The frustration comes from Stains on Silence's propensity for a feeling little bit too rough around the edges, unfinished almost, despite it’s reworking.

Frequent changes in instrumentation and tone ultimately make Oczy Mlody feel unfocused, and without any of the band’s signature flamboyance to fall back on, it makes for a dull listen.

Glitterbug is a tired album that lacks invention and makes the landfill indie tag even easier to attribute.

Weak and boring are never words we’d have ever thought apply to Poppy’s music, but alas here we are – hoping for the ‘Zag’ to come.

It’s hard to ignore the inconsistency and feeling that something’s lacking from its second half. That said, the rough-around-the-edges charm and guitar-packed indie give DMA’s a great starting point on this album.

Flashes of the airtight songwriting that ran through ‘Scream Aim Fire’ and ‘Fever’ remain--closer ‘Pariah’ does controlled fury very well--but otherwise, it has to be case of back to the drawing board, because Bullet sound as if they’re beginning to run on fumes.

All things considered Chuck Inglish hasn’t offered enough that’s new or high quality enough to truly make a mark.

Messy in its execution, and lacking in simplicity, No_One Ever Really Dies isn't nearly as profound as it thinks it is.

Sunny Hills is at its best when it keeps things simple, with the taut ‘Dreamer’ the clear standout; perhaps next time, All We Are won’t throw quite so many ideas at the wall, because few of them stick here.

Ultimately Beyond The Wizards sleeve sounds like what it is--a hobby. As an outsider, it simply doesn’t reap the same rewards as it might have for its creators.

Iit feels like a natural extension from what’s come before rather than a bold move forward, but you can tell Santigold had fun making it all the same.

The material on Keel Her is probably best enjoyed one by one--17 tracks at once is a bit much.

The apex of which Moon Duo head towards on The Shadow of the Sun isn’t reached and seemingly it burns out before entering a new atmosphere

With a few forgettable songs and seemingly overcrowded moments, Lo-Fang's debut falls short--acting as more of a promise of what's to come, rather than a thrilling introduction.

Extension relies not just on quality component parts (of which there are many here), but too on tender placement and a development which holds some compassion for the listener. On this rich but straggling album, of Montreal fail on both accounts.

The result is still just a big, slick, debatably-decent pop record.

‘Are You Fucking Your Ex’ has none of the melodrama its title suggests, the question holding about as much weight as ‘did I leave the bathroom light on?’, and ‘I Got Hurt’ sledgehammers the line “I got hurt… and it didn’t feel good”. For a songwriter who’s so loved for finding poetry in the quotidian, for saying so much with so little, it’s just a bit basic. Maybe if he’d allowed him - and us - to wallow a bit, he’d have had more of a point.

Desire’s best moments arrive when there’s a genuine attempt to create a bit of atmosphere--the cool strut of ‘Spotlights’ is a rare bright point. Everything else, though, has been done better elsewhere, and recently, too.

‘Social Cues’ is a study in US radio - or so it seems, each song a suitable soundtrack to faceless car journeys along nondescript roads: think Imagine Dragons in leather jackets and ripped jeans, if you will.

It remains evident that the pair stellar pop songs in their armoury, but their over-reliance on a standard formula finds this debut stuck in a bit of a creative rut.

The majority of the record is just not memorable enough.

A passable if disappointing montage of mid-tempo electro-pop that flirts dangerously close to dull trip-hop.

For an album which features a list of impressive producers, it feels though one of them should have worked on the album as a whole to give Soft Control cohesion and the platform for Welsh to jump from.

While never the strongest lyricist, ‘Power’ sees vocalist/guitarist Sam McTrusty roll out an unending series of lines that are overt to the point of self-suffocation. ... ‘Messiah’ and closer ‘Praise Me’ are stronger cuts, though as with much of ‘Power’, they’re unfortunately lost amongst the plethora of untidy songwriting on show.

This record does have its moments, though any instances of real connection are a notable rarity.

Whilst the majority of the album is technically admirable for what it does achieve, it is also frustratingly slow going at times.

Encyclopedia is the sound of The Drums trying to find their feet once again, an endeavour not yet fully accomplished.

If kept short and sweet, Temple would have made a charmingly laconic record that blossomed in unconventionality, yet sadly here is muddled in his expansive means.

It's almost as if the songs were constructed by way of algorithm.

A record that needs its fat well and truly trimming.

Overall Beat the Champ will no doubt prove a hit with die-hard Mountain Goats fans, however as a standalone album it lacks a coherent sound.

The Liverpudlian four-piece are gifted with penning peppy indie-pop, the melodies that lift the likes of ‘Be Your Drug’ and ‘Move To San Francisco’ are spiky and infectious but ultimately stick to a well-worn formula that produces middling results.

