All songs are played relatively straight--nary a jingle bell in earshot--which is a good choice, as it offsets the devotional aspects of more traditional carols like ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Angels We Have Heard On High’.

By now, Frida’s come so far from where she started, you will have been won over, and it’s possible to see the early schmaltz as a necessary counterpoint: a musical analogue of the innocence to be lost, and/or transformed into experience.

They’ve defied compartmentalisation again, managed to avoid crippling themselves in their dramatic reduction of outright 'singles' material, and left the door open to a number of future experiments. Unfortunately it just means that Tonight becomes a makeweight.

Whilst materially an improvement on its predecessor, the move to electronica is superficial.

A number of songs suggest brilliance before stumbling rather into the bland.

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.

Though occasionally he could have done with his band mates to act as a quality control barometer, overall Odludek shows that Goodwin made the right choice to step back onto the treadmill.

The album falls somewhere between curio and convincing; there’s enough here to hold the attention of the casual Mac fan, however fleetingly, but diehards should find a bit more to dig into in the brighter moments. A worthwhile exercise.

Sounding big may be a pretty good way to get a support slot with the biggest bands in the country and, in time, the world, but after a point you need more to say.

In summary, this is an album which is trying to be lots of things for lots of people. The sadness being that where Royal Blood appealed to so many because of its abandoned musicality and aggression, How Did We Get So Dark? may run the risk of losing its soul and beating heart in order to please the masses.

For now, Strength In Numbers, whilst not exactly redefining the zeitgeist, is a lot better than anyone could have expected.

So Palma Violets get a pass this time, their lack of focus and their naivety balanced by their charm. 180 is a record they're only allowed to make once--next time we're going to need some substance.

As part of a longer discography, Smart Flesh will probably stand as a good, solid point in The Low Anthem's career, a sign of the band developing their sound and their songwriting before delivering something truly special.

Flume’s decision to try his hand at everything, whilst demonstrating his evident enthusiasm and frequent successes, comes at the price of the album’s coherency. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of potential here.

Holy Ghost! is an interesting album and much of the production is loving, well-crafted homage to some wonderfully overlooked disco genres.

Smoking in Heaven is a still novel and mostly welcome dive into an often ignored and overlooked era.

Does this mean Inherit is one for the better-luck-next-time pile? No, because while we’re right to expect more from these three women, their middle of the road still stands heads above much produced by the younger generation of noiseniks.

It seems a little mean to judge this against song-based records - if anything, the narrative arc suggests it's 'about' the deterioration of meaning / tunefulness / drama into the inconsequentiality of real life; still, on its own terms, it's rather precious.

The National Health gives the likeable quintet a firm footing from which to stop their seemingly inevitable decline.

The balance of unsettleing noise and artistic appreciation wavers perhaps a little too much and, as admirable a band as they are, wrapping your ears around their album unfortunately proves to be a little too much work.

It’s more that as a whole, Bizarster just feels a bit lazy and thrown together, and fails to have any real continuity which can hold your attention for the hour that it plays out.

Treefight For Sunlight isn't a knockout success, but it just about contains enough to suggest that, if there's any justice, the Danes deserve a second crack of the whip.

While it’s an intriguing album, it’s one where ideas lack a little conviction.

The album doesn't have that 'grab-hold-and-don't-let-go' emotional pull that would elevate it beyond sounding nice into something to treasure. It's worth your listening time though, because even though it's not always consistently a great album, it's never less than an intriguing effort.

The result is exactly what I Believe wasn't: tasteful, sensitive and containing a fair few memorable tunes.

This is not as good as its predecessor.

This is a solid collection of pop-tunes, but not for connoisseurs.