The ten songs which make up Everything Last Winter drift along without saying anything at all.

Asa Breed feels too lightweight to recommend without caution.

White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood is, in essence, a very solid new of Montreal album.

By no means an awful record, but certainly a disappointing one.

Conduit is short, vicious, angry and their most singular album to date but this lean and stripped down approach isn't a total success.

The 2003 Campfire Songs EP - re-released here in both CD and digital format - is at once an intriguing, beguiling and ultimately frustrating record. For a band certainly not averse to a little sonic experimentation, Campfire Songs remains Animal Collective’s most ambitious statement to date.

I Never Learn is by no means a failure--the highs are grand when they come--but it has a tendency towards bombast and shallow self indulgence that sees it edge dangerously close to the fringes of mediocrity.

I can't say if you liked Preteen Weaponry and Rated O then you will like this for sure, because it is a departure. Nonetheless if you were minded to like those two records and if you are after a record that is in pretty much every sense a 'challenging' listen then Absolute II should tick all your boxes.

For a record sold on its modernity, New spends most of the time in the past.

Making Time has some really great tracks, but maybe with a little more time spent on a few less ideas it could perhaps have been a great album.

With Glow & Behold, Yuck have shown they can be more than the grunge gropers Billy Hamilton billed them as and have survived saying goodbye to Blumberg--a situation that could yet see them become an altogether different and far more interesting band. However, it’s hard to shake the feeling we’re not back where we started.

Three of the songs are between seven and ten minutes long and make for laboured listens and sadly, the lack of song variety doesn’t really fit in a volume that’s meant to reflect lightness.

The album serves as a classic case of frontloading and one gets a sense that the first six songs would have made a better standalone EP, buying the band yet more time to craft something a little more interesting.

Despite an abundance of textures Codes and Keys seems somehow sparse, empty calories around a hollow centre.

Overall, Rewind The Film won't be afforded the same reverence as Manic Street Preachers more definitive outings. Nevertheless, in the context of the present, it's the sound of a band growing old gracefully in reminiscent mood yet firmly at ease with their lot.

So swings and roundabouts, then, but for all Bloodsports’ faults, it’s still pretty good.

This album may be out of time, often boring, but is just too competent to lend itself to any fun.

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

Husky's best songs are carefully paced and uncomplicated; when they attempt to aim for cod-psychedelia they produce some turgid tunes.

The problem is that throughout the record there is the nagging sense that this is ground that contributors have covered previously, either as 13 & God or in their separate guises.

NV’s live shows are a true spectacle, bursting with human drama and storytelling, building an arc that is disappointingly absent here. It is not just the pop songs that have disappeared, but the sense of definition. ... There are moments of hope.

Ultimately, Peaches shows herself developing, late in her career, but unlikely to infiltrate the market she's targeted.

It's no good for serious contemplation, but then I doubt that's what it's intended for – definitely one to keep handy for a sleepy August afternoon.

The details rest comfortably in the background and add only to a sense of ambience, not to a bold artistic statement.

This still feels exactly like the record they had to make, and there are startlingly good stretches to be found, but there’s enough of a disconnect between the songs to make it a slightly jarring experience.

Because of its unusual structure, Holy Ghost rarely manages to play to all of its strengths at once. It’s a bold choice, both interesting and admirable in its way, but it’s hard to get past the fact that it undoubtedly lifts towards its conclusion--building towards an energy it never properly inhabits.

Circuital can't be marked down as a failure; it's just not as good as it could be, or as its best tracks suggest it might have been. A little run of the mill for a band that often hit such massive heights.

None of this is original, nor particularly appealing for anybody disinterested in a by-gone era of music production--still it's enjoyable on a level that no amount of cerebral analysis will ruin.