She remains in a state of full control throughout the album, and by album’s end it’s clear that Gaga has released one of her most dazzling albums to date.

In its imperfections Amphetamine Ballads occupies an especially human place. Saviours of rock n’roll? Nah. It doesn’t really need saving, and anyway this lot are far more about destruction. A modern classic? Just maybe.

There’s no real question that Music Industry 3 Fitness Industry 1 is only really going to be of interest to the diehards--the remixes in particular--but it’s a sign of the band’s confidence in their recent material that they saw fit to put out these Rave Tapes misfits in the first place

Thematically, Organ Music… re-visits all-of-the-above, but Spencer's more lucid in his metaphors than ever before but loses none of the mystique for doing so; listening to this is like realising you can suddenly speak horse, or whale.

There’s nothing on Overdrive that’s going to change your mind about Shonen Knife; if nothing else, it’s impressive that they’ve managed to spin so many records out of such a derivative sound.

For the most part What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? fails to muster much sense of enthusiasm for itself beyond those first and last tracks.

[There are no] outstandingly bad offerings, just several more forgettable ones than can be briskly ignored.

When they push the boat out and go prog on the lengthy title track (which clocks in at a wildly indulgent near-four-minutes) the effect is one of ethereal loveliness, a lysergic suspension of normalcy as the band’s warming lo-fi offers a moment of transportation.

Above all, I can't help but feel that Wiley is still too much of a creative character, one relentlessly trying new and different things, to offer the sort of polished and succinct singles that would stick with a daytime radio audience. This unrelenting originality at least is something to be celebrated.

Ethereal, meandering vocals over finger-picked guitar and very soft, low-pitched strings! With slight hints of the mediaeval in the harmonies! Can my heart take the pace?

While each track sounds different to the one that preceded it, they all manage to fit together as a coherent whole. Barking is still a credible effort and a pleasant listen, but it is also unremarkable and, had it been released by artists whose fame didn't precede them, it probably would not have made any waves.

Three albums in, they haven't yet – but I trust The Cave Singers – I think their next might be the one.

Overall, there’s as much room for the head explodeGIF in Monsters Exist; as there is in a WhatsApp group-chat post philosophy lecture.

An escapist Jamaica-pop lark with a traditional bent and a big heart, in the realms of good-times bass you could do a lot worse than the classy and charming Watch Me Dance.

The five songs that Radiant Door is comprised of shows the band's pensive, if occasionally exploratory side.

Hi Beams is an album that delights and baffles in almost equal measures.

Dando fucks Varshons up just enough to stop it being an actively great covers record--in recent terms The Condo Fucks’ mighty "Fuckbook" stomps over it--but not enough to detract from the truth that the thread drawing the successful songs together is the still-beating talent of Evan Dando, non-dickhead version.

With a record as good as it is, it's difficult to believe that both they and pop music aren't alive and well.

A rather average document, already a relic on arrival, with about three standout songs among a soporific wash of over-polished Flying Nun imitations.

Nobody is suggesting that Brilliant! Tragic! isn't a flawed album, but it is also one which delivers some of the richest, fullest thrills of Art Brut's career.

Like Arab Strap with bellbottoms and flower necklaces in place of the drum machine, Shapiro and Green are a match made in heaven who explore every corner of romantic hell.

With Last Days on Earth, the persistently-versatile Noah continue to set to music those picturebooks of get-togethers, easy plateaus and break-ups that we've all got stored in our heads and add to year-on-year – and, in the process, they've managed to forge some great big tunes. More or less irresistible.

At its best, Glitter In The Gutter is a compelling journey into another time and place, perfectly pictured and realised.

Fade Away is the sound of a band clinging to the lost potential of their past for buoyancy, trying desperately not to drown in their own aimlessness.

It's a mixed bag all right. At times brilliant, at others unlike anyone else out there and occasionally frankly a bit rubbish.

DOOM has taken a backseat in an attempt to mentor this young talent and under his guidance Nehru has put in a spectacular performance.

Despite all of the ingredients for a great album being present, it just doesn’t ignite, perhaps due to the unmoving, maudlin stance from which it is all delivered.

While it perhaps doesn't achieve all it sets out to, it is regardless an intriguing, immersive combination of old and new.

Landing is a well-made bit of fun, but it’s no more than that.

There’s something about High Hopes’ slight incoherence that actually stands to its advantage--it’s a less homogenous, polished whole than Magic or The Rising and a fresher, more arresting listen.

