Sure, Ultimate Painting know their influences, but what shines through most of all is the sheer diversity and inventiveness of their songwriting.

Billie Marten delivers a pragmatic album that explores the equilibrium between her positive and negative outlooks on life, whilst confirming that being preoccupied with our own contemplation is and will forever be an ongoing process of the human condition.

Ape in Pink Marble doesn’t do anything innovative because it doesn’t really have to. So go ahead, Devendra, celebrate.

It’s a beautiful album, and it’s the sound of a band realising they can finally do anything they want with sound.

Yet beyond this wired mix of post-punk anxiety, splintered techno elements and haunting soul samples, it’s Danny Brown’s rhyming ability that ultimately sees the LP flourish.

This is God Damn growing into themselves, their sound and with a UK tour in full swing running into October; it’s only going to get better from here onwards.

Overall there is a distinct retro vibe to City Club. Most of the tracks possess a nostalgic groove which wouldn’t render them out of place in an episode of the enigmatic Twin Peaks

McMorrow loyalists may bemoan the polished sheen that characterises the tracks on We Move, but there is some genuine pop-soul mastery at display here, McMorrow’s sound more wholesome without renouncing the spectral quality that characterised his earlier material.

Overall, it's the record you wanted--and expected--AlunaGeorge to make three years ago. It'd be good to see them kick on, though; you still get the feeling they've an even better record in them.

Those uncharacteristic twist and turns--the hybrid of orchestral arrangements and classic indie pop formulas--give the album cohesion and a narrative despite seeming out of place at first. Still, the LP is testament to the group’s ability to churn out perfectly wrought, desperate pop, time and time again.

A solid debut then, full of yearning and barstool tales.

Yes, 22, A Million is painfully, painfully sincere. Yes, it’s also hopelessly oblique, grandiose, and pretentious. Yet it’s also an absolute diamond of a record, at once fragrantly beautifully and also hopelessly complex, easy to disregard and yet thoroughly hypnotic.

This album as a whole is without doubt greater than the sum of its parts, but it just so happens that those parts comprise one of the most intriguing production collectives in the industry, and arguably the most unique MC that this country has to offer.

Although coming quickly off the back of their debut might give people a cause for concern, the conviction with which it’s delivered should put to bed any negative preconceptions. An absolutely vital record.

One for the fanatical only.

While Scott might spend the 14 tracks telling us how incoherent he is, Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight is anything but.

There simply isn’t much to latch on to here, and certainly nothing to suggest that Still Corners aren’t completely out of ideas.

At this stage Warpaint still have their boots in two camps: the icy cool of their indie heritage and the open-hearted joy of the kind of music they clearly want to make. As the album progresses the vibrancy that decorates its first half starts to brown.

It retains the witticism and humble poetry that saw him crowned the beloved laureate of Fife, but there’s just a little bit of magic missing.

With 17 tracks this album could be expected to take off to somewhere fantastic but, although we stay very much on the same page throughout the duration of the record, the pristine production of A Moment Of Madness is faultless.

At 40 minutes long it’s probably just the right length, and both beats and rhymes will have you reaching for the microscope to appreciate the layers and nuances of each, listen on listen.

It wraps you up like a sunny day in the middle of no where. But Lynch is never far from a party, and every moment of this record is glazed with fun and pop and excitement.

The spark of unpredictability that defined his previous records is sadly lacking.

It’s her vocal prowess that threads together the line-up of producer-du-jour types that feature on For All We Know. That, and the infectious grooves that dominate this album provide endless enjoyment--18 tracks worth, to be precise.

AIM may be not the magnum opus that Mathangi Arulpragasam is capable of, but the music world would be a good deal less colourful and quirky without her in it.

Smith delivers a record that combines sonic punch with a nuanced and wide-ranging sound palette.

There is just Nick Cave, stripped to the bone and robbed of a future. It’s impossible to turn away.

If ‘Sistrionix’ was Deap Vally as a brooding teenager, Femejism is the more grown up and wiser young adult. Strong and independent, it has just realised that it doesn’t need to impress you, regardless of the immaculate construction that can’t help but bowl you over.