This is not as good as its predecessor.

Shame on the person who made this. Shame on the people who release, market and play this. And shame on anyone who buys it.

The Bees have made a record sparkling with enough wit and ingenuity to make the past seem an undiscovered country well worth visiting.

Pale Young Gentlemen–-as an album--is musical theatre. Switching between moments of mid-tempo melancholy to upbeat cabaret, they strike a perfect juxtaposition.

While opening track ‘Get Innocuous’ gently apes his own ‘Losing My Edge’ for the first minute and a half, the rest of the LP gradually moves onwards and upwards; either improving and tightening the previous template, or trying new things altogether.

In fairness, We Were Dead... excites almost as much as it frustrates; the problem lying not so much in its commercial aspirations per se as an occasional inability to integrate them into a satisfying whole. That, and there’s too much shouting. And it’s way too long.

Drums & Guns is likely to split opinion to a greater extent than any other piece of Low's extensive catalogue, but avid fans should not be put off as behind the challenging production and at the centre of all their controlled experimentation lies one of the band’s strongest releases to date.

There's as much silliness and attempted cred-building as there is genuine excitement.

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

This is an intellectual jaunt that reveals the beauty of pop music, both musically and lyrically.

El-P has masterfully used New York’s dark corners as a productive muse on I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead.

There's no sonic arsenal, nothing to make you sit and check your ears, just gentle, simple songs that sound like the laments of a sad generation.

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.

It’s all masterful.

All too often, I'm From Barcelona are either forgettable or just beyond cloying.

There's a profound lack of any surprises, anything you might not expect, any... inspiration.

Black Pompadour is not a bad album, it’s just flat; it’s delivered with little to no passion, meaning that listening to it in its entirety will be a test of patience for some.

Ultimately, The Rakes have softened their blunt and focused their attention to detail. This is a far more cohesive record but at the expense of the brutal urgency so prominent in their debut.

Their best yet: it’s multi-faceted like no release before it (from the band’s catalogue), and each and every nuance is super funky.

File under "Music for Somnambulists".

Perhaps the true beauty of Neon Bible is its imperfection.

Devoid of inspiration, lacking in any edge, this is pathetic.

Make Another World finds Idlewild balancing their twin loves of volatile angst-rock and vivacious indie-pop neatly and professionally.

For all its comparative brave departures and originality, The Third Hand just isn’t particularly engaging.

Lynn Teeter Flower isn’t bad by any means. It’s just too safe, too predictable.

The overall sound of The Foley Room is unquestionably Tobin's, even though it sounds like a step forward rather than a re-tread.

In the end, Vessels comes across as a promising guitar-driven breath of fresh air trapped in a box of squeaky-clean studio tricks; what was hopeful is now hopeless, and what seemed like an exciting rock revival is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

This is a wonderful, intoxicatingly special album that deserves to be cherished, and played and played.

Abandoned Language is a much more direct affair than its predecessor.

I’m perfectly happy settling for an upgrade rather than a complete overhaul.

If Pop Levi’s intention was to create an ornate pop star persona, then he’s definitely succeeded. However, his songwriting skills leave a lot to be desired.

There's a lot here to admire: the songs are well-formed and consistently engaging.

That music so majestically restrained in pace can make your heart beat so quickly is a testament to The Besnard Lakes’ focus and ability to coat each millisecond of track time with an utterly captivating sound without ever becoming clogged up with their myriad ideas.

Copia is the sound of Cooper surpassing himself, combining his patented minimalist drones with beautifully rendered piano.

Both dream-like and slightly brutal in its approach, Ash Wednesday is a rare folk-rock LP, drenched in equal parts sunshine and cloudy grey skies.

It’s unpredictable, ridiculously clever, catchy as hell and as perfect a pop album as you’re ever likely to hear.

A Weekend In The City is the aural adaptation, a digital manifestation, of what it’s like to be a twenty-something in Britain, today. It’s dirty, dishevelled, unsure and paranoid; fearful, easily distracted, boisterous and ashamed; reckless, wild, nervous and terrified; graceful, thought-provoking, clumsy and contradictory. And it’s very nearly perfect.

Whilst this ceaseless good feeling will be too much for some, even those who don’t list this style of music amongst their interests may find enough variation here to keep coming back, as each song differs enough in its construction to warrant repeat visitations.

It’s a CD stuffed to the gill with great tunes, but little else. There's nothing to hang your heart on, as much as there's a huge amount to move your head and feet to.

Here, Aereogramme have created something more than deserving of all the praise lavished upon it.

As much of a cliché as it is, you're either going to love Allen or hate her.

Some Loud Thunder is a partial success. When it shines, it shines brightly and showcases a skill at crafting - when they have the balls to carry their ideas through - insanely catchy left-of-centre quirk pop a la Talking Heads.

While Not Too Late is a shade darker than her mega-selling, Grammy-winning template, it's highly unlikely to win all that many new converts, and fans may find this album a little bit of a slog in places.

Imagine The Mars Volta's swollen red super-giant bursting beyond the constraints of mass and time and finally contracting to an all encompassing black-hole, sucking in Lightning Bolt’s heaviest riffs and The Boredoms’ most intense drum work after hurtling them to ‘n’ fro against all manner of cosmic debris.

The sequencing allows the listener space to breathe at the most opportune moments, and its leaps from ambience into adrenaline-soaked enthusiasm for hand-clap-happy high-jinx are worthy of celebration.

Though by no means as manic as previous Deerhoof long-players, this is a intriguing record which stands up next to the bewildering excellence of Runners Four.

But for all its momentary highlights, this is a record that doesn't tend to grow on you as much as sink and seep into your skin: and it does this slowly.

If Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow were like ADHD-riddled cousins, unable to inhabit their own thoughts for longer than a few seconds at a time, then Wincing The Night Away is the Ritalin-gorged riposte. Its bounce is more bleary-eyed; its euphoric bouts tempered by a weird, waking-dream sensation that some dark presence is stalking the peripheries of its foggy vision.

If there is one thing in this world that can elevate even the weakest of lyrics from the trough of personal diary hell, it’s a catchy melody. Thankfully this record overflows with them.

While The Enemy Chorus may not launch itself into the night sky and explode like the great big sonic firework it wants be, there are enough bangs on display here to warrant taking it out for the occasional stroll.

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

The majority of this record meanders along like a fuel-starved express train whose driver has taken an extended lunchbreak; experimental noise follows more experimental noise.

The Neptunes' pitch-perfect production allied with Pusha-T and Malice's vicious, witty rhymes make Hell Hath No Fury one of the records of the year.

Breaking Kayfabe is a record that demands and deserves undivided attention, its creator fashioning a brain-searing patchwork of ragged rap, electronic flourishes and truncated rhythms.

Beast Moans suffers from one weakness: the three members apparently forgot to stop and listen to each other before forging ahead with their own ideas.

You know those radio jingles in which they stick a bunch of current tunes into a big-beat mess? This has the same effect – a whizzbang confectionary, serving more to advertise the band’s back catalogue than to be any kind of durable document.

This is a superb album, and each time you listen to it you’ll find something new to like.

Songs for Christmas is beautiful.

Over twenty years later their music continues to connect.

It’s a vivid and beautiful painting that you can walk into; a magic window into another world that I'd be happy to get lost in, and never come back.

While the instrumental augmentation in most of the songs is impressive, the setlist feels less immediate than the band's past work.

Not only are these not the greatest songs in the world, they're not even a tribute to them.

Blink-182 aficionados will find plenty to enjoy here, but for those who grew wearisome of the stale pop-punk formula years ago, +44’s debut album is an unnecessary purchase.

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?

It fits and works together perfectly despite the fact that the songs showcase the development of a thirteen-year career.

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

If you’ve even the slightest interest in ‘heavy’ music, you simply must make Saturday Night Wrist an integral part of your record collection.

They’ve pushed themselves on this album, striving to achieve something honestly different to what was released before it. Occasionally they’ve fallen short of perfection, but for the most part this album is a certifiable success.

On the whole, Noise Floor is a fascinating concoction of delights that documents the rise of one of underground USA's most prestigious talents.

[An] inventive, if uneven collection.

Diane’s strength lies in her assured voice and preternatural affinity for placing the perfect melody in the perfect place.

While the album’s steady pace makes for few edge-of-the-seat thrills, World Waits is a success of consistency and coherency.

This... might just be too scatterbrained for its own good.

If you liked Beirut, you’ll love this.

This is Crimes refined, sculpted so that its edges aren’t as jagged as many sound-clashes past have proved to be; it exhibits managed eccentricity enough to stoke the furnaces of intelligent, demand-more punks worldwide.

At times much like a soundtrack to life’s sombre and reflective moments, Roots And Crowns’ clutter-free design is a nice reminder that good music needs no window dressing.

It is, in a word, magnificent.

They are a less irreverent and more melodic Art Brut, swapping that band’s caustic wit for a far nicer type of honesty.

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

Despite the album’s plethora of stylistic shifts and breakdowns, there’s a solid coherency to The Information that allows it to flow from beginning to end without the listener losing interest.

Taken as a body of work it is certainly more consistent than Hot Fuss.

At most, half the songs on this album are capable of successfully fusing Finn’s compelling narratives with rather less than impressive instrumentation for an effect that’s worth some merit. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t ‘hold’ for the remainder.

Seventy minutes for only eight tracks is excessive, be they remixes or not, and each track is suffocated and diluted until it proves to be just some noise, somewhere.

Friendly Fire is better than anyone could have predicted.

Where Subtle use many words to convey many things, I will use one: perfection.

Comparing Homesongs to Love and Other Planets, as is sadly unavoidable with a debut and its follow up, reveals the former to be the more immediate, the more melodic and the more understandable. However, Love and Other Planets, despite a glossier overtone, is the detailed, developing record.

For latecomers to The Lemonheads this record isn't a bad place to start. For long-term fans it's a sure sign that Evan Dando isn't ready to be written off just yet.

A guilty pleasure it may be, but when the pleasure is as intense as this, quite frankly who gives a fuck?

A beautiful, touching collection of songs, and one which marks an important rite of passage in one man’s career, even if it doesn’t always feel like his best work.

The heart of the album lies in the unparalleled excellence of Oldham’s songwriting – simple yet complex, understated and profound at the same time.

Return To Cookie Mountain is a party soundtrack for a fucked-up generation and an opus that inhabits the midpoint between the scarcely conjoining circles of eclecticism and enjoyability whilst maintaining consistency throughout.

All in all, Amputechture can be compared to watching a Hollywood car chase: impressive, but ultimately a heartless experience.

If you boarded the good ship 'Jaxx back in the Nineties, Crazy Itch Radio won’t see you throwing yourself overboard any time soon. If you were waving it away from the shore, though, this won’t see you splashing your way through the sea to catch up.

So This is Goodbye is the perfect example of how aiming for perfection in music can end in alienation.

The Rapture have kept all the ingredients from their previous successes, but they have forgot to ignite the oven.

On the first spin this is a set of highly listenable light pop tunes. However, this is by no means insubstantial and some real gems begin to reveal themselves.

Ultimately Into The Blue Again disappoints.

Great in parts though it is, Magic Potion isn’t quite the album to attract a raft of newcomers to The Black Keys’ archaic rock.