U2

Stipe and co’s major label years, now repackaged with bonus DVD-audio discs and making-of documentaries

Mouthy agit-rock trio trade spiky bombast for mellow elegance

Carol Clerk, who covered Live Aid for Melody Maker, on the newly released DVD of the global rock spectacular

Remastered, repackaged and reissued. Beloved of Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan and Michael Stipe

Five-disc box of demos, sessions and lost album

Another lengthy hiatus, another Blue Nile album. Here Paul Buchanan revisits the same spot on the hillside overlooking the evening city lights, is still filled with the same surging, oblique melancholy and longing that has sustained The Blue Nile since 1984, is still crafting singularly mature MOR in a darker shade of turquoise all his own. This time, however, the overall return feels diminished in effect—"I Would Never", for instance, trespasses dangerously close to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

First new material in eight years from heartland rockers

Self-styled Chauncey Gardiner of cute implies a lot but says little

Raucous Californians give their punk-funk stew a London airing, with a little help from the Godfather

Treasures unearthed from '80s Beeb archives