As an entity it's perhaps best seen as the siesta to Landscapes' nocturnal astral tryst – lighter and less intensely psychedelic, but immensely enjoyable nonetheless.

The sisters show an ability to pull different sounds and shapes together to make something extremely enchanting and really very lovely.

Brilliantly elegant.

Abandoning the abstract art-rock ideals of experimentalism and pushing the rhythm section further out onto the dancefloor has resulted in a sweet spot for this type of storytelling. Still, this isn’t music to be taken in completely on the first listen. It’s eerie, complex, heart wrenching even.

There’s no doubting that sensory sensations offered here can hold the listener, but most likely they'll be enjoyed a helluva lot more while chemically-enhanced; essentially this is not a record designed for home listening.

The reason Tongues works so well is not because the song lengths are significantly shorter, but because both Hebden and Reid interact on the same wave length.

As a warm up exercise for Barât’s musical muscles and an honouring of a debt to The Jackals, Let It Reign is absolutely fine. But Libertines album number three will need to deliver a lot more than this.

In many ways, Outer South feels almost like a coming of age for Oberst. His voice is way stronger than it has been in the past.

This isn’t a half-formed album as such, just that it’s statued unchanging tempo and unvarying instrumentation leave potential developments lying by the roadside.

Initially addictive and tantalising, an hour of consuming their slickly engineered autopop leaves you with little more than a faint sense of emptiness.

Overall, Spring Tides is the record Jeniferever have undoubtedly spent the past thirteen years of their existence building towards; an epochal moment that was well worth the wait, and can only whet the appetite in further anticipation of where their next journey of discovery will take them--in their own time, of course.

Certainly on this album class is more straightforward.

Remarkably the chuck it all in and see what happens approach works, mainly because the superb sheen of production papers over any cracks. What we are left with is an inescapably solid album.

With barely a duff song here bar the minor irritations mentioned earlier, Tourist History is an infectious debut that may well divide opinion, but at least suggests that amidst all the uneasy listening and obtuse noises coming out of the underground at present there are still those capable of writing the odd tune or ten.

The group's palette is widening promisingly.

What's instantly charming about Paddywhack is its welcoming aspect as Friley's honesty and sincerity creates a warming romanticism.

Complex of subject matter and sound, Player Piano could have been weighed down by intricacy.

A few bursts of energy on the record make up for any lags, and should be enough to sustain those expecting Broderick's typical depth.

More than anything, what impresses about Contrast is the quality of songs on offer.

On the whole sometimes the production frills work and other times they sound a bit too much. But either way his solid songwriting skills and lyrical wizardy remains and makes sure that when you listen to this, that you're not gonna anywhere else except in Deez land.

Accomplished and polished, if a little slight compared to its predecessors, AGE doesn't quite equal the consistency of The Smell Of Our Own or Awoo but is, nonetheless, a welcome return for one of this century's finest songwriting collectives.

Maui Tears is a distinct return to form and one that reaffirms Sleepy Sun as a genuine force to be reckoned with.

Spector balance out their miserablia with the kind of choruses that nag at you for days at a time.

Ultimately, expectedly, Rock 'N' Roll is a functioning collection of… well, rock'n'roll songs, and, save for the odd cringer, entirely passable.

Yung's debut is unflinchingly bold and as confident as you'll find. The verve and brashness on display on A Youthful Dream is counterweighted by maturity and tenderness, making this an album to drink, dance, fight, forget and remember to all at once.

Unfortunately, instead of producing an album that feels new, exciting, and refreshing--exactly what you’d expect from a band in their position--you get some lazy attempts at something different, before a retreat into the comforts of a tried and tested sound.

It’s crushingly disappointing from a band that can sound so much better.

Big and bold when it hits, underwhelming and otherwise transient elsewhere, it’s a debut that manages to occasionally impress while leaving a lot to be desired.

This is the freshest their music has felt for a while.

Funk-by-numbers has not yet had an update worth of Sly Stone; but in Head Over Heels, Chromeo have cracked it. They never miss a beat in updating it for 2018.

1/1 is much more than a curio, but there’s not enough pressure on it to make you unduly fret over how it stands up to the band’s great works. It’s kind of fun, and deserves to be taken seriously.

The album is certainly steeped in the synthpop and post-punk genres so associated with their feeder groups, so much of this album feels very much in its comfort zone: a solid and pleasing sound with few surprises.

It’s not just that Darwin Deez have recreated their first record, but made a more mature work, building on the intellectual learnings from the music they created in between.

A record light on substance but packed to the rafters with melody - there are plenty of cheap thrills to get jiggy with.

