Many of you will already be aware Jón (Jónsi) Thor Birgisson normally lends his mellifluous vocal skills to Icelandic post rockers Sigur Ros and prefers to sing in Hopelandic (don’t look it up, it’s a made up language). So how does his solo effort sung, in the main, in English compare to his bands efforts? Well, the results are certainly more accessible, almost pop in places, although the strings (courtesy of composer Nico Muhly), ensure the soaring plateaus beloved of Sigur Ros fans are present and correct, but Go is different enough to warrant the ‘solo’ tag, whilst being recognisable enough to satisfy old fans and welcome some new ones.
Ruby Palmer

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It’s highly unlikely that the sort of reader who frequents this site would be unaware who Roky Erickson is, but just in case you are younger than the average TM-O-er Roky co-founded, the 13th Floor Elevators (godfather's of psychedelic rock) and suffered from both paranoid schizophrenia and appalling treatment by the Texan authorities. This record, mainly unreleased material penned throughout his decades-long career, details a harrowing life of electro-shock therapy, imprisonment and mental illness, easy listening this ain’t, but a career resurrection on a par with Johnny Cash’s work with Rick Rubin it most certainly is.
Ray Harper

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From his early days with Wood Brass & Steel (with long time bass buddy Doug Wimbish) and as part of the house band at Sugarhill Records (where he began working with drummer Keith LeBlanc) playing on early rap cuts like The Message by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five and beyond to his later work with Doug and Keith as Tackhead with Adrian Sherwood, Bernard ‘Skip McDonald’ Alexander’s career has been remarkable, made even more so by his later incarnation Little Axe under which moniker he has produced some of his finest music, and this, his sixth, is possibly his finest yet.
Drew Bass

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You’d be hard pushed to find a long term Ozzy fan who would place any of his solo output up there with the first four Black Sabbath albums, but then Ozzy has been a benchmark for soap opera reality nonsense now for such a long time now that only the most naive of fans would be expecting anything here to exhibit the same bone crunching welly as heavy metal anthems like ‘Iron Man’ or ‘War Pigs’ and, needless to say, they would once again be disappointed. That said there are any number of solo Ozzy fans around and if you loved No More Tears you’ll almost certainly dig this, the rest of us will just have to dig out the old Sab's vinyl.
Ray Harper

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The second studio album from Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins boasts an A list of guest performers – including Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen and , needless to say, Dave Grohl – and a vibe pitched somewhere around the mid-seventies UK singles chart. The influences are glaring, but fun nonetheless, in fact the whole album rattles along in a fine old Foo Fighters gone glam rock style, and let’s be honest here successful and properly entertaining solo albums by drummers are about as rare as hens teeth (of course Taylor does have Grohl as a role model here), so not world shattering but well worth a listen.
Ruby Palmer

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What do you get if you cross a metonymically precise guitar legend with a prodigiously talented sax/flute wielding jazz type and a huge great ambient space? Yup, Live At Coventry Cathedral, and whilst a night of improvised explorations recorded in 2009 may send many scrabbling for the mouse (especially those hoping for any King Crimson style careering prog racket), if you enjoyed Fripp’s work with Brian Eno – like No Pussyfooting and Evening Star – then you will certainly want to add this to your collection as it repays repeat listens and the alternate take on KC’s ‘Moonchild’ is delightfully deconstructed.
Paul Riley

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Originally released in 1971My Goal’s Beyond preceded McLaughlin’s interest in Indian music and acoustic guitar by some years – lest we forget around this time he could be found creating great whirling dervishes of sound with Miles Davis. It features Billy Cobham, Jerry Goodman, Charlie Haden, Airto Moreira and tabla player Badal Roy doing justice to jazz standards like Charles Mingus’s ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and Chick Corea’s ‘Waltz for Bill Evans’, but it’s the two extended Indian fusion pieces ('Peace One' and 'Peace Two') which are the real gems here. If you only ever own one JM album this really should be it.
Paul Riley

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Robert Palmer really doesn’t get his due in the pantheon of pop, his angular white boy funk may well have been hijacked and pooped on later by acts like Go West but he really was a genuine innovator. True, you do have to ignore some properly horrendous ‘80s synth sounds on this ‘80s live set but if this album does nothing more it highlights what a fantastic voice Palmer had, or more truthfully what magnificent use he made of very mediocre base material (listen to the phrasing and improvising on ‘Sneaking Sally Through The Alley’), and tracks like ‘Woke Up Laughing’ and ‘Johnny And Mary ’ are tremendous.
Ray Harper

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How do you begin to review Curly's Airships? The work of Van der Graaf Generator’s Judge Smith - originally released in 2000 - a double CD featuring 18 performers documenting the events leading up to and including the fatal crash of the world's biggest airship, the R101 on its maiden voyage to India in 1930. With over two hours of music and words (lot’s and lot's of words) Curly’s Airships was six years in the making and can loosely be described as a rock opera (although Smith prefers ‘Songstory’), but in truth that description really doesn’t prepare you for the truly phenomenal size and scope of this remarkable project.
Ray Harper

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Believed, by many a Cure fan, to be their finest moment and a move back towards the bleaker vibe of Pornography, Disintegration was, in part, a result of Robert Smith trying to distance himself from pop successes like ‘Why Can’t I Be You’ but the ploy backfired disastrously when the album promptly became a huge success. Now including unreleased tracks, out-takes, demo’s (many showing just how fully formed Smith’s demo’s were before recording began) and Entreat the entire album played live at Wembley in 1989 now with four extra tracks. If you are only ever going to own one Cure album this should be it.
Ruby Palmer

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Not a band who has worried the UK album buying public over much to date, Boston based Celtic punk outfit The Dropkick Murphy’s are a testosterone fuelled mixture of Stiff Little Fingers, The Pogues, The Clash, Thin Lizzy and The Dubliners, and are actually as good as that list makes them sound. Renowned for their live work, and in particular their legendary yearly St. Patrick’s day bash, this CD/DVD set captures The Murphys in full, bug-eyed flow at just such a performance, and it’s a proper blast from beginning to end, and any band that used to boast a bagpipe player called Spicy McHaggis and now has one called Scruffy Wallace is alright by us. The Oracle

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So just how the hell do you follow a massive success like Tubular Bells – and lest we forget on the 14th July 1973 Tubular Bells entered the British album charts where it remained for a mind boggling 264 weeks? The truth is you can’t. All you can do is carry on regardless but this really is worth hearing if only for the 1,000 distorted guitars featured on 'Part Two' (and the inclusion of the original demo’s). Critically lambasted it nonetheless reached the top of the British album charts and remained there for three weeks before being deposed from the number one spot by, yup, you guessed it, Tubular Bells.
Ray Harper

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