Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: After their first round was such a success, Gary Crowley and Jim Lahat have been tasked with pulling together another essential collection of punk and new wave from the 70s and 80s, and you can rest assured they've done it again. There are some major, familiar names here like The Clash, The Slits and Ramones, but there's also a hell of a lot of rare delights from the likes of The Limit, The Art Attacks and The Newtown Neurotics. Musically, there's plenty of range too from spiky three-chord pub rock and punk through to Linton Kewsi Johnson and Dennis Bovell's crossover dub as Poet & The Roots. That's just a tiny overview of this mammoth six-disc set, which takes you deep into the heart of a vital, thrilling period in alternative music.

Review: If we were to tell you that the original touring show for this now slightly more than 40 year old Jethro Tull album featured a stage built to resemble a Viking longship and the band performing in medieval costume, your reaction would very much give us a good indication of whether you were likely to enjoy the LP itself. Coming, in 1982, as the band hit a serious crossroads, with singer Ian Anderson wanting to embrace new synth technology and others favouring sticking to the traditional prog/rock/folk triptych that had been so successful in the previous decade, it's actaully more modern in places than its sleeve suggests, with 'Watching Me Watching You' in particular showing the influence of Peter Gabriel's first solo albums and standing the test of time well. With a heap of extras, including a heap of contemporaneous live recordings from Germany, the Tull completist will be donning their viking helmet at the merest sniff of it.