There are no alarms and no surprises here, but it's a record produced by Jeff Lynne (who is a genius and anyone who says otherwise is a joyless idiot) so it sounds as bright, clear and appealing as anything this year.

Painted Palms have a natural ability to extract profound noise from otherwise unremarkable places, lyrically however; it's more subjective. Forgettable accounts of youthful deprecation litter the album.

Most of this record isn't the kind of total genius that can be found elsewhere in their canon but it's a fine album that shows what can be done if bands just relaxed a bit.

Nocturnes comes off as a monochrome drag.

There are moments where the album shines, absolutely, but it doesn’t match up to the same level as Okereke’s previous work, both with Bloc Party and solo. However, it’s still a worthy piece in its own right, and a testament to the idea that a musician changing their sound is a gamble that can pay dividends.

As it is Weathervanes remains a catchy album that will satiate those with an indie-pop sweet tooth, (the type who can bear glockenspiel on every track) and maybe even offer the odd moment of genuine inspiration. Many of us will find it all a little too familiar and unengaging to get that far.

All three EPs--Junk, Dross and Dregs--featured in Resort hold their own standing alone--but when they are collated together it does have a feeling of doing it for the sake of it.

In the end, what was once an exceptional record is now merely a rather good one. That’s a real shame, but it can’t entirely derail Alphabeat and their purist pop vision.

Strangeland feels just a bit by the numbers.

So a game of two halves, with enough excitement from Arbouretum to keep it interesting--but cosmic Americana fans may find more solace in their (excellent) previous two records The Gathering and Song of the Pearl than they will here.

Everything Infinite is perfect for summer, it has a few beautiful tracks and is constructed masterfully, but you can almost hear the fan chatter describing the outfit as 'that band who sound like Tame Impala'.

Although the album shows impressive range - toggling back and forth between insidious ambient ('Dome Horizon') circuit-bending noise ('2T(fru)T') and a kind of stroboscopic speed-drone (the aforementioned 'chase sequences'), much of the textures and tech you could find in commision across the Captured Tracks and Wierd Records catalogues.

Not classic Pearl Jam by any stretch - let’s not get carried away here--but enough to kindle at least a little optimism for whatever comes next.

The Bears for Lunch is business as usual: more songs about airplanes and beer, as David Byrne would say.

Perhaps pushing their relentless extremity of the music is not the best way forward: there’s a more nuanced, skilled band lurking in here and it will be interesting to see to what extent they are allowed to emerge.

Indeed, they can rock. But, inevitably, their writing here lacks the epic imagery and themes that cemented the rock gods into the canon, and thus doesn’t bewitch in the same way. Black Mountain defend the temple ably, at least.

While the longstanding fan may indulge them the odd misstep, it’s a little bit jarring when they produce something which by their own high standards is, dare I say it, a bit underwhelming.

You probably won't head to the record store for this one unless you've been obsessive-compulsively collecting all the previous releases, but if you do, you won't be disappointed by what you hear on the turntable. After all it's Sonic Youth.

This is music to (quite pleasantly) while away dozy afternoons, but it’s far from being as transcendently atmospheric as the many great records Roedelius has been a part of in the past.

The Devil's Walk can be as persuasive and intoxicating as you want it to be. The acute complexity of temptation inevitably boils down to a simple yes or no. You'll take to this record or you won't.

Where Future Perfect knocked us right off our feet, Transit Transit doesn't seem to have the energy to even push us slightly to the left. We miss 2004's Autolux.

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

The great thing about Blondes is how they move through such simple ingredients as a decent bassline and a tight groove, and end up in some tripped out wonderland after nine minutes of hedonistic bliss. On Warmth, they’ve traded that sound for something a bit harder and more immediate, which doesn’t end up all bad, but does sacrifice that elegiac joy they used to perfect so readily.

Carry On is a solid, if rarely remarkable work, showcasing an artist maturing at his own pace, and sounding content and comfortable in his form.

X-Treme Now is an intriguing, often entertaining bit of art from a duo that seem locked into a long-running lark that sometimes, perhaps accidentally or even incidentally, delivers the genuine article, sometimes makes do with platitudes and sidelong, distancing glances, but more often than not is a summery slab of fun.

An album that doesn’t sell us short on the pop hooks of albums past, but one that also delivers a healthy dose of politics to the mix without sounding like a six-legged cliché-riddled embarrassment.

And yet for all this effort the album itself is at times curiously empty, both overblown and underwhelming, with loads of smoke but not much atmosphere.

Like Oasis' first album, it's definitely going to bring people together, and it will certainly start mass sing-alongs, but something tells me The Others won't be making it to a stadium near you anytime soon.

Its persistent gloominess makes it a challenge to get through, but it was never intended to be just a simple alt-country album.

It's admirable to hear a follow up LP trying to push itself out of comfort zones but Invisible In Your City finds Gang Colours falling short of his peers.

They do little to advance on the template, but at their best they produce some thrilling pop music, and while failing to create a consistently brilliant album

Although on the relative straight and narrow, the band have lost none of their attitude.