There are moments on Coming Up For Air that lay claim to a genuine force, the kind who’ve earned their Chris Martin-endorsed stripes. They’re yet to truly claim their own territory, though, and any attempts to reinvent the wheel fall flat with an almighty thud

Fretboard noodling far outweighs any emotional or intellectual potency, and Heirs continues to leave ASIWYFA stuck between a rock solid live show and a hard-to-place recorded direction.

Not one for anyone who’s not already won over by the pair’s particular charms.

'There's No Leaving Now' in fact resonates like the stark antithesis to Jeffrey Lewis' wry, comical anti-folk. It's dreary as hell.

His sophomore full-length is at times uninspired and leaves an emptiness in the gut.

Let’s Eat Grandma clearly have the potential to merge fantasy and instant fix pop, but this debut is more a showcase of their peculiarities than anything else.

The Dream Walker comes laced with the feeling that, of all the various multimedia forms that make up the Angels & Airwaves project, it’s sadly the music that is the weakest link.

Where things ought to be reduced and given more purpose, they instead stampede into goodness-knows-where. Ambition doesn’t always equal perfection. Rock operas have their place, but this isn’t the pick of the bunch.

For a group whose best moments are when they teeter on just about every edge imaginable, it's just... boring.

Titus Andronicus have always melted together the music of their heroes, but this time it feels completely without inspiration.

Yes, ‘Club Romantech’ is fun, albeit superficially - supercharged by pulsating house that would perhaps be irresistible only under very specific, very inebriated conditions in 2012.

The vocals are rather Thurston, too, like a chain-smoking Scrappy Doo, and structurally each song on The Best Day follows a specifically Thurstony pattern; all shimmery build-ups and thrashing bar chords, and deadpan vocals thudding solemnly along the top of it all.

[The off-trend songs like Alaska, Sawzall and Hawaiian Mazes] feel freer, more exciting and more innovative. But III isn’t that. Instead, for the most part, it feels like Banks-by-numbers.

Kyla La Grange still has a voice you want to listen to, but two albums in, it seems like she’s still searching for the best music to set it to.

The Wilderness, though, is Explosions hitting autopilot when they enter uncharted airspace, rather than exploring the potentially limitless universe beyond.

As loud and aggressive Flats can sound it can't come close to hiding a lack of pretty much everything other than extreme volume and misplaced nothing-better-to-do-than-have-a-go-at-everyone-else small-minded aggression.

There’s enough evidence on Ropewalk that The View’s songwriting senses remain sharp, but the turgid manner in which they’ve served up this group that renders it a disappointment.

It’s hard to overstate how aggravating it is to hear somebody who once stood as the dictionary definition of “less is more” fly so flagrantly in the face of the mantra that made him.

It's simply too mired in experimentation to make for an enjoyable or enlightening experience.

There are occasional flickers of inspiration - see the maximalist rework of ‘Elite’ from Blanck Mass and the minimalist ‘Teenager’ that Robert Smith contributed - but otherwise, you have to hope that everybody involved enjoyed putting Black Stallion together, because it ain’t much fun to listen to.

‘The Streets Where I Belong’ appears to aim for ‘80s FM radio nostalgia, while the title track hints at cod reggae, ‘Forever ‘92’ borrows a smidgen of shoegazey guitars and ‘The Bomb’ a touch of trip hop. But with a lack of immediacy, paper-thin production and no discernible hooks throughout, for anyone still humming ‘Chewing Gum’ or ‘Heartbeat’, it’s a disappointment.

She hasn’t managed to effectively distill her many ideas into something that sounds cohesive After seven years away, that feels like a bit of a let-down.

At this point Mumford & Sons know exactly what they have to do to keep the Spotify streams rolling over, and Delta feels like an exercise in box-ticking, no more, no less.

Unfortunately, this slightly more mainstream vision is consistently obscured, making Innocence Reaches a frustrating listen.

Phoned-in and simplistic, it’s hard to decipher when one track ends and another begins.

It lacks the immediate bombast of either that last LP or 2010’s ‘Come Around Sundown’, but neither is it straight-up boring.

This is a confused mess of a record, with nonsensical lyrics, trite musical clichés, and not a lot else.

On the whole, the album makes for difficult listening and it's hard to engage with.

By recycling the same guitar and drum effects, it comes across as a poor man’s reworking of ‘Broke Me In Two.’ That only leaves you desperately wanting to return to the gems that frontload this curiously unbalanced album.

