Ultimately Snow Patrol fare best when they play to their strengths.

This is The Fall, live, in a variety of undisclosed European locations (who knows where? Only MES, probably, if even him), one of this land’s (which land’s?) greatest ever groups, still hurtling forward, still thrillingly, still bafflingly, with their full-bore wonky-wheeled tenebrous, anomalous, glorious grooves-aah.

Young the Giant are aiming for big things and they come close.

Enough signs are pointing in the right direction, but Romance At Short Notice isn’t brave enough to follow each road to its end.

There are occasional lapses (‘I Run’ is textbook Embrace, and thus completely forgettable), and probably too few ideas to really sustain a record, plus of course Editors have made pretty much this exact album at least twice in the last ten years, but still--it’s a hell of a rug-pull from a band long written-off, and a reminder to some of us that everything should be approached with an open mind.

Mills is simply better (if still at times clumsy) when writing about more personal, spiritual or quasi-philosophical matters. K 2.0 begins very promisingly with the loose psych-rock stomp of ‘Infinite Sun’.... Not everything works that well, especially in the LP’s second half.

I like it a lot. Much better than their first.

As well as they’ve delivered The Teal Album, they don’t quite hit the mark with every one of its takes, with their version ‘No Scrubs’ feeling more than a little bit uncomfortable.

Difficult second album? In a way. In that it's difficult to listen to it without smashing your CD player to make it stop.

On the whole, To Lose My Life is a solid debut that will certainly divide opinion, but approach with an open mind and dividends will be reaped en masse.

Happiness promises the rough edges and absurdity of one era's pop, but for the most part gives the mum-friendliness of the next. Hurts would surely be better if they committed to one or the other.

Quite simply, this record is the devil's spawn incarnate.

A French Kiss In The Chaos is neither artistically interesting nor indeed very good.

All in all, Crooked Shadows is where new and old Dashboard meet amicably. It is the most revitalising DC album to date.

Not everything on By Default is misogynistic, mind, it’s just that when the lyrics aren’t threatening or creepy, they make [any] sense.

On The Real Feel it seems that he’s buckled slightly under the pressure of having his own full length, with his own space to breathe and experiment, and has instead decided to play it straight down the line.

Stereophonics have in effect 'done a U2', packing in the arena-filling songs but with added AOR. Elements of rock dinosaurs such as ELO, Chicago and Fleetwood Mac all crop up over the course of 11 songs.

In between there are definite moments, but the preponderance of very long songs makes it a slog to this day.

This is nourishing pop music at its most immediate best.

With the best of the bunch already out there, the rest simply feels disposable by comparison. You can't help feeling Is Tropical may have made a mistake by playing their aces too early. Lucky they've got that video then.

Even if it doesn’t quite represent the grand tour Nightmares On Wax originally envisaged, the album at least provides an enjoyable detour or two.

The tracks' durations are, to these ears, not wisely distributed and this is possibly the album's biggest drawback.

There are no alarms and no surprises here, but it's a record produced by Jeff Lynne (who is a genius and anyone who says otherwise is a joyless idiot) so it sounds as bright, clear and appealing as anything this year.

Fans of The Music will love 'Welcome To The North' but it is unlikely that detractors will be converted.

The result is intricately experimental in style and form but while there are some glorious successes, as a whole Climb Up feels blunted.

It will do for the festivals but not without considerable help from their back catalogue.

On many levels it's immediately obvious that Nobody's Daughter is neither an awful record, nor a great one.

There are certainly some succulent dishes on the album ('Xerses' and 'Eats Darkness' for me) but all together I do wonder if someone ordered a bit too much?