It's clear that All at Once is a record of big sounds, bigger themes and enormous – and entirely achieved – ambitions. A crushing classic.

Go Now and Live is a measured and accomplished collection of songs--songs which work together as an album as well as they do individually.

The broad, stuttering beats do fatigue the listening experience eventually, but music this animated and unrelenting demands a very specific ear in a very specific setting.

This is a second album that genuinely builds upon its predecessor. Exile reinforces the feeling in modern pop that no other group sounds quite as hurt as Hurts.

For the flagrant pop thrill-seeker--judging by this incredible, irrepressible, ecstatic, brilliant record--neither will they ever disappoint. Don't believe the anti-hype: pop album of the year, by at least a dozen choruses.

Not quite yet the coherent full album that its time in the making hinted at, but nonetheless a welcome addition to record collections.

Their most coherent, alive and plain best album yet.

La Liberación is so fixated on exhibiting its sense of fun that it forgets how to finish ideas in the process.

"Quite listenable" sums up most of Future History.

As a transitional release, however, Night Train points to an even bigger and brighter future: it mostly sounds like a band happy to enjoy the freedom of chalking up 10 million album sales, and everyone else can take a running jump.

Though not without its charms, Endlessly is too slight and uneven to impress unconditionally.

Hollywood Undead are content to deliver cliches--more out of a lack of imagination than cynical opportunism, but it still smacks of both. That's why to seasoned ears or any genre fan requiring more than more of the same, they're very, very boring.

The lyrics aren't the only thing holding EFUNK back: Soul Clap's chugging pace drags on the heels of their most anthemic numbers.

ANNA is strategic in its experimentation, but represents a fairly dramatic departure from its makers’ brand, so hats off to that.

Flamingo will keep the fans from growing rabid while The Killers take a break, but if Flowers releases another solo album before reconvening with his colleagues, teeth might well be bared.

Ultimately, Form & Control serves it purpose as a ready-made playlist for your next party, but perhaps the band's oversimplifying of its sound has stripped away some of its mystique in the process.

On the whole, Collections is a misfire and proof that, sometimes, re-inventing the wheel doesn't always reap rewards.

One wonders if those responsible for this platter of past-perishable pop mimicry, these clichéd regurgitations of ubiquitous motifs, are indeed the same Danes who wowed admirers of sparkly melodies and insatiable hooks only a single springtime equinox ago.

It is, essentially, a pop record to stick on and sing along to. If that was Kassidy's aim, to have fun and make people dance, they've undoubtedly succeeded. But don't come looking here for anything more profound than that.

Blue Slide Park ends up a charm-bereft everyman hip hop record merely ticking boxes required to shift units.

U2 producer Flood marshals the band's bulldozing energy into an altogether slicker sort of bombast, and admittedly there are moments (Dream Dream Dreaming and the seemingly endless build-up of Lots Sometimes) where the songs sound in danger of losing their way in the middle of it all.

Try as he might, Barat can run, to Europe and beyond, but he will always find it hard to hide from his past.

This is a charmingly youthful and exuberant album, featuring a fine selection of vocalists.

Although this statement sounds very much from the heart, and many of these songs make you smile while other make you sour, it’s a shame that this album’s playfulness very often comes across as pretentiousness.

Better Living, Flats' 34-minute debut album, is a commendably cacophonous outpouring which contains not the slightest germ of future commercial gold.

Bad Blood is a really gratifying debut that feels like a solution.

You want the mix to jump and pound and excite. But it doesn’t, and the choruses feel hung out to dry. This makes for a frustrating listen, because the talent is there – damn, even the songs are there.

Get these cuts [I'll Never Let Go and Called Out In The Dark] out of the way, though, and Fallen Empires settles down and improves.