Lil Wayne’s status and influence is now clearly working against him, the choice to release a rock record has backfired, yet obviously no-one has had the guts or inclination to tell him that the overblown choruses and riffs of Rebirth drag him away from the in-your-face lyricism and unorthadox flows that he is best at.

Not a bad album, just a boring one.

Mysteries is by no means terrible, but Tigercats are a long way from earning their stripes.

There's no doubt that Skee-Dat-De-Dat...Spirit of Satch is a project of love, but by the closing stages there's no getting away from it; the album is a bit of a... drag.

They have yet again created a record of consistent dependability, but sadly it fails to excite and veers too close to the middle of the road.

Away from the lyrics, there’s a nagging feeling that, like The Only Place, California Nights isn’t going to blow too many people away with its mostly familiar-feeling content.

That’s the half of Relaxer that I can live with, the half that strives actively to dispel alt-J’s pretentious front and swing for the top of the charts. But then, my friends, we return to the 'House of the Rising Sun'--because here, on this wikkle precious cover version with the cyclical Leonard Cohen guitar, we’re reminded of every reason to hate the three blokes.

As 'Syncn' lilts to a close, it’s hard not to feel that White Denim would be better if they channelled a little of their chaotic diversity towards consistency, and focused upon being the very biggest, dumbest and craziest bunch of garage revivalists, rather than striking towards a uniqueness that is momentarily out of reach.

Most of these are just too damn long, and don’t develop too far past theme-and-variation rounds. Plus, Sarp taps along at the same stately tempo for nearly all his parts, so every song merges unwillingly into the next.

ARTPOP is a decidedly patchy ‘Just Dance’-less disappointment.

While the instrumental augmentation in most of the songs is impressive, the setlist feels less immediate than the band's past work.

It’s a decent snapshot of that nebulous minimal-not-minimal sound at present.

Okay, so it’s a bold change in direction, and while that’s laudable, there’s very little differentiation, which makes for a frustrating, often banal long-player.

The rest of the record is a confused meander through some of the lesser known backstreets of this over-familiar band.

This is a missed opportunity to stand up and move forward with popular music, and comes off as a backbench cry for how good things used to be before we all started caring about progression.

The Little Ones however have produced a record that naively ignores all the elements that make reality real, and therefore it doesn’t make much sense. It’s happy and lively to the point of vulgarity.

The album is recognisable in name only. Only a few songs register in their entirety as actual conceivable moments that the artist would have presumably been comfortable releasing.

It’s just that on Don’t Forget Who You Are he and his new collaborators have turned everything up to 11 in a transparently concerted effort to throw him into the spotlight, but in setting him apart from his previous work he’s lost many of the idiosyncrasies which made him interesting.

On record Yes, It's True feels insubstantial, which is disappointing because when they don't go overboard they can still craft interesting music.

Ultimately Life On the Road can only work as a comedy project, and musical comedy needs to be richer than this to be worth visiting more than once. You need to be Flight of the Conchords to pull that off, and David Brent just isn’t likeable or interesting enough.

The moments of unity sound accidental and haphazard, ambient music with the occasional breakcore eruption, as if a child was operating two stereos playing each artist and alternating turning the volume up and down on each one.

Whether Colors will be a success within the pop world it is clearly aimed at remains to be seen, but one suspects even pop fans will see through this for it appears to be: an album documenting a mid-life crisis.

It’s perfectly pleasant background listening, but it yields diminishing returns from close listening.

At this point Rival Schools sound like Nada Surf without the pop nous or OK Go without the videos. Perfectly listenable, perfectly agreeable, absolutely forgettable.

It goes without saying that they still possess a die-hard dedication for that certain herb, and if you don’t smoke the reefer you shouldn’t go anywhere near this record; it will leave you colder than Cheech and Chong’s Arctic Adventure

Sadly, moments of well executed originality are thin on the ground, as indeed are examples of the band effectively channeling the transcendental shoegaze of their established contemporaries.

Too many cheesy keyboard presets, no engagement with contemporary 'urban' forms, no distinct personality, one half-decent song, a facsimile of a thing as opposed to the thing itself.

These towering moments stretch thin across a record lost in a comatose state of traditional, if beach-bumming, rock-pop tedium.