Restraint and getting to the point are valuable commodities in music, but Too True misfires in this regard.

There are moments of decently sassy pop-rock here, songs that you can just about see someone singing along to, hairbrush for microphone, in front of the mirror before a night out. But these moments are few and far between, and are exclusively the tracks featuring a vaguely vibrant BPM count.

As an album it's neither bombastic enough to immediately grab you by the throat and refuse to let go, nor subtle and intricate enough to demand and reward repeated listens.

This feels like an opportunity missed; his defences are never truly down, and we’re only offered tantalising glimpses of what might have been.

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

The biggest crime here is that it sounds so dated-listening to Flesh Tone is a bit like watching a filmmaker failing to ape the innovation of The Matrix more than a decade after it was made.

The band have retreated back to their pre-4AD line-up and reined in the overtly pop instincts of After the End, instead content to needle at a single idea in the hope of coaxing something memorable.

Its great moments really are great, and shouldn’t be underestimated. However, when an album is bookended between two potential song of the year contenders with little to grasp in between, it’s difficult to really get too invested in this record.

It is exactly as you would have expected it to sound, and ultimately that isn't enough for anyone who doesn't rush out on the day of release to buy their albums.

They’ve merely decided to exchange one set of quite transparent influences for another, less-effective set.

Brand Brauer Frick are unquestionably a force to be reckoned with, yet they seem unsure exactly what direction to take: whether to continue to interpret dance music using classical apparatus, or to move down a darker, more avant garde route.

The LP is repeatedly let down by its own exhibitionism.

"American Gangster" was the last time we saw the real Jay-Z--soulful, lyrically adept, his narrative streak reborn with a newfound alter ego--but here he is back to treading water.

With pluses so few and far between, it’s a struggle to make it through these 11 tracks without feeling nauseous from all the sickly pop filler.

The album is largely stuck analysing lost feelings and past regrets, when it would have been much more entertaining if it focussed on living for the moment.

It’s a shame, because there were some genuinely good ideas on We Can Create, but Chapman seems to have no real sense of direction for this album, and thus the end result is wholly unfulfilling.

Whilst Deradoorian’s ambitions were undoubtedly high in creating The Expanding Flower Planet, the end result is more miss than hit, leaning too heavily and too often on dense harmonies at a slow pace which ends in a record lacking cohesion and direction.

Unfortunately, by stretching the album to an unnecessarily long 16 tracks, ‘A Bigger Bang’ suffers from its fair share of non-starting filler.

At least there’s a couple of good ones here to stick onto the singles collection that’s inevitably just around the corner.

Now stripped of their manufactured aura, WU LYF no longer have a platform but instead stand naked and shivering alongside hundreds of other bands with debut albums that don't satiate the need for instant greatness.

Despite some fine moments, on the whole there's not enough that's memorable or above average. No one would give Keane a second glance if Tom Chaplin did not possess such a gift of a voice.

There very well may be a human heart beating at the centre of 'Bleed Like Me', but thanks to the walls of effects and static, it's sometimes impossible to hear it.

Four-and-a-half decades on from the original band’s formation, Lynne’s voice is as warm and comforting as ever, his ear for a hook still sharp and his production is as shiny and gorgeous as a celebrity model’s hair from a shampoo advert. But still, there’s something missing.

The truth is that, for possibly the first time in Yo La Tengo’s discography, they're a bit boring.

Notice the way whole songs skulk past without you ever noticing; how half the material here is ornate but unmemorable muzak, with all the emotional force of a feather. [combined review of both discs]

Thorburn splits his calculated kookiness into two halves: rote indie synthpop vying for your Noughties nostalgia on Taste, and straightforward, more-of-the-same twee rock that also vies for your Noughties nostalgia on Should I Remain Here At Sea?.

One suspects the end product here may have had more to do with the record's producer than its creators, and as a result, this album is as unconvincing as the band's hollow assurances that they're open to embracing new horizons.

A sterile, witless turn here.

I was expecting a record full of opportunities to hang BFS out to dry, but there aren't any obvious faux-pas. Fishin' for Woos is solid because when a band is together this long they know what they're doing.

It is sprawling, messy, and bursting at the seams--but certainly when listening to it, you see how it could have worked with a bit of quality assurance.

You Were Right is never more than solid and, whilst it’s immaculately polished, tired and forgettable lyrics combined with a general sense of 'good enough' about the tunes suggest that Benson is looking forward to The Raconteurs’ return sooner than the rest of us.

