American Goldwing isn't bad, but it's not particularly exciting when you consider the band's usual standards.

Despite the quality of the execution, it's difficult to shake the sense that A+E has been done before.

All in all it’s a competently executed album that keeps your feet tapping and head nodding for as long as it lasts, but one that takes too few risks and bares too little soul to linger in the listener’s thoughts and emotions once it’s over.

Egypt Station is easily one of the most forward-thinking records of McCartney’s later career and a surprisingly welcome return. We might wish he could be more thoughtful and elegant in his older age, and maybe even a little bit cooler, but that wouldn’t make him Paul McCartney. Thankfully, he generally keeps his groan-worthy impulses to a minimum.

The Wytches have proved themselves a genuinely intriguing proposition, one with far more up their sleeves than just straight-up punk raucousness, but that also have evidently not quite got a handle on how best to present themselves on record, either--given that this is their first effort, though, that’s entirely forgivable.

It’s Frightening is by no means a record which is without merit. I suspect that the production work of Spoon’s Britt Daniel has infused it with more presence than it might otherwise have had. However, that notwithstanding, the album’s lack of anything substantial to get your teeth into proves fatal.

Sadly, for all the passion and insight of his lyrical aspersions here, a lot of the messages are left a tad subdued by the conveyor belt plod orchestration.

It may not be a great, or even particularly good album, but it does at least tide us over until Weezy become a free man, and the much talked about Tha Carter IV finally sees the light of day.

So, yeah, Tyvek (on this album anyway) are pretty trad-punk. Which is not all that bad. When one wants to listen to something that sounds like old punk rock but isn't actually old punk rock, one could do a lot worse than listen to these guys.

It's careful, like well worded advice, and typically careworn, but this ultimately can’t disguise a lack of lyrical spark.

Those aforementioned past tense references are telling, because that’s exactly where Go Away White sounds as if it belongs: in the past.

Perhaps where Midwinter Graces suffers most is that it will be resigned to the world of the holiday album, making brief appearances from only late November to early January, garnering at most a passing mention the rest of the year. At the very least, though, it is a holiday record that will be remembered once a year.

For all its glitz and shine, Dungeonesse feels slightly disingenuous--a rather contrived leap onto the 'summer of disco' bandwagon.

Though it would have been nice to feel a greater sense of ownership, it’s a solid enough new chapter for a group who always kept it light, so why change all that much now?

Not once does Overpowered really drag its feet, but it never truly impacts with the might one could possibly expect from an artist with such a fine pedigree.

Solid and safe fun perhaps.

This stylized despair erases everything that made Holy Motors special. Without the casual surrealism (like sentient skeletons) or gaffs about touchy stuff like tampons, the reboot plays out with the predictable pallor of most “edgy” primetime cable shows.

While Part II is broadly a success, it is a qualified one. Lines often come across as clunky and trite.

Sure it’s trying to mimic something it can never truly be but it’s lovely nonetheless and credit where due will probably be rewarded with more than a few listens.

It’s an admirable attempt at maturity, but Diploid Love drains the energy from Dalle's music, along with its heart.

Perversely given the record’s comprehensive musical overhaul it’s perhaps a surfeit of respect for the source material that proves Anywhere's undoing; for all its undoubted accomplishments there’s a lingering suspicion that this is too safe, too respectable a record to do justice to an artist who remains forever mid-topple from the bar stool in the popular consciousness.

It's a mixed bag all right. At times brilliant, at others unlike anyone else out there and occasionally frankly a bit rubbish.

So far, Sov’s done well for playing to her strengths, but it’s too short an album for filler, and a song about being unable to play the guitar is pointless, however melodic and Northern Soul the cello-part happens to be.

Everything’s well executed, but nothing sinks in; it’s all surface, no feeling.

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

He’s Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands is by no stretch of the imagination the most disagreeable Joan of Arc record to date, or the most impenetrable, either; some of the soundscapes here are pleasingly smooth given how scattershot Kinsella’s approach so often is.

There’s nothing on Undress that diminishes her as a songwriter; it’s just that it seems a mistake to strip some fine tracks of what made them so enthralling in the first place.

A patchy return, then, from a band whose prolific status never looked in jeopardy before. While it's good to have The Coral back, it's unlikely that Roots And Echoes will win them any new converts.