Album

Fired up by disco and punk, Jagger’s swagger returns, with a disc of unreleased songs...Wrongly or rightly, the allegations against the Stones came thick and fast in 1977. They’d lost their edge. They’d become gluttonised, lazy, too rich and bored to care. Some of them had the temerity to be in their mid-thirties (NME called them “The Strolling Bones”). The urgent sound of punk had made their jet-set rock seem passé.

The final album, compiling offcuts into heartbreaking shape...This is, perhaps, the most gruelling album review I’ve ever had to write. It’s a record by a dead person who I met, and really liked, and fully expected to meet and like again. The Amy Winehouse I interviewed in late 2003 was an insanely charismatic and shamelessly frank 20-year-old who looked like a Jewish punk Jessica Rabbit and wore pink ballet shoes so worn her toes poked through.

Five whole remastered discs and a mountain of trinkets. But is it worth a ton?JEEZ, THE SOUND quality is INCREDIBLE. It’s like David Gilmour is playing his acoustic guitar IN YOUR ROOM. You really can hear the strings BUZZ and hear his fingers SCRAPE on the fretboard. You can hear Nick Mason’s drum stool SQUEAK, hear Rick Wright’s Clavinet THROB, and you can actually hear Roger Waters having a BREAKDOWN about two minutes into “Welcome To The Machine”. Amazing.

Wenceslasaire! Spangladasha! Shnamistoflopp'n! Come frolic in Kate Bush's winter wonderland...

40th anniversary reiossue of Krautrock's greatest double album...

Bigger not necessarily better for Florence...

Metallica blow away Lou Reed’s cobwebs. Great stuff...

The unfinished symphony, in five formats, with a wealth of extras...

This year’s remodel: The King Of Limbs, remixed across two CDs...

Growling, whooping, yelping and crooning: a swaggering, multifarious tour-de-force...