Thorburn splits his calculated kookiness into two halves: rote indie synthpop vying for your Noughties nostalgia on Taste, and straightforward, more-of-the-same twee rock that also vies for your Noughties nostalgia on Should I Remain Here At Sea?.

It’s not a brilliant record, but if there’s good one thing to be said about 48:13, it's that it sounds like a band coming to terms with who they are and who they’re making music for, tossing pretense aside, and concentrating on being themselves.

Not so much judgement on Oasis as a whole, but y'know, it's just not a fun best of. The second disc is 73 minutes long, contains only two tracks from the golden era, and after a while becomes not unakin to drowning in the colour beige.

Harpischord, bombast and multi-tracked vocals create an eerily outdated sound, setting Destroyer of the Void's stall as an overblown oddity.

Whatever magic they once had appears to have deserted them.

Highway Songs feels both like an underwhelming experiment with moments of greatness, as well as a highly personal piece which is almost impossible to penetrate.

He only truly nails it on one track out of four doesn't bode especially well, but as I say, there's some reason to hope, and if you really don't have anything better than the Pumpkins to pin your musical hopes onto, you probably shouldn't be too nervous about checking out the next EP.

As with so many albums in the contemporary indie-electronica world, there is a decent one simmering somewhere inside of EVINSPACEY (this sentence makes me curse the existence of cease-and-desist orders).

Unfortunately, the plodding repetition soon rears its ugly head again, and stays for the duration.

The problem with Human (the album) is that it feels like it’s been over tooled for success, that the commercial facets of his talents have been blown up at the expense of what might have actually made him interesting.

Mellifluous, yet unenticing.

By psychobilly's own modern standards it's serviceable, faithful, consistent and good for a groggy pogo, but in the greater scheme of things there's very little here to nourish the modern punk fan.

World On Fire, while certainly not without charms, is a record that's happy to coast instead of climb.

It's just there was the expectation of more, and this has left me a bit cold.

Though Taiga ends on something of a high, in all it comes across as a wholly wasted opportunity that, with a few lessons in moderation and restraint, could have been something altogether more impressive.

Mercifully, this album shouldn’t even be a footnote – it’s no nadir, for sure, but it sure isn’t any good.

There’s flashes of very skilled songwriting, but there’s also the cynical, calculated feel of a record built with a certain commercial targets in mind.

Despite any popularity which may come their way, what Mumford & Sons have produced in Sigh No More is nothing more than an empty shell of a half-decent record.

These glimpses of something unexpected are few and far between, much of We Started Nothing tonally muddled into a weird new form of MOR: cool for five minutes amongst the fashionable crowd but unlikely to reach audiences beyond those fascinated with the hot and happening.

The songs flow by and are engaging enough, but as soon as they’ve finished you’ve totally forgotten them.

Now they’re back, back, back (repetition absolutely necessary) with a second dose of barely-pubesced raucousness and, a mere two spins down the line, DiS is seriously reconsidering the prospect of having children, like, ever.

Off the Record is of more interest as a historical document than for the music itself--something Bartos would probably admit.

Sleep Mountain lacks both the urgency and unhinged fervour of Arcade Fire and the inventive mischief of the Flaming Lips.

Some sparks of brilliance fly in Instructions, but not enough to distinguish the spectacle of Heck from their recorded output.

It’s most thrilling moments are the ones you’ve already heard before.

The man wants so much to create a ‘70s-apeing epic, but fails. Yet that's not to say this is a bad record per se, it's just that Knapp's whole Son, Ambulance project has a good few obvious clangers dragging it down.

Here, the former Supergrass leader is so busy trying to prove something with his lofty themes and overreaching stylisation, that all of the magic is lost.

It is laudable for Smith to try and eschew the eccentric frontman label in favour of something more cerebral. But in attempting to reach for the moon, he ends up merely stalled and snagged, dangling awkwardly from an unwieldy scaffold of clumsy platitude and hollow couplets.

Major moves some distance away from Fang Island's core aims, and their first record's core strengths--instead offering up a collection of tracks which do far too little, for far too long.

This Is What the Truth Feels Like is half-baked in places and perhaps a little too safe in others, but it’s really, properly genuine, and if she doesn’t leave it a decade next time, Stefani might still be able to make a great pop record. It’s in there, somewhere.

Alas, The Temple of I & I, does not hit the high benchmarks of prior quality. Very much a Thievery album in its own right, with the tropical rhythms alongside the DC-based musicians approach to studio-dub, the LP falls short of the classic peak moments of the past.

This is ultimately an unremarkable--and frankly forgettable--third album from a notably gifted songwriter.

