Joshua James' second release of 2012 is a thoughtful and pleasantly warm collection of songs that are steeped in the sound of Americana.

The record surprises far more frequently than his previous material, despite never straying too far from his initial sound.

Despite hiding behind the veil of electronic experimentation, Thom Sonny Green has taken a brave step forwards.

Whilst a fun record, there’s only one issue remains, the fact that it’s often hard to connect with something so unabashedly honest.

La Femme toss so many weird and interesting ideas against the wall, that for every gorgeous moment that sticks, there’s an awkward miss.

The real charm of this record comes in its additional moments of character; the spoken-word interruptions (‘Do Something’) or soundbite introductions (‘She Wants Me Now’) which somehow tie the album together even more tightly.

This second album shows that there is more to their schtick than barely tamed chaos.

The record spans from spoken word to ‘70s funk and ‘80s glam rock, dabbling in balladry and power pop. It may not be the most polished or serious piece of art to emerge from the pandemic, but it’s impossible to deny the sheer amount of personality and unashamed frivolity bubbling out of ‘Transparency’.

It’s comfortable, casual and--as is Iggy--a little bit weird at times. It’s catchy and has some great stories nestling in there--Post Pop Depression gets its hooks into you gradually with each listen.

Ultimately, this is the strongest Bird has sounded in some time, but it’s not quite the monumental breakthrough that’s going to find him new fans.

Echo Lake have managed to take a slew of barely-original touch points and make something genuinely intriguing about them.

The second album from the Phenomenal Handclap Band may not contain anything as exciting or danceable as the highlights of their debut but, despite its disappointments, there is still plenty on Form & Control for anyone who enjoyed their debut to appreciate.

It's not a record that will convert anyone who had previously dismissed these two Canadians, but it preaches a sermon that the present congregation will enjoy to their heart's content.

‘Blood, Hair and Eyeballs’ is a level, if somewhat uninteresting, addition to the Alkaline Trio lexicon. Fans will find pockets of the band they fell in love with, while less seasoned followers may be better served diving deeper into the back catalogue instead.

Blue's watery explorations demonstrate an intriguing new facet to the project, but it might well come at the expense of the fearsome impact that earlier releases packed in the shedload.

Uncle, Duke and The Chief is a chirpy affair that’s very much in the vein we’ve come to expect, even when there’s a sadness permeating the lyrics.

Whilst there are a couple of noteworthy exceptions there is simply too much here that simply slips into background music fodder.

The Incessant marks a turning point, as Meat Wave tackle their demons head on.

Taken on their own, each track solidifies the group’s wild imagination, but IV is tough to stomach as the free-flowing, full-bodied juggernaut that it is.

There’s an awful lot of promise housed in Graveyard Of Good Times, but its scale and constant shape-shifting makes it difficult to consume and process. Some refinement though, and the future’s bright for Brandon.

All too often Welcome The Worms lacks the bite that’d make it Very Good Indeed

Seven albums in, they’re not so much shifting the formula as refining it and waiting for cult stardom to creep up on the scene.

Good Luck and Do Your Best is so far out there but at the same time feels right at home; making it one of Panda’s most thrilling pieces to date.

The refocusing of his songwriting has led to undoubted growth in SOHN’s work, but that stunted sense of adventure leaves moments that fall between the cracks.

It's Springsteen, it's 70s soft-rock, it's sun-soaked Californian road trips.

Unsurprisingly, this collection does sometimes border on becoming stale; 10-30 second fillers appear somewhat pointlessly bookended between certain tracks. But, more often than not, Friedberger does spice things up.

Rat Boy works best on this record not giving the fans what they want--but something new.

Strange Creatures limps and sags habitually, never quite succumbing to Drenge’s wishful potential and ruthless attempts at crafting the idyllic garage-rock their previous releases showcased. It’s a shame when the promise never quite delivers.

Students of jazz, but with a love of avant-garde art punk and West African music, Pom Poko bring something chaotic to the table. ... But this is their bread and butter; the kaleidoscopic realm in which they thrive.

Save for a few tweaks, she doesn’t go to great lengths to expand upon the musical formula that’s served her to date.

The experience is filmic first and foremost, barely for a minute could Les Revenants survive as a stand-alone album, but it’s the curiosity and atmospherics of that leant narrative that compels the listener through the album.

At times 'Rant' comes across like a hip church choir having a go at some pop hits. Yet, in the main, this is a fun and genuinely touching set of songs.

Realisationship might not always come together neatly, but Andrew Hung’s desire to push his own boundaries, whether that’s moving into that lo-fi zone or utilising his vocals, leaves you wondering just where he’ll turn n

It’s hard to tell if the first half of Miracle Mile is really better than the first, or whether it’s just that a kind of boredom sets in at some point during a listen, whether it’s your first or your fifth.

