heart a sublime collection of folks songs. ... A winning package. [Dec 2017, p.103]

Some of the best songs he's written since Heartbreaker. [Jan 2004, p.98]

Smilers is a masterpiece from a songwriter who's quietly chronicling the blanched last days of a sunshine empire. [July 2008, p.112]

A masterpiece, exactly the sort of record that your average sentient pop genius should make in 2002. [May 2002, p.99]

Finds her super-brassy, minimally-tooled groove machine in peak form. [Oct 2023, p.97]

The Basement Tapes ignored every record-producing rule while remaining true to the muse. [Dec 2014, p.109]

It is all heart, it is truth and it is beautiful. [Jun 2003, p.94]

The dark matter of his fall that holds The Graceless Age together is formidable stuff. [Jun 2013, p.85]

It's difficult to detach this record from the harrowing specificity of its backstory, yet Riderless Horse never makes you feel like an intruder. That's testament, after 12 long years, to Natasia's skills, the undimmed songwriter able to transform all the pain and horror into something indelibly beautiful. [Aug 2022, p.88]

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is a record of grand hopes and epic imagery, and powerful, uplifting music--the most accomplished of his 20-year career. [Apr 2009, p.102]

Are these essentially live recordings of a visceral, in the moment experience? Of course they are. You can’t fake that vital spark. ... Live And Dangerous still stands as the band’s finest hour; the crystallisation of all that made them so irresistible, so brilliantly volatile. [Feb 2023, p.94]

Friedberger's finest solo album to date. ... Supple, elastic, and in forward motion, it loses nothing in translation. Vibrate, resonate. [Jun 2018, p.86]

The scope and breadth is startling. [Oct 2004, p.94]

The jazz roots of George Clinton's Mothership, Ra's visionary music now sounds simultaneously joyous and bereft, a possible future now consigned to the past. [Feb 2017, p.107]

The works-in-progress disc of this handsome reissue package gives an even starker impression of a man rummaging joyfully through the studio toy box, now slapping down an instinctively lively drum beat, now jumping on a synth he’s only just plugged in, and rolling with it.

A record of startling breadth. [Feb 2003, p.96]

The two CDs move forward with an eerie dread and romantic wonder; violin, piano, bass, celeste, cello creating an alternate wordless narrative to normal Cave blather. [Oct 2009, p.115]

Ultimately, the official album remains the crucible of the artist who flourishes to this day. [Dec 2010, p.112]

With Callahan's romantic certainty comes rare writerly confidence: several tunes bask in this miraculous feeling. ... Outright classic. [Nov 2022, p.86]

A hugely enjoyable whole. After a fortnight's heavy rotation, it has yet to reveal its fatal flaw. [May 2017, p.89]

The whole thing only underline what a ferocious rock band they had become. [Nov 2017, p.106]

Is not only utterly delectable but manages to find genuinely new ways to shape heartbreak. [Dec 2002, p.114]

A musical odyssey across a real and imagined landscape of mountains and cities, dreams and memories. [May 2005, p.95]

The bluegrass scene is now offically in touch with its feminine side. [Sep 2001, p.96]

It's hard to imagine a more comprehensive collection from such an important group. [Dec 2016, p.98]

Tempest is Dylan's best musical album of this century, a vibrant maximising of strict rules and the savaged-leather state of that voice. [Oct 2012, p.84]

Eight long-deleted vinyls 45s and EPs bring back prized gems by The Congos, Linval Thompson and Freddy McKay, the 24-page large-format booklet putting everything into perspective. [Jan 2020, p.104]

Perhaps not as many musical genres are represented as might have been but it's still a good reminder of just how many styles Holly's music crossed and influenced, if not invented. [Aug. 2011, p. 99]

It routinely achieves a perfect fusion of forma nd content. [Dec 2021, p.87]

By revealing a snapshot of the creative process part-way through, the working mix included on IV's companion CD only adds to tone's grasp of their artistic achievement. [Nov 2014, p.106]

This is unashamedly traditional: committed, personal and really quite perfect. [May 2014, p.91]

The result is an album that goes far beyond emulation or pastiche to capture the emotional heart of a strange and elusive film, soaring from rapturous highs to quiet, introspective lows, vital romantic life undercut by a melancholy twilight sadness. [Apr 2018, p.89]

SFA's first truly flawless album.... Sad, lush, romantic, beautiful, heartbroken, crazy, this is an album powerful enough to make you shout out loud in public or cry alone at night. [Aug 2001, p.96]

Fantasy Empire buzzes, drills and throbs with a brutal power that is relentlessly, terrifyingly exciting. [Apr 2015, p.89]

The fabulous final versions of these songs often haven't travelled far from their rougher cuts, possibly because Harvey's voice, matured into a sumptuous growl, anchors the mood in enough grandeur. [Nov 2020, p.94]

Sensitively remixed and remastered--like cleaning stained glass for brighter colours--and in combinations of formats, here's a masterpiece that lives up to its legend. [Oct 2018, p.106]