All in all, Empire is a rather decent garage rock album.

There’s nothing to break the mould here, nothing that stands out and surprises like ‘Dakota’ did.

For a record bristling with ideas and extraterrestrial fervour the overall result is a little confused.

On fifth album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon the cast expands again to include erstwhile Strokes guitarists and movie stars, and at points you’re left pining for the eccentric acoustic phrasings of yore.

Shadows in the Night is an extremely well-made covers album that feels divorced from Dylan’s day-job.

This is music aimed squarely for the naïve-at-heart, and the industrial knife-sharpeners are best waved elsewhere than at the entirely likeable Young. If these genteel Casio-noodlings are what the kids are going to be listening to in 2010, I predict a peaceful year for the rest of us.

Five years on, BBNG stand poised to write jazz standards for the next generation. In some circles, you’d call that progress. But for folks that turned to BBNG as infiltrators, rebels, the razor edge of the new--in those circles, you’d call that a sell-out.

It's worth a listen for its high points--but it needs more unity.

If gentle psych-pop is very, very much your thing, you may fare better with Jonny, but otherwise the overriding impression the album will leave you with is that it would have made a really strong EP with some judicious pruning.

Volcano is a fun album of tightly-crafted, catchy melodies. But it’s in no way reinventing the genre the band members so keenly idolise.

Stereolab will always provide excitement, but in the past, part of that excitement came from a band having no idea of how they should sound, so that the result threw polemics and tangents together with an unmatched grace.

As a whole, Remember us to Life feels a little patchy, with enough ups to make it good, but too many downs to make it great.

Whether or not this is enough to inspire acolytes the likes of which this writer had a first-hand audience with some three years ago remains to be seen, though Folie à Deux does look certain to satisfy fans' appetites as much as it may surprise and intrigue certain others.

Upper Air is a decent enough record, but it’s not strong enough to be listened to without recalling other, similar but better records.

The album never fully soars either imaginatively or musically, and for all the virtues of its crisp, bold path through the blood and ice of wherever Edenloff is in flight from – or towards – this means that it's a disappointment.

It's the extraordinary ordinariness, sophisticated simplicity, that redeems all this: even when bass drums calmly clatter wall-to-wall like hungover flies in a jar, there's a gentle edge that's mellow and mellifluous, distant yet direct.

Those wanting an intense, borderline overdose, hit of rushing psychedelia for 42 minutes need look no further, whilst others wishing for a bit more diversity are barking up the wrong tree.

On The Thread That Keeps Us, Calexico have splurged. They’ve flexed their muscles and had a go at everything, with the possible exception of speed metal. Some of it has worked, but not all of it. Hopefully, the next album will hone down their sound and focus it like a laser beam.

The only potentially bad thing about Edwards' style is that many of the tracks on the later half of the record tend to all bleed together.... That said, 'Back To Me' demonstrates Edwards' prowess as a top lyricist.

Whilst back then they bounced along with cheekiness and zeal, now they seem to be trying to continue the reggae-meets-Brit-suburbia Nutty blueprint but end up falling flat in too many places.

Music doesn't always need to be about preaching, grand-slam bombastic leanings or pushing the envelope forward – that's a fallacy. Sometimes it can just be sonically gorgeous, layered and pleasing to your hearing and thought - just as Marissa Nadler ends up being.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and Spinnerette makes its strongest statements when flobbing a big loogie onto the grave of past endeavours, not when laying out fresh blooms at the side.

If they cut out about half of the songs and focused more on the parts that sounded less like Sigur Ros, Riceboy Sleeps would be a much stronger record.

At times the levels of raciness reach Spinal Tap levels of hilarity, as on 'Ooh Ooh Baby's' slinky Glitter Band stomp.

Although Success is a very solid album, from a band that have already proved themselves consistently capable of churning out suitably bad-tempered and obtrusively loud material, it’s hard to feel it’s anything we haven’t heard before, which makes it far more underwhelming than its generally high quality content suggests it should be.

An album which starts feeling a bit dense and chewy halfway through.

On the opening ‘Distant Dream’, where a nagging, urgent keyboard line recalls classic Halloween-era Carpenter, until the creepy effect is undermined by some big, thumping power-drums that come off as more dated than retro. Its an ongoing problem across a record that is often enjoyable, but just as often frustrating.

Somewhere around track eight, the formula starts to wear thin, and the mood lightens a little to a sort of murky, sleepless pre-dawn--it’s not quite sunshine, or it’s supposed to be, but Blank Dogs can’t really make sense of the big glowing thing in the sky.

Tunes-wise there’s some strength in depth here but it’s telling that, in spite of the lip service being paid to various left-of-centre influences, Santogold feels a strangely conservative listen, in danger of satisfying neither fans of M.I.A.’s wild stylistic forays nor the bubblegum masses thirsting after their latest dose of content-free self-assertion.

While most would expect nothing less from a Mark Lanegan Band LP, the end result is a record for ardent fans and not casual admirers.

Most of the tracks here would sound great in that context, but put together here and it leaves you wanted something a little more ragged.

