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.