[They] have made an evolutionary leap in rock. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Have One on Me is a very mature work indeed, even its resonant, discursive themes are underpinned by Newsom's usual playfulness. [Apr 2010, p.90]

A jarring and gorgeous reminder that our suffering is neither new nor negligible. [May 2021, p.79]

There's much to digest here but absolutely no filler--each song is a priceless gem. [Jan 2004, p.110]

Some of the songwriting is exceptional. [Dec 2003, p.114]

The result is fittingly breathtaking, a singer destroying his own work, yet creating something more elegiac and profound in the process. [Aug 2016, p.90]

What Dizzee Rascal has done with this record is find his own - profoundly satisfying - balance between grime's digital vortex of ringtones and car alarms and an older more contemplative electronic tradition. [Oct 2004, p.104]

Elephants On Acid finds Cypress Hill not only recapturing the dynamism and urgency of their early-90s heyday, but also taking that energy somewhere completely new. [Nov 2018, p.84]

A richer feast, from more humble ingredients, could scarcely be imagined. [May 2012, p.82]

Less exotic perhaps than the West Coast, Brazilian, German and Franco-Italian musical forays of the past, but even more remarkably musical, intriguingly textured and affecting. [Nov 2003, p.130]

Luminous and alive, Dear Scott is just what Mick does: Head music, straight from the heart. [Jun 2022, p.82]

Great songs and renewed relevance aside, Woody at 100's greatest bounty may still be Guthrie's own sketches and illustrations, beautifully reproduced in the book. [Oct 2012, p.101]

His rare talent for corralling emphatic musicians into his rhythmically intense, entrancing vision adds a whole new spin to the Indo-jazz continuum. [Aug 2019, p.91]

In a way, Trampin' is to this decade what Horses was to the '70s: a repudiation of its time, and the promise of a way forward. [Apr 2004, p.98]

All this may seem so exhaustive as to verge on the absurd, but fear not. It is the most fascinating document imaginable. [Dec 2016, p.100]

[An] alarming intimacy is the bedrock of Devils & Dust. [Jun 2005, p.92]

The quantity and quality of the songs they have unearthed that didn't make it onto Deja Vu is pretty amazing. [Jun 2021, p.99]

New stuff for him every bit, from pain to process, and consequently unprecedented in his previous work is the sweet melancholy measure of his voice. His songwriting, too, emerges liberated, lyrics forged, melodies flowing. [Apr 2013, p.86]

Intense, painfully frank, hysterically funny,and in the end, exultant... OSIGTS isn't always an easy listen, but it does offer a fearless experience that invests pop with more theatricality than the form can usually tolerate. [Jul 2012, p.80]

Isolation doesn't get more splendid than this. [June 2008, p.100]

[An] outstanding piece of work. [Feb 2012, p.92]

What's really mind-blowing is the audio quality of that initial 60-year-old performance (and indeed, the box set in general), which is so lucid that it sounds as if Miles is in the room playing right next to you. [Aug 2015, p.106]

All of the new mix’s strengths are writ large here. Ringo is restored. The voices feel ‘properly’ balanced and positioned. And in general, where there was whimsy (the bête noire of most Pepper agnostics) the power of solid drums and central voices irons it out. ... It’s an album--maybe the album.

It's among the best albums ever made. [Nov 2002, p.92]

It still vibrates with Warren Ellis's ominous, cosmic-radiation synthesizers and loops, but Ghosteen is less tightly coiled and knotted. ... Cave finds a way to reach out, and reach through. [Dec 2019, p.87]

It's never just meat and potatoes. It's more like eating bone marrow in a fashionable restaurant - earthy, carnivorous but still beautifully designed and knowingly conceptualized. [Jan 2012, p.88]

Idiot Prayer is extraordinary, breathtakingly varied within its minimal format, and compelling throughout. [Dec 2020, p.84]

This 4-CD box is the monument to both the cult and the art. And it's great. [Oct 2009, p.117]

Seductive, stirring songs about crushed hope and the corruption of beauty and some of their most ambitious arrangements make this their most fully-realised and accomplished album yet. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Their most affecting and cohesive statement to date. [Oct 2001, p.108]

An album of colossal strength and maturity. [Sep 2006, p.104]

An album virtually bereft of fluff and filler. [Album Of The Month] [Oct 2001, p.104]

Their debut, Mono, gave voice to little beyond their frustration, and the distance between that impressively venomous fit of black-hearted flailing and Penance Soiree's stereopathic, multiphonic attack is similar to that between Nirvana's Bleach and Nevermind. [May 2004, p.94]

It's as good as anything in this group's monstrous catalogue. [Dec 2003, p.120]

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

Here, backed only by guitar or piano, she inhabits other singers' material (including Smog's "Red Apples") with a fierce conviction that's often startling.

This is a great record for and about New Orleans and one of the best the two men have ever made. [Jun 2006, p.96]

Despite a shared Giorgio Moroder influence, they are more DAF meets Soft Cell and early Detroit techno than a 21st century Human League.