It’s a fun mess, and although heavily indebted to 60s psyche folk and acid rock, Astronomy For Dogs has a verve and colour that saves it from derivative pastiche.

The freewheeling garage bangers of Original Pirate Material have receded into the distance and we’re left with stabbing high-range synths... resulting in an album that’s charming and witty, but not as exhilarating as it might have been.

This may not measure up to The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, but it does boast a batch of sweet and deceptively unfussy, scruffily heartfelt tunes dealing with love, loss and the messiness of life that help redeem his unarguable songwriting talent.

The Go! Team are clearly committed to the lo-fi, DIY aesthetic, but with songs as strong as these it’s rather a shame they didn’t apply a little depth and finesse to their production.

At the heart of this album is a trio of absolute killers.

It’s a step backwards for sure, but a worthwhile one.

Good Bad, Not Evil delivers 13 testosterone-crazed grooves which mercifully give finicky revivalism the swerve, in favour of fuzz-frazzled sonics and lots of fun.

It’s a one-trick pony album sure, but what a trick.

A welcome reminder of the Brummie art-poppers’ lighter, brighter past.

Heartfelt but sometimes overly polite.

Roots And Echoes is an album of songs with all the warmth and familiarity of old leather--and as strangely unexciting as that sounds.

NYPC's restrained disco needs to rip it up and get wilder, cos this down‘n’dirty posse is actually cleaner than a Boots cosmetics counter.

This anthology of new and previously released 7” singles is inevitably somewhat dishevelled as an album, but then this extraordinary band has always worked best in bite-size.

The incessant hooklines cloy a little after repeated listens, but that’s hardly the most damning criticism of a pop band.

This is cathartic, psychically haunted fare; pleasing and troubling in equal measure.

Love Travels At Illegal Speeds is good stuff that doesn’t drive you round the bend. It doesn’t pack any surprises either.

Lyrically, Allen spins the street-slang tales of blowjobs and booze told with varying success by everyone from The Streets to Shampoo.

For what both of Guillermo Scott Herren's alter-egos are concerned with is sound's texture rather than its structure, rendered here through the soft caressing of acoustic instruments instead of circuit board torture.

This Japanese power trio possess a lurking sense of Metal traditionalism, producing a scabrous wall of guitar noise, crunching, dense and turgid.

The subject matter takes them closer to Nick Cave than ever before, yet, whereas he displays a knowing black humour, Low’s earnestness sometimes makes them unwittingly hilarious.

A more straightforward affair than previous works, and as such suffers from predictability.

All whoops and yelps, their third album jumps skittishly from primary-coloured electro to punk to poolside cabaret, with an impressive sense of its own silliness.

Just Like… is no classic, but it’s enough to make for a teary goodbye.

It's still heavy on the harmonies and hummable choruses, of course, and does meander into happy-clappy, round-the-campfire territory too often for those of us with a low saccharine threshold.

More incoherent than Dntel’s superb debut Life Is Full Of Possibilities.

The bubbly cartoon funk of single Cell Phone's Dead is a winner, but tracks like 1000 BPM and We Dance Alone are mid-paced, cautiously funky numbers with neither the bare sentiment of Sea Change nor the ribald lunacy of Hansen’s late-90s bombs.

It’s an evanescent experience, for whilst you’re awestruck by the sonics beneath the electronic sheen, you can’t remember anything much about them after they’ve evaporated at the end.

Has some moribund slumps.

My Dark Places captures the offbeat brilliance that made the TVPs indie legends in the 70s, characterised by Treacy’s endearingly slapdash attitude towards singing in tune and playing in time.

Stately, midtempo tunes whose immaculate production belies the darkness at their core.

No doubt fans’ll love it, but virgins shouldn’t expect to swoon at this end-of-the-pier jamming.

Raymond Raposa, the ex-surfer behind the ever-shifting line-up, sounds like Neil Young after spending a few nights on a park bench, his decayed folky croak the perfect thread to link these hushed laments.

It's Christmas come early, and None Shall Pass won't disappoint his fervent admirers.

The Loon owes so much to Stephen Malkmus and Frank Black that one imagines lawyers might be called.

The first few tracks work a treat, melding glitchy beats and stomping brass bands in the best tradition of Björk or Sigur Rós. After that, however, things start to feel a bit overwrought.

Occasionally veering into rakish skiffle in an annoying hat, it’s not quite the righteous sword-slash of vindication prayed for by fans; still, it’s a relief to see Doherty’s muse in surprisingly rude health.

If this was any more showbiz it’d be performed on ice.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sees Britt Daniels channelling his persecution complex into more piano-driven 60s pop songs, screaming "Don't make me a target!" at the heavens as his girlfriend walks out. His band prove surprisingly versatile.

This is woozy Americana wrapped fast in thick swathes of serrated menace.

While it’s a bit hit and miss, the sheer bullishness of this album is impressive.

The sense of clutter, not to mention a recurring high-pitched motif, makes Preparations feel like being trapped in someone else’s nightmares too long.

Features an excess of accumulated ingredients with predictably indigestible results.

There’s some great stuff here – specifically Relax, Take It Easy’s sublime falsetto hook - but elsewhere buoyant pop is sunk by relentless vocal mugging and production which wears its influences much too heavily.

Shorn of the orchestral lushness that distinguished their previous effort, The Dears now have little to recommend them.

Boasts little in the way of joie de vivre.

This is the sound of a fighter punching below his weight.

Caught between essentially meaningless singalongs and trying to actually mean something, what you get is average power-pop with crass attempts at poetry.

What seemed fresh and charming on 2005's Noah's Ark sounds like an interminable racket this time round.