Back catalogue: Indie/Alternative

Review: Clutch's cult and debut recording back in 1993 has never before been available on vinyl, but it is now thanks to Weathermaker Music who have pressed it up to a limited 180 gram sea glass blue vinyl and included a numbered and autographed insert. Transnational Speedway League is a great work from the band's Tim Sul and it comes with great artwork which has been redesigned by Dan Winters and Sult. The limited pressing is a must-own for fans that reminds of the band's very earliest sonic roots, raw riffs and guttural vocals that all make for an intense and arresting album still now all these years later.

Review: There are so many pivotal albums in The Cure's imperious back catalogue, but Wish will always remain one which heralded the band's progression from indie heroes to universally adored treasures of British pop music. The gothic tendencies are absolutely still there in the moonlit charm of 'Open' et al, but the sound is direct and expansive, with plenty of space for monster hits like 'Friday I'm In Love'. The ability to let the light in ensured Robert Smith and co. could be popular as well as profound, and they've never looked back.

Review: The Cure's live album 'Paris' catches the band in the summer of 1992. This tour came after a siesmic shift in the previously fairly static line up of the goth pop icons, with original frontman Robert Smith and long serving bassist Simon Gallup joined by drummer Jason Cooper, keyboardist Roger O'Donnell and guitar player Perry Bamonte for the first time, all of whom remain part of their live ensemble 30 years later. The setlist starts with their evergreen opener 'Shake Dog Shake' but this selection double vinyl captures more deep cuts - 'The Figurehead', 'One Hundred Years' and 'Apart' as examples - than hits, although the dark pop of 'Close To Me' does make an appearance close to its end.

Review: It was the album, or perhaps era, that nearly brought the whole thing crashing down around the members, threatening to cut short what has subsequently become one of the most longstanding, celebrated and influential British rock music stories at the fourth chapter - when there was clearly so much more left to write and read. LP four from The Cure is arguably up there with the darkest of hours, a brooding, claustrophobic gothic pop masterpiece that laid bare, and still does, the struggles of those involved, and ourselves. Fuelled by heavy drug use and with the underlying uncertainty that disbandment was a very real possibility as a result, with Robert Smith's plummeting mental health and in-fighting only adding to the troubles, nevertheless, Pornography is a powerhouse album which approaches stark and universally poignant themes without apology, helping generation after generation understand that somewhere someone gets it.