Ultimately Perch Patchwork has some good pieces that just don't combine to make a great album. It's hard to call a band that is just releasing its debut full length "overcooked," but that's exactly what some of these tracks sound like.

In truth, it feels rather lightweight, as do much of Ryan James and Tomas Greenhalf's more adventurous flourishes, seldom though they are. As the narrative unfolds, nothing arrives at the punch of promising earlier efforts.

A good album is essentially buried here; at least eight songs could comfortably be axed.

The production is sublime, every beat and note fully realised in glorious colour. The songs, however, sound tired, and despite determined efforts to sound upbeat and jaunty, they end in a slump of indie-pop lethargy.

It’s a good record, it honestly is. But good grief, it’s a hard one to be excited by.

It’s neither poor enough to warrant a panning, nor progressive enough to deserve praising to a degree where recommendation to absolute beginners is necessary.

The sense of worship for the genre [dance pop] is laid on a bit thick sometimes too, even in the titles (see ‘Face 2 Face’, ‘Going Thru the Motions’ and ‘(Don’t) Wannabe’). So maybe the thing Kristin needs most is a sense of uniqueness.

Sistrionix could be a foundation for something much better or something infinitely worse, but for now Deap Vally don’t particularly deserve your hate or your love.

On the whole Goodbye isn't really much more than a background music soundtrack, something that would probably sound much better in an elevator than on an iPod. That said, it’s good for running a mile to.

As you'd likely expect, they're still as confused as ever.

Hi Beams is an album that delights and baffles in almost equal measures.

To The Happy Few is precise and calculated. It lacks the irrationality and selfishness that gives a record its soul.

Ultimately though, they don’t commit enough to the sonic range which they eventually bring to bear, focusing too much on middle-of-the-road indie-folk.

The tracks themselves work if you can get past the contrast. That might even be what makes you love it rather than hate it. The problem is that if you’re going to have a deep concept behind your pop tracks then it really needs to be stronger or more current than something that has gone before.

The aforementioned 'The King' is a string-laden lament on changing times and love in their small pocket of the world, and it's better than most of the songs that precede it. But it’s not enough to pull Once Upon A Time In The West out of it’s own lumpen mediocrity.

Mr M is an honest but tough old ride.

On the surface it’s all nicely put together but almost all these covers lack the passion.

While the songs aren't exactly good per se, they're certainly not hateful. You'd dance to them. Maybe you'd have to be drunk. Maybe you'd have to be in Reflex. But you'd dance to them.

In general, the songs that began life as full band, large productions numbers undergo Young’s intimate reimagining far better than the already bare-boned tunes.

Both songs [Vapor and RIPP] provide interesting interludes in an otherwise pretty average album.

Listening to Barbara is like watching the England football team; expectations are high at the outset and true to form, things get off to a rousing start. However, after the halfway mark normality sets in, there's an alarming sense of underachievement and long before its conclusion, you're dismissing them as hapless failures.

A solidly built celebration of interchangeable ordinariness.

It’s purely incidental material that goes nowhere for a dozen tracks and ends with just as much fuss as it began, i.e. none.

All too often, I'm From Barcelona are either forgettable or just beyond cloying.

For the most part, though, debut album Between Places cuts and pastes a series of well meaning but unengaging pop vignettes.

There’s this frustrating sheen over everything--likely from Fitz and Joy’s formal training--which makes the violins too syrupy to be sweet, the steel guitar too rustic to be real. By the same token, Joy’s lyrics also lack any lived-in landmarks.

One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back is a sturdy rock album with some saucy titles and odd instruments, but sadly it is less than it could or should be.

Nothing Is Wrong would have been a better record had that time been spent eking the emotion out of their own lives, rather than their record collections.