The paucity of innovative ideas, reliance on old recipes and directionless experimenting make for a fairly tasteless repaste.

Repeated plays just refuse to reveal hidden depths. There aren‘t any. “Around The Sun” is just a really poor album, probably the first one that this band has ever put out.

Reliably odd, then, but unexpectedly moving, too: the best Tom Waits album, all told, since 1992’s “Bone Machine”.

On paper it can seem a dark, depressing combination. But what Hope Of The States bring and what, in theory, they offer up for the lost and desperate to cling onto is... well, hope.

“Mind Body & Soul” goes a long way to answering many of the questions her debut left hanging in the air, and most of them with a resounding ‘Yes’.

Overall, it’s a suppler record than its older brother, largely avoiding the skittish tempos of "Turn On..." tracks like "Roland" in favour of elegant curves and harmonies... though the road-honed likes of "Slow Hands" and "Not Even Jail" still hit bruisingly hard.

This is a brilliant record, just as it's always been.

This is music that sounds like it was plotted by sad psychics graduates in lab coats. It's clean, melancholic and sterile (in a totally non-derogatory sense) - full of gently undulating rhythms and melodic pulses.

They're one of those rare propositions in British Pop - A Great Idea On Paper.... Often, it works, leaping off the page and becoming something you'd actually want to slip into your state of the art entertainment hub at the end of a hard day shredding documents.

Not only does it contain Green Day’s finest songs (and choruses) to date... but it also scratches at the surface of political dissatisfaction with nails sharp enough to leave a nasty scar.

For people awaiting that second Jet album, this should prove a welcome distraction from their crayons. For the rest of us it's a look of bemusement and a scratched head.

By third song, "Faded Beauty Queens", the recipe is already stalling, and the harmonies begin to sound flimsy.

If not musically the most creative thing to ever have been called hip-hop, “Sweat” has more than its share of head nodding struts and hands-in-the-air moments.

Mainly, though, this is a terribly weary album, tedious when it strives to be seditionary, trading on utterly devalued notions of attitude and aggression.

As much as Nelly likes to portray himself as everybody’s favourite fun-filled club star, “Suit” suggests that writing thoughtful, intelligent and enduring R&B is where his heart really lies.

Essentially a homage to The Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and fellow Minnesotan Prince, "The Handler" proves that Har Mar possesses a fine R&B baritone, is an able rapper and pens exceedingly funky, party-primed tunes with a perfect pop core.

Sincere of intent and, as ever by Weller, stylishly and deftly delivered, "Studio 150" is a pleasant enough listen, which nevertheless will leave die-hard fans hankering for new Weller material.

“Funeral” is the sort of perfectly-realised record you’d hope from a band at the top of their game. For a debut release it’s unmatched in recent years. Hearing it is to wake from a black and white slumber and to view the world in widescreen Technicolour.

The album's sinewy rhythms and monochrome production sheen start to fade into the background after a while, but as far as capturing a certain political and musical zeitgeist, "Stealing Of A Nation" does so accurately, and with more honesty and integrity than most.

This is a determined little bastard of a record by a band in a bug-eyed, rhythmic sweat, who know it’s time to come out with their guns blazing.

Everywhere you look on this record there is a sense of magic escaped, accompanied by the ever-tantalising presence of a great band just beneath the surface.

Everything, you suspect, that people hate about Björk is multiplied a thousandfold here. But by the same measure, to her fans, “Medulla” is an intimate, ecstatic wonder.

Should you own the band’s magnificent first three singles (collected on the “Three EPs” mini-album), it’s hard to imagine you’ll ever really need another record by this conceptually brilliant, artistic dead-end of a band.

While the sound is distinctly Crowded House, it’s darker than previous offerings.

Represents an ill-advised body swerve from the duo’s idiosyncratic home territory and plunges them deep into the thoroughly becalmed waters of MOR ambient pop, offering up languid, beats-driven, down-tempo tunes that aren’t so much radio-friendly as downright sycophantic.

A dignified and enjoyable end to a frequently astonishing career.

It will undoubtedly top some end of year lists this Christmas.

Carr has always wanted to create his very own sound, and for the first time we are starting to hear it here.