There’s a great and clear leap forward this time around, but this still has all the cornerstones of what drove so much attention: the ability to lull listeners through power pop or be taken in dreamlike trances, lyrics that take you on new journeys with every listen.

For the most part, Honeyblood’s second outing is a delicious face-punch of a record, running amok in the best way possible with everything they’ve learned since first time around.

On their third LP, Two Vines, the band continues to make glossy retro-futurist pop, creating a world of synthesizers and keyboards that feels both primeval and modern at once.

While we’ve not heard Nick’s vocals out front before, those frantic fretwork and well-trodden chord changes work like an aural comfort blanket. Yet this is no carbon-copy.

All in all, it’s a melodic, sprawling record to wig-out to; and one that means that Clear Shot hits the mark indeed.

‘A Goood Sign’ never really goes anywhere and gets a bit lost in its murky pool of synths, while ‘i.v.’ doesn’t add much to the record. But overall, the falsetto of Mockasin and the electronic sounds of Dust marry perfectly into something stunningly weird; the kind of marriage where’d you wear multi-colour suits and dresses and tuck into an inflatable cake.

What you see is what you get with Kero Kero Bonito. Instant sugar rush pop with extra icing on top, they’ve perfected the quick fix formula.

Lady Wood isn’t an album made for radio or easy digestion. The hooks are there but, like Tove herself, they aren’t succumbing expectations.

Branching out musically is a bold step that pays off in flashes, but the riff work in ‘Welcome to Hell’ and ‘Jailbird’’s brief guitar solo confirm that, at heart, Crocodiles are strongest with guitars in hand.

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

Put it all together, and listening to Savoy Motel’s debut in its entirety can leave you struggling, wondering if you’ve accidentally left the album on loop and yearning for something--anything9--that doesn’t begin with a bassline boogie.

Intentionally overwrought, brash, and totally different to anything she’s ever done before, Lady Gaga’s Joanne doesn’t quite nail the artistic frankness she’s aiming for.

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

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.

The whole record shows them as a band who wear their heart on their sleeve, a perfect mix of ‘90s guitar nostalgia and sweet-sounding slacker rhythms.

With short tracks, skits and interludes admittedly Yes Lawd! does feel a bit more like a mixtape than an album at times but that’s simply the NxWorries way. In a pairing with this much chemistry, they can be forgiven for getting a little carried away.

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.

Powell’s music is for sweaty, unconcerned nights of utter debauchery--the kind of whirlwind Saturday night where there’s no way you’re getting home until at least midday. This makes listening to the album as a whole a frankly exhausting experience.

In an age where any era of music is within a second’s grasp, The Lemon Twigs’ reliance on nostalgia is at best dated; at worst, pure laziness.

Ruminations feels like a comedown as such. His first solo album since 2014 ‘Upside Down Mountain’ features only Oberst, a piano, an acoustic guitar and the occasional flash of harmonica. It’s possibly his most reflective, nostalgic work yet.

Despite its curiously downbeat nature, it’s thoughtful and packed with intricacies waiting to be revealed. You’ll never want to leave once it sucks you into its gravitational orbit.

Whilst Heems’ verses amble along with wry humour and charmingly lazy wordplay (“Inshallah, mashallah, hopefully no martial law”), Riz MC’s (actor Riz Ahmed) are typified by a razor-sharp flow, as fast as it is furious, and breathlessly references the refugee crisis, Aeneas from The Iliad, Trump and his film career in short order, before throwing down that he “run[s] the city like my name’s Sadiq”.

They still sound like they’re on a process of self-discovery, just a couple of steps away from striking gold.

Perhaps not perfect, but a recovery position from which Two Door Cinema Club look primed to soar once more.

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

Doe always hinted at such results from an LP, and Some Things Last Longer Than You delivers the lot and then some with devastating power and sincerity.

It’s a record that’s well-travelled, that’s absorbed a whole myriad of influence and taken two years to digest it into something cohesive. But, impressively, it’s a record that still holds its identity despite all the ideas it’s binding together.

It’s a record that feels at once deeply personal and eloquently grand at once. All this aside, musically Sirens is up there with Jaar’s best work