Through exhibiting effortlessly strong songwriting with infectious hooks and warm, albeit slightly corny lyricism, the other slacker from Canada has matured into an amorous connoisseur of alternative pop.

‘Spark’ presents a jarring change: not one from that familiar warmth to icy cold, but only halfway, a sort of uncomfortable mild chill.

Messages from the deepest isolation are most likely to be a SOS or the increasingly deranged words of someone losing touch with their sanity. TFCF somehow manages to be both. Alive with unease. Shorn of every accessory, everything to mask the sharp taste, the familiar duality of Liars is starker than ever.

Flynn and band are happy to be a little old-fashioned, but it can be fun to join them.

Two average tracks out of nine starts to feel like too many and leaves you doubting whether the rest was quite as good as you thought.

Severely damaged, sometimes terrifying, and always enjoyable, it’s his most challenging album yet.

The vocals, the terrible rhymes... it's business as usual then for Liam; it's just scrubbed up a bit.

All in all, the blanketing lime-lit production, the in-your-face ’60s nostalgia, the five-sugars-in-the-tea gooiness of it all may be too cloying for some, but Miles Kane has been so upfront about these musical influences, and for so long, that one can only admire him for so faithfully embodying them.

Holding Hands With Jamie remains an untamed beast that’ll pave the way for Girl Band’s unstoppable ascent. There remains a nagging feeling, however, that this deadly work could’ve forced an apocalypse if delivered with more conviction.

This is an album that asks for patience, and only on occasion is it duly rewarded.

It's never boring, the dynamism of the tracks means they all have a sense of motion. It's just, after a while, there doesn't seem to be a destination in mind.

Chunky, neatly devised and deeply satisfying--this is the sound of staring into a black winter puddle while a nearby bird squirts a veneer of soothing melody onto proceedings.

An album, according to Dev, about “black depression, black existence and the ongoing anxieties of queer / people of colour”, Negro Swan is a record that radiates these tensions; subtle and amorphous, it’s not the most immediate listen, but it’s undoubtedly one with real weight.

While not wholly consistent, Teleman’s third LP contains some of their best work yet.

American Utopia isn’t a complete paradise. Yet, there’s enough upbeat vibes on offer here to perhaps make you feel a little more optimistic about the future.

This is a good start but, after losing half of their line up, you get the feeling Jonquil need to add a bit more character, and a bit more bite, into their new pop noise.

While Dance on the Blacktop won’t mean everything to everyone, its considered construction, intriguing philosophising and plain old barbed-wire hooks mean it’s certain to mean everything to someone.

We Come From The Same Place, then, is a delightful record, catchy enough to keep the listener’s attention, and with enough substance for them to return to it time and time again.

While debut ‘Beams’ was a bubbling, unpredictable electronic masterpiece, second album ‘Apocalypso’ was a dancefloor smashing, out-Fischerspoonering affair, Pacifica stands as a wildly temperamental compromise between those two drunk on a peculiar addiction to mainstream action.

This is the sound of an artist who has allowed himself to take a break and record eleven tracks he would like to rele

It's a fine debut.

The album is a mismatch of styles, moods and tempos. There is little cohesion and each song feels like a thought or idea alone on the record--like a collection of B-sides or rarities.

Granted, his sixth effort is as bonkers and creative as ever, but it could be that less really is more.

So far, so great. But when the use of vocals is taken into overdrive on final track ‘Go On Without Me’, where Jacob Bannon from hardcore punks Converge offers up his jarring scream, it’s almost on the borderline of becoming too much.

Each track is a musical sketch that assembles fragments of thoughts and shadows of daily pursuits. Escaping the urgency of old, this Ultimate Painting is a picture of a disquiet melancholy.

American Football meanders a lot less than its predecessor, and it’s a much more focused record, every move carried out with precision.

Intersections can, at times, feel a little blinkered and mopey.

After a difficult few years, Snowdonia proves that a steady hand and a playful surf-rock riff has seen Surfer Blood through the darkness and out the other side.

Thieving like a magpie from his own box of tricks, there’s no denying that Gallagher is a songwriter from the very top of his class.

There’s undeniably magical moments here, and taken in small doses it can be a cosmic voyage. All in one go though, its sheer scale can be as daunting as the vastness of what lies beyond the stratosphere.

An album that’s sometimes a little too abstract to truly connect with.

An enigma made by a puzzle, ESTOILE NAIANT is as compelling and as unusual as the musician who refuses to tell you his name or show you his face.

Unusual yet distinctive, Aviary may alienate some but you can’t fault the depth of Julia’s grand vision for her work.