Vices & Virtues is quite some distance from the triumphs of that remarkable record.

For the most part Underneath the Rainbow lacks the acerbic wit that has underscored so much previous Lips material; there’s a handful of tracks here that really are sorely lacking in character.

The material ranges from the sublime to the good to the galling.

Regrettably, there's little substance to take in here.

Ultimately, ‘Winning Days’ is an highly frustrating listen.

The arena-filling sound that runs through modern music owes something to Bon Jovi, but This House… comes across more like their third-tier spiritual successors, comprised of forgettable dance-rock and schmaltzy slow-burners loaded with endless platitudes and those echoey, staccato guitar lines that bands do when they want to sound big.

Ultimately Snow Patrol fare best when they play to their strengths.

Tough going and very samey, both in sonics and lyricism. Even if you enjoy the basic template, you may well run out of steam before the end.

Marmozets are a band that thrive on angst. They deliver it through the raw nature of their sound, through their acute lyrics and pounding metalcore-slash-pop-punk. It can feel at times, though, of too much of an exhilarating ride, an endless roller coaster that doesn’t provide enough respite.

As an insight to a world within a world of black American music, Personal Space elicits interest. As a compilation, it fails to sustain it very long.

A little shallowness is fine by me, but Rocky's studied, humourless delivery is harder to swallow.

On Let’s Be Still, they sporadically do a good job of nagging at the heart, but fail to convince the head that this hasn’t been done better elsewhere, plenty of times before.

The first two singles released of the album, ‘J-Boy’ and ‘Ti Amo’, are enjoyable enough, setting the scene with shimmery ripples as you’re engulfed by the clubby rhythm, disco-balls swirling through every riff. But they also reveal the main flaws in the album: both build promisingly into grand reveals only to stall and go nowhere, like revving a car in neutral.

Disappointingly, this is a shaky collection for such a groundbreaking producer, though unlikely to impact his designs on commercial ascendancy.

An unremarkable, yet solid record.

Sun Structures is a record made with flair and skill by a band who know exactly what they’re doing--and that’s the problem. Temples are trying so hard to be something else that we lose track of who they actually are.

It’s a crushingly un-exuberant album, powered by neither anger nor joy, howls of rage nor whoops of exhilaration, not revelling in any particular aspect of the band’s music, nor kicking against any pricks. The lyrics dabble with outsiders and the odd bit of queer imagery, but there’s nothing revelatory, incendiary or revealing.

Sadly what Yours, Dreamily needs is a little bit of oomph every now and again to wake us, and the rest of the band from our collective stupors. Even compared to his debut solo album, this feels second rate.

If you want an album that is easily digested, doesn’t require much thought or attention, but still ticks all the right boxes in terms of beautiful guitar playing and vocal work, then it’s the one for you.

Just how often you'll revisit Forth after the initial flush of interest is debatable, because it hasn't really moved things anywhere for them.

Such relaxed saunters down musical memory lane have been done before, and often better.

Unfortunately, the writing and production is as saccharine as the topics covered, either gossamer thin semi-ideas of tracks padded out, or bogged down by strings and a blinding sheen of instrumentation that does nothing to appeal to anyone beyond easy-listening FM aficionados.

There's a sort of admirable purity to this approach, and it suggests that if Animal Collective decide they'd like to make brilliant albums again then probably will, but this time they're probably better off painting alone.

The Family Jewels seems to be to be symptomatic of a broader trend at the moment to demand our female artists be both credible and commercial at the expense of achieving anything great in either camp.

Unfortunately, too much of NLOTH sounds staid and uninspired, again maybe due to the changing musical landscape that was going on all around them during the making of the record.

The truth is Tranquillisers has no teeth; being neither truly reprehensible nor in the slightest bit memorable.

It’s disjointed and discomforting, and certainly easier to admire than actually enjoy.

Gargoyle is missing the emotive, musical draw that makes Langegan the tear-jerking, blues-poet that he really is.

It is hard to criticise such a well-crafted, enjoyable album that appears to have been made specifically with someone like me in mind. The thing is that in six weeks’ time it will be even harder to remember it.

The thing is I wanted a Pretenders album, not The Black Keys feat. Chrissie Hynde. Which is what this all too often feels like.

This album is grounded. Slightly lost and, sadly, all too findable.

In the cold light of day the album feels flat and utterly predictable.

The first dip into this new Jacuzzi feels pleasant, since Sucker’s sunny party anthems fizzled out halfway through--but XCX lacks the finesse to turn this into anything beyond a mindless massage.

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.