 | Black Gives Way to Blue by Alice in Chains
Buy new: £8.98 / Used from: £5.49 Rubbish. Another comeback album I shouldn't have bothered with. It just sounds like generic modern rock - nothing that AIC stood for can be found. 2/5
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 | V.I.P. by Jungle Brothers
Buy used from: £0.49 Full of stone-cold grooves and great flows. At times it's really cheesy, but this is nicely off-set by an equal tendency to get crazy experimental. 4/5
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 | Rite Time by Can
Buy new: £12.69 / Used from: £4.44 Malcolm Mooney is so consistently terrible, that at times he's actually brilliant. Overall it's like Beefheart's Clear Spot, but less complex. "Below This Level", "Withoutlaw" and "Hoolah"= genius 4/5
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 | Electric Arguments by The Fireman (Paul McCartney
Buy new: £8.98 / Used from: £2.93 "Nothing Too Much" and "Lighthouse" are terrific, but elsewhere it's exactly as smug and happy-clappy as you would expect from McCartney. 2/5
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 | Humbug by Arctic Monkeys
Buy new: £6.98 / Used from: £6.35 Lyrically it's too much like bad poetry without substance. Musically there are some very nice ideas. 3/5
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 | Keep Bangin' On The Walls by Asian Dub Foundation
Buy new: £9.98 / Used from: £7.40 Energetic and vibrant sounding. Concentrates a little too much on the "Enemy of the Enemy" album. 3/5
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 | Hats Off To The Buskers by The View
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.31 Decent indie/punk debut, with 3 or 4 top tunes... and a bit of filler. 3.5/5
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 | Songs and Other Things by Tom Verlaine
Buy used from: £3.00 Verlaine's starting to get a bit boring, now. It gets better towards the end, though. 2/5
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 | 100% Fun by Matthew Sweet
Buy used from: £0.30 This is just awful; so cliched an unimaginative... and Sweet's singing ain't too good, either. 1/5
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 | Crown Of Creation by Jefferson Airplane
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £3.99 Pretty good; delicate, groovy, subtle, and weird in places. 4/5
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 | Together Through Life by Bob Dylan
Buy new: £8.38 / Used from: £5.00 Basically along the same lines as Dylan's last 4 or 5 records. It's pretty good. "Shake Shake Mama" is killer. 3/5
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 | Live in New York City by Ghostface Killah
Buy new: £6.98 Good material, but... what's the point in live hip-hop albums? It just sounds like 5 guys shouting. 2/5
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 | Neighborhood Watch by Dilated Peoples
Buy used from: £1.98 Contains 2 or 3 decent songs, and some pretty good deck-work, but it's a little low-key overall. 3/5
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 | Unchained by Johnny Cash
Buy new: £5.68 / Used from: £3.57 I think these American Recordings get more credit than they deserve. Cash is great (but then he always has been), and "Spiritual" in particular, stands out. 3.5/5
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 | Lola Vs Powerman & The Moneyground by The Kinks
Buy new: £3.48 / Used from: £3.00 I like this very much. It's as perfectly crafted and creative as you would expect a Kinks album to be. 4/5
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 | Waxing Gibbous by Malcom Middleton
Buy new: £8.18 / Used from: £5.50 Very disappointing. After the lovely packaging it's all downhill: overproduced, over-whiney, over-long... 2/5
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 | Divine Design by Jeru the Damaja
Buy used from: £2.25 This is absolute rubbish. How-to-make-a-rap-record-with-no-budget. 1/5
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 | Dark Days/Light Years by Super Furry Animals
Buy new: £7.98 / Used from: £6.39 After the dreadful "Hey Venus", this comes as a big relief. It's absolutely brilliant; experimental, tuneful, varied and beautifully produced. Could be SFA's best. 5/5
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 | Hawks & Doves by Neil Young
Buy new: £6.68 / Used from: £2.66 Underrated early 80s album from Shakey. Worth your pounds. 3.5/5
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 | BBC Live by Violent Femmes
Buy new: £10.98 / Used from: £25.65 Not bad, but as it's a live show, it kind of lacks the listenability of an album. 3/5
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 | Live At Tramps, NYC, 1996 by De La Soul
Buy new: £4.96 / Used from: £2.55 Sure, it may have been a legendary show, but really the music is mixed far too low, so all you're left with is 3-7 guys shouting 1/5
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 | Punkara by Asian Dub Foundation
Buy new: £6.98 / Used from: £6.62 Too punk, too busy, too energetic for me. I liked ADF when they were more chilled out and less shouty 2/5
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 | American III: Solitary Man by Johnny Cash
Buy new: £6.28 / Used from: £4.01 Easily the best of the American Recordings records I've heard so far. This one benefits from actually containing really good songs that are exceptionally performed. 4/5
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 | Crooked Timber by Therapy?
Buy new: £8.98 / Used from: £7.80 This might just be the best Therapy? album since Infernal Love. It's inventive, hard... and quite brilliant. 4/5
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 | Embryonic by The Flaming Lips
Buy new: £8.98 / Used from: £6.42 Exactly what was needed from the Lips to set them apart once more, and cement their status as the only band that are really worth caring about. Extremely groovy and truly experimental. 4/5
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