Intimate and involving doesn’t necessarily mean that the record is engaging, however, and some tracks wash over without an impression, ultimately making this feel like little more than an indulgent side-project.

Real Lies’ debut effort instead puts forward a group who’ve clearly agonised over every detail of their early ‘90s aesthetic, and forgotten about the songs in the process.

Something that gradually becomes clear is that this is an album of uncertainty.

The results range from dazzling to disastrous.

The band has honourable aims with its vocal intent and concept, but fails to inspire with its content, nor deliver on its promises.

L.A. Divine is simply too rigid for Willett to shine. Joe Plummer, while undeniably talented, is a less subtle drummer than Matt Aveiro and locks Willett into predictable, percussive grids that give his voice a jarringly artificial, almost showtune quality.

It’s pleasant, and there are intriguing touches to be found in the Jacco Gardner-esque keys of ‘On Your Own’, but there’s an intrinsically grating quality that’s hard to shake.

Disjointed rather than bad; there's undoubtedly a cross-section for which the not-quite-post-punk, not-quite-shoegaze combination works. Let's hope they find it.

The nods to Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine are still there, but the world has moved on since then, and unfortunately, it feels like Maps is still stuck in 2007.

Messy, complicated, capable of star turns, it’s clearly a record Gonzalez needed to get out of his system.

What we have is quite ironically, a record lacking both direction and colour.

This is an album that suffers from having altogether too much surface and not nearly enough substance.

The issue with 48:13 is that it’s actually a fairly routine-sounding Kasabian record.

The album’s title suggests fight and energy but much of this album feels too polite and too pedestrian.

If a little more time been spent focusing on the increased R&B influence, Tranquilizers could've been the rejuvenation chillwave deserves.

Ex Lives just sounds like a band going through the motions.

By playing it too safe, Animal Nature isn’t worth recommending. It’s just sort of fine and that won’t cut it.

Though the writing is clever and at times funny, the whininess and constant soul-searching shuts the audience out, and anyone deciding to stay is bludgeoned again and again with his relentless wet sentimentality.

After an ‘Our Version of Events’-worthy build, it’s crying out for something slightly off-kilter to douse the saccharine overload, but instead shoots for a bounding chorus of ‘Rather Be’-proportions, which misses in favour of something that can only be described as 90s dance clunk.

Glasshouse isn’t exactly groundbreaking. It could also do with being about half its mighty 17-track length.

Without any real substance to the lyrics, these soft, earnest, mild guitar songs come across like their author has grossly overestimated their depth. The album as a whole sounds like fourteen-year-old boyfriend music.

Sure, with ‘This Is Really Going To Hurt’, Flyte have successfully echoed the sounds of the past, but it’s all about as paper-thin as a yellow-hued Instagram filter.

‘Bad Things (That Make You Feel Good)’ sounds like a sped-up take on wholesome pop king Bleachers, while opener ‘Should Be Dancing’ features a half-arsed attempt at pal Alex Turner’s croon. ... A little more humour on Mini Mansions’ third, and they might’ve been able to pull it off.

Undoubtedly there’s riches to be found here but the treasure map is harder to follow than ever.

They’re an easy punchline, in fairness--perennial whipping boys, probably deserving of a break at some point--but when they continue to churn out nonsensical self-parody, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ continued stratospheric success is nothing short of baffling.

Although ‘Superstar’ certainly reaches for the stars in its slick production, her wit doesn’t sparkle as strongly, and its theme of an awkward outsider trying to chase success feels a little too close to home.

There are basically no odd turns here, no tangents into unexpected territory and certainly nothing at will make you spin your head round for a second glimpse. That being said, it fulfils its remit with consummate ease and you'd be hard pressed to say it's unenjoyable.

In the end, this is an album with a whimsical construct that fails to extend its ideas and live up to its musical promise.

As an album it’s guilty of being simply too cold and distancing to be able to connect to.

By trying to make them sound something they're not, the end effect falls far short.

The Tourist isn’t ‘the worst’, but it’s far from the journey its designer hopes it to be.

Enter Shikari have made their mark with a hybrid theory of conflicting ideas but, unsure where they sit between Rage Against The Machine and Radiohead, it lacks real conviction.

While diverse in places and interesting at its best, Albumin is disappointingly underpinned by the singular drone of fairly dull, generic rock.

If Japanther focused more on their punk rock sensibilities and honed in on their talent for hook-infested pop songs, rather than trying to clean up their act, then they’d be far better off for it.

With all the various guest vocals, Pick A Piper's multi-narrative structure is a little problematic.

In Plain Sight is an overwhelmingly dour listen.

Ultimately, These Walls Of Mine is too incoherent and disparate in style to merit any amount of satisfaction.