x's first third is not without its issues but there is charm, not to mention the feeling that Sheeran really is trying to raise his game. A pity, then, that the remaining 35 minutes is alternatively as generic and simpering as it gets.

There are only fleeting glimpses of brilliance on a long-player littered with ideas that never seemed to get past the kernel stage.

This is duvet music, offering vague comfort but impossible to feel any excitement for.

The result with For Crying Out Loud is that it has bright moments but ultimately adds to the collection of below-par efforts that will do little to extinguish the elitism scorn that they attract.

Music is supposed to be a form of entertainment, but ‘Long Gone Before Daylight’ feels like a collection of aimless lullabies.

Familiar ground is where they’re most comfortable, and they still haven’t worked out how to successfully expand their horizons beyond that.

To be blunt though, for all the great literary and musical figures involved, the result of this creative vision sounds more or less the same as the music Natalie Merchant has been making for her whole solo career. Only more boring.

The rest of this collection floats between funny and worthless, tending much more towards the latter by the EP's close.

The State Of Things will no doubt be a big hit. But if anyone ever takes the time to give it a good proper listen they will find that it’s a wafer thin album of posturing and poor word play.

The problem with clipping. is that they sometimes seem to have an unusual idea of what makes good hip-hop. Sometimes it feels like the purely hip-hop side-project of a dodgy rap-metal group circa 2003.

Nine of the 13 tracks go over the five minute mark, and despite the combined fertility of Arcade Fire and producer James Murphy’s creative minds, very few tracks justify their running times.

While Don Broco’s desire not to retread old ground is commendable, their stated desire to focus on what makes them stand out as a rock band has fallen a little flat.

A Joyful Noise is a femme-power event album too shallow to achieve the import its creators intended.

Over the course of OF Tape Vol 2, souless-ness has curdled into banality.

Unbalanced and ill-executed at times, Hvarf-Heim is a supplementary release.

The Ascent doesn’t actually feel like a Wiley record. That’s mainly because it’s a struggle to find him amongst the gaggle of voices that spit their way across vapid efforts like the Chip and Ms D collaboration ‘Reload’ and the pedestrian Far East Movement-mauled ‘So Alive’.

This is a record that feels alarmingly lacking in purpose from a band whose glory days are now a good decade behind them. This one is for completists only.

Rip This is completely ignorable, and not a fun ambient music way.

It sounds like The Zutons trying to record one of their more out-there b-sides having just lost the ability to play music.

Blink-182 aficionados will find plenty to enjoy here, but for those who grew wearisome of the stale pop-punk formula years ago, +44’s debut album is an unnecessary purchase.

If you were there and want an audio-postcard of the night when noise and flashing lights broke your brain then add four to the given mark. Otherwise this is like pretty much every live album: pointless and skippable.

An album diluted by the indecision of its creators.

Struggles to offer the same level of excitement that previous Jaxx albums provided.

Overall Animal is a dumb album. Where it tries to be empowering and fun it comes off sounding like a spoilt brat singing the American Pie script through auto-tune.

[It] leaves this bizarre aftertaste – one not of immediate dislike, but one that’s pretty far from appealing enough to warrant a second sampling.

From the outset, No Mundane Options drifts by without asserting itself.

It seems they’ve not only gone and made that sensible and mature fifth album that every band past their sell-by date inflicts on their effervescently loyal fans, they’ve actually made a record that would be more appropriate in an old folks’ home than your local indie niterie.

Formula is strictly adhered to, and while pace may differ from one jolly strum-about to the next, the void where there should be a worthwhile tune remains.