Cameron may drench his songs in luscious, sweeping strings, but this is more akin to a gritty neo-noir thriller with numerous femme fatales haunting him at every turn.

They don’t often get the time to build a song from nothingness to explosion quite as well as they mastered on their debut. It’s a powerplay that largely works, yet still takes enough rests to showcase a frantically beating heart and a definite intelligence underneath.

It is a heady and often confounding listen and, for many, will be too drastic a departure from his normal territory, or too diffuse and hectic a set of ideas. What ‘Song of the Earth’ can’t be faulted for, though, is a lack of ambition.

It presents itself as an almost impossible follow-up, but Goodness more than holds its weight, and shows its beauty in time.

Though ‘Mama’s Boy’ won’t exactly be changing the alt-pop game, it certainly might convince you to text your ex after one too many glasses of wine.

Black Country, New Road’s seriousness and determined intellectualism is sometimes to their detriment.

Manhattan would thus far be a brilliantly joyous record, buzzing with intention and vitality. Unfortunately there are a pair of oddball transgressions that ruin this.

By refusing to change the song structure or tempo in any way, Deez has created an album that is stuck in a memory that grows more rose-tinted by the day.

It’s not so much a Meat Wave as it as an all-consuming fleshy tsunami. Although this breed of cut-the-brakes punk is obtrusive and in-your-face in all the right places, it offers little else in terms of versatility or gear changes.

HÆLOS are clearly intent on shunning tradition. With that in mind, this is a promising start.

TV en Français is more a more muted outing.

Fans might see this as a boon - Bainbridge picking up from where they left off before their self-imposed hiatus. To others, it may sound like a missed opportunity to establish themselves as a more cutting-edge artist.

The electronic beat of ‘METALIZM’, with its winding guitars and chanting vocals echoing their melody verbatim, comes over a little too recent-era Muse than anyone needs. But what, on the surface, is mostly a fun, noisy collection does also offer an infinite rabbit hole to dive down.

Despite the album’s beginning in confusion, Saturn sounds genuinely uplifting throughout with her impressive vocal range being the focal point.

While it perhaps won’t warrant an influx of new listeners, The Waterfall is an inviting record that will leave returning fans thankful for them not disappearing.

Homely and familiar in its sound for the most part, ‘My Mind Wanders…’ is a smooth ride of buttery emotional grandiosity and infectious London pop that sits somewhere between Paloma, Adele and Jess Glynne, with enough attitude and bravery to modernise these prevailing and reliable British tropes within soul-pop.

For all his wayfaring tendencies, it’s refreshing to hear an album from Mattson that feels as though he’s found solace in something or someone, and the richer instrumentation never compromises the album’s overall sense of intimacy.

The songs themselves are invariably linked through a series of euphoric crossovers and trippy interludes that create a strong sense of life within the music.

Replicating the 60s psych sound is something that is often tried but rarely successful, yet this Kiwi trio suit these influences that they so obviously wear on their sleeves.

While this album will neither shock nor rewrite opinion, there is no denying 'Strangeland' is solid enough.

Echolocation is a bleak affair, but it does have a number of impressive melodies and a clear sense of the liberation that music elicits in the band itself.

There's so much to like about Mirrors The Sky that could've been loved instead.

Often, it’s an insightful and engaging look into what it feels like to be of everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, without alienating anyone simply looking for a catchy pop song. It’s simply a shame that Baio didn’t alienate some of his own desires to wander through genres.

‘Hanoi 4’ is a driving, groove-led funk workout, while ‘Hanoi 5’ pits all kind of warped gurgles against a nocturnal jazz saxophone. They’re stranger, more direct beasts without the foil of Ruban’s soft vocal and often all the more ominous for it.

Just as the pair’s ability to create moods with just their guitars is impressive--it’s a bit much over twelve tracks.

Just when you're close to giving up [on A Wasteland Companion] we get to 'The First Time I Ran Away' and the album suddenly and brilliantly clicks, starts getting everything right.

It'll make you dance and sing until you sweat, and although it stutters in places and has plenty of sections that build but frustratingly never execute the finish to shatter your eardrums, it's an album that is very difficult to truly dislike.

While the celestial sound-effects sometimes make Saturn’s Pattern sound like the soundtrack to Lost In Space or a retro computer game, generally what you can clearly hear is that Weller is creating music confidently again.

Jassbusters is the album of a musician who has been around the block a bit, knows what he wants and more importantly how to get it.

With a stark lyrical dexterity and deliciously noodling guitar riffs, the album is torn between crippling sentiment and stark detachment.

Anybody yearning for reinvention or experimentation is going to be let down, but the fact that Building a Beginning remains so in thrall to Lidell’s soul heroes suggests that perhaps such drastic action wouldn’t be a good idea anyway.