Despite a magnetically bitter prescription, this album's strong dosage of darkness is tough to swallow in one sitting and even more difficult to actively enjoy.

As odd of a notion it is, as a setlist for a show, Weirdo Shrine is a miraculous endeavour to behold, but as an album, it suffers because of its untamed splendour.

It's far from perfect, but Smoke Fairies can be viewed as a record that speak of future potential, rather than wasted potential.

It’s a clever and often highly entertaining album with inbuilt limitations, but if you buy one record this year whose title is possibly a reference to Bumblebee Man from The Simpsons, it should probably be this one.

It's far from a poor record - the sole problem is that a number of songs do blur together, forming more of an aural whitewash than the technicolour trip some had predicted.

There's much to admire here, but when you’ve stared into the sun for too long, it’s hard to see the dimmer lights.

Wounded Rhymes is an album that has not escaped unscathed from its wounds.

Overall, D is a measured if occasionally overcooked beast that proves difficult to digest as a whole.

For a band so obsessed with invoking their past, you do wish the Manics weren't so reluctant to throw in a bit of the old grit and ardour. It's a very nicely put together record, but there are moments so far away from the music that drew you to this band in the first place that you wonder if it's wrong to question what you're actually doing here.

The blokes have always goofed too much to fluke sensuality, but there’s some spark of intimacy, which ties off Marble Skies with an unexpected bow.

Little Comets have some energetic hooks and straight-to-the-point post-punk choruses that would make many of the resident bands in their native North East proud. There just isn't quite enough to get carried away about.

You expect there to be an abundance of vibrancy and passion on European, the band’s third release; though tempered by doubt and restraint, emotion lies beneath the layers of onion peel in the grey gutter of sadness.

While moments of greatness emerge, there's a unfortunate limpness to proceedings that undermines otherwise outstanding songwriting.

If we look to the previous literature, we find that no components of >>> are particularly novel.

Our advice, then: pick and choose via online outlets to get the best out of this album, as in this instance Dizzee’s mathematical skills have failed to calculate a formula for another must-buy release.

In concert, the results of these expanded horizons will sit among an enhanced and emboldened set list. On record, though, this feels an uneven entry; too self-conscious in its attempt to transcend the expectations of contemporary Welsh language music.

This project is evidently a labour of love for Polachek, allowing her to capture moods and ideas in the immediacy of the moment. But the result isn’t matured enough to be considered a definitive statement of artistry.

American Goldwing isn't bad, but it's not particularly exciting when you consider the band's usual standards.

Despite the quality of the execution, it's difficult to shake the sense that A+E has been done before.

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.

Egypt Station is easily one of the most forward-thinking records of McCartney’s later career and a surprisingly welcome return. We might wish he could be more thoughtful and elegant in his older age, and maybe even a little bit cooler, but that wouldn’t make him Paul McCartney. Thankfully, he generally keeps his groan-worthy impulses to a minimum.

The Wytches have proved themselves a genuinely intriguing proposition, one with far more up their sleeves than just straight-up punk raucousness, but that also have evidently not quite got a handle on how best to present themselves on record, either--given that this is their first effort, though, that’s entirely forgivable.

It’s Frightening is by no means a record which is without merit. I suspect that the production work of Spoon’s Britt Daniel has infused it with more presence than it might otherwise have had. However, that notwithstanding, the album’s lack of anything substantial to get your teeth into proves fatal.

Sadly, for all the passion and insight of his lyrical aspersions here, a lot of the messages are left a tad subdued by the conveyor belt plod orchestration.

It may not be a great, or even particularly good album, but it does at least tide us over until Weezy become a free man, and the much talked about Tha Carter IV finally sees the light of day.

So, yeah, Tyvek (on this album anyway) are pretty trad-punk. Which is not all that bad. When one wants to listen to something that sounds like old punk rock but isn't actually old punk rock, one could do a lot worse than listen to these guys.

It's careful, like well worded advice, and typically careworn, but this ultimately can’t disguise a lack of lyrical spark.

Those aforementioned past tense references are telling, because that’s exactly where Go Away White sounds as if it belongs: in the past.

Perhaps where Midwinter Graces suffers most is that it will be resigned to the world of the holiday album, making brief appearances from only late November to early January, garnering at most a passing mention the rest of the year. At the very least, though, it is a holiday record that will be remembered once a year.

For all its glitz and shine, Dungeonesse feels slightly disingenuous--a rather contrived leap onto the 'summer of disco' bandwagon.

Though it would have been nice to feel a greater sense of ownership, it’s a solid enough new chapter for a group who always kept it light, so why change all that much now?

Not once does Overpowered really drag its feet, but it never truly impacts with the might one could possibly expect from an artist with such a fine pedigree.

Solid and safe fun perhaps.

This stylized despair erases everything that made Holy Motors special. Without the casual surrealism (like sentient skeletons) or gaffs about touchy stuff like tampons, the reboot plays out with the predictable pallor of most “edgy” primetime cable shows.

While Part II is broadly a success, it is a qualified one. Lines often come across as clunky and trite.