Although the consistency of last year's Your Future... is not reached, there are some fine moments.

I listen to Milagres but I hear Coldplay.

Dead Confederate have possibly made the best record out of all their contemporaries this year, which surely beckons the question 'How much longer can they be ignored?' Time to pay attention methinks...

It's certainly not a bad second effort; simply they have attempted to downsize the large breast-beating anthems to something a little more crafted and understated, while still retaining their populist nous.

Unfortunately, despite its improvements, the album still suffers from lackadaisical and unfocused songwriting. Sure, this record is quite a bit better than the one originally released, and kudos to the band for taking the time to prove their point.

It’s Bob Dylan’s Christmas gift to you, delivered with warmth from his heart, even if his tongue is in his cheek. Like eggnog, it’s something that will always go down well once a year, even if it is probably just the once.

For all its celebrity tricks and years of pipeline evolution, ‘Auf Der Maur’ still has all the hallmarks of the debut record.

If you got concussed during the first Pearl Jam tour and have only just come out of your coma, boy, have we got a great new sound for you.

There’re dudes out there (Google them) who will try and tell you this album has some relevance, that it represents pop, that it’s important. That it’s good. They’re wrong.

What The Portrait Is Finished… evokes is a sense just like that of its inventive title: an ultimately unsatisfying portrait that fails to capture beauty, even though it's clear that true beauty is there to be captured.

This behemoth double LP is a risk that just hasn’t paid off.

While the rest of the album does falter a little towards the end, as a piece of work overall it's one that they should rightfully be proud of.

Mumps, etc. simultaneously feels like a fresh start and consolidation for the band; it encapsulates what makes them so unique while subtly expanding and pushing forward their sound, and as such must be viewed a real triumph.

It’s not a brilliant record, but if there’s good one thing to be said about 48:13, it's that it sounds like a band coming to terms with who they are and who they’re making music for, tossing pretense aside, and concentrating on being themselves.

Occasionally vague, sometimes incohesive and a little self-indulgent it may be, but ultimately Abnormally Attracted to Sin is an abnormally attractive piece of work, and another fine example of the shining talent that is Tori Amos.

With Beautiful Trauma then, Moore proves that she’s both still relevant, and a vital, confident female voice on the pop circuit who has impressively never really succumbed to the pressures of the overly-sexualised pop machine.

More! as an EP would have packed more punch and avoided the pitfalls of consistency which plague albums of every genre. Nevertheless, it is a good album, and perhaps the only tinge of disappointment is the knowledge that they could have done better.

A disappointingly tepid affair.

Overall, this is a highly schizophrenic collection.

If it’s slightly weaker than its immediate predecessor, that’s only because it’s following the same furrow.

This Is What the Truth Feels Like is half-baked in places and perhaps a little too safe in others, but it’s really, properly genuine, and if she doesn’t leave it a decade next time, Stefani might still be able to make a great pop record. It’s in there, somewhere.

It's neither forward looking nor, overtly retro or especially of the moment--it just is, in the best sense.

Hate them all you like, but Snow Patrol have some great songs and enough money now to forget all about the tripe they’re currently peddling at their massive group of new fans.

Overall, Encore is a worthwhile listen. It obviously suffers from many of the problems that dance music albums generally suffer from but it does well to show off Snake's ear for hooks just as well as his ear for drops.

Ripples is a record which will likely struggle have any relevance, impact or longevity beyond the goodwill of its own gestation. Which really is a shame.

For while the aforementioned songs all have recognisable parts borrowed from their peers, they all also contain moments of genuine beauty, fear and grandness which demands you to fall into hell just as Dante's Devil demanded him to.

Had this been a debut album perhaps it would have been better received, however, the shadow of the successful first album looms heavy here and may just have listeners reaching for the older material rather than the current.

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