Liam Howlett and the boys embrace their psycho circus schtick on The Day Is My Enemy to the point of suffocation.

All in all though, Radio Wars is disappointingly average; pleasant but fairly forgettable, and in contrast to its misleading title, should really have been named Radio Friendly instead.

Essentially, if you like the sound of men that sound like they drink a lot and make a lot of bad decisions in life, have people die around them and then like to sing about it, set to a raucous soundtrack of guitars, drums and piano... then Strange Boys are pretty adept at all of those things.

With a little more pace and drama to offset this off-whitest of visions, El Perro Del Mar could be an interesting prospect indeed.

Here we have a garage-rock band with lounge-pop leanings. Which is fine - but that’s all.

All in all it’s a competently executed album that keeps your feet tapping and head nodding for as long as it lasts, but one that takes too few risks and bares too little soul to linger in the listener’s thoughts and emotions once it’s over.

Excerpts is a work of forgetful minimalism; it is powerfully repetitious--perhaps, in waves, completely random.

Having heard Taylor's fingerprints over a dozen fine records, it's great to finally hear one that he can call his own.

With solid production throughout, there’s little to slight Public Warning besides Sov’s hang-up with her diminutive physical stature.

It's a pleasant enough experience on the whole, but could've been so much more--and that is what's so frustrating with Rituals.

Ultimately Into The Blue Again disappoints.

While sometimes left wanting for redeeming bells and whistles, where Big Bells & Dime Songs sporadically strikes gold is its distillation of tumbleweed folk Americana.

Its fervent technicality can leave it feeling soulless, lacking grit, bite or real emotion. It can become stifling and songs tend to blur together. But there are moments of beauty too.

This is an engaging, rewarding listen that promises great things in the future from our four heroes.

This is Acting has some good tracks on it and is obviously written by a very talented songwriter, it’s just not an album that demands excitement from its listeners.

It is all too easily consigned to background music if you stop paying attention.

You get twelve colourful washes of sound that work well on screen, but in terms of the band add up to not much more than a interesting EP.

It may not be perfect, or even great, but Pete Doherty has somewhat surprised with Hamburg Demonstrations by proving to a world increasingly less interested in his antics that, when given the chance, he can still pen a tune or two. Maybe just try including a few more 'bangers' in the next album Pete, eh.

All that really matters for the moment is that their debut album is an unqualified success, a concise and perfectly-presented collection of first-class pop music.

If you were a fan of Inside Llewyn Davis, this a great way to bring the film to life a little more and to expand on the world which inspired it, and also a quality live album in its own right.

While the revved motors and displaced robot pop satisfy your expectations, you find the virus progressing too quickly for you to evaluate its efficiency. A blue bar at the bottom tracks the virus’s progress to completion; you’re quite alarmed to see this already halfway full, as if someone twisted the fabrics of time in your ears.

These layered, multi-directional numbers stand out rather than fit in. On either side are tunes a little too straightforward, big ideas a little too self-contained to really mesh in the way you want them to.

Aureate Gloom stretches spontaneity to the point of feeling rushed. None of these songs are among Barnes’ best.

It's a decent enough, darkly-shaded mainstream pop album, but the concept is distracting.

There's an absolutely great EP somewhere amongst the length of Darwin Deez's debut, it's just unfortunate that it's been distilled into a sub-par full-length.

Doesn't quite have the same impact as their debut.

A step backwards, demonstrating that to rehash old sounds you need to prop them up with new tunes.

¡Uno! finally sees the Cali-punk trio letting themselves sound like Green Day, releasing the pressure and defaulting to what they do best.

Albums such as this one will often be defined as ‘difficult,’ and the love of its content will derive more from muso appreciation than genuine affection. Six Organs of Admittance have sidestepped this by crafting a piece of work that diefies categorisation: it feels mathematically precise, painstakingly composed, entirely freeform and joyfully performed.

To sum them up in one word, "reliable" would be the most appropriate.

It's a matter of personal taste, but Herren has largely shaken off these doubts with a rich and intriguing piece of work, the strengths of Everything She Touched... largely outweighing any reservations towards this sonically evocative album.

Here, musically as lyrically, Okereke seems concerned with emotional connection first and foremost, making this a plaintive and engaging experience throughout.

Despite the energy and marching delivery, the band's musings often ring quite delicate. They're never fragile, however.

Kintsugi is a finely-made tearjerker of a record that evokes similar levels of sadness as those examples, featuring some crisp and well-structured songwriting that launches torrents of emotive air strikes to summon an appropriate degree of solemnity.