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's not an especially coherent set; because wonderful as most of these songs are, they'd have been better if the perfectionist band had finished them properly.

Cells is coherent, yet not without the odd welcome respite or a few anomalies.

For now, Strength In Numbers, whilst not exactly redefining the zeitgeist, is a lot better than anyone could have expected.

Wilder Mind is incredibly one-track, so much so that even on your first listen-through, you’ll likely already feel like you’ve heard closer ‘Hot Gates’ five or six times in the past hour.

As The D.O.T., the material on Diary has an honesty of its own, at times perfectly balancing Skinner and Harvey’s styles.

The message feels less than vital at a time when vitality is so needed, and no, there will be no revolution off the back of the subversive royalty involved in this release. The slogans feel thin, but the music itself is substantive. Whether that counts as a success or not comes down to what you came here for.

Following on from last year's EP1, this a tougher, leaner Pixies than that of their classic era, missing some of the ramshackle charm on which their most well known work floated.

The downer is that nothing here can touch the early pop gems that can still see even the more stringently alternative spill their JD and cokes, and without that it's all too easy to start thinking this record is a lot worse than it actually is.

This is a bad album. The power ballads have some good elements. You might sing one of these songs at karaoke one day. You should not listen to this album in its entirety.

Despite the self-therapy and tonal lulls, Christopher is a highly listenable affair that produces two truly outstanding moments.

What we have to deal with is a record we already fully understand, a record that we can’t project our own ideas on to, and that’s a shame. It’s nice to dream every now and then, Adam. Let us dream.

This is music aimed squarely for the naïve-at-heart, and the industrial knife-sharpeners are best waved elsewhere than at the entirely likeable Young. If these genteel Casio-noodlings are what the kids are going to be listening to in 2010, I predict a peaceful year for the rest of us.

On Black they sound fully invested into exploring, and more than capable of handling, a new pop sound. This is a unique addition to Weezer’s discography that sees them preparing for the future, however bleak and overwhelming it might seem.

It’s a real shame Witness has come out as a bit of a disjointed mess, as there’s a decent record somewhere in there, but it gets lost in the fog of endless guest productions and co-writes that miss the point entirely.

By aiming to sound like U2 and Pink Floyd, AVA ends up sounding like an emo version of an even more plodding Coldplay.

Succinctly, it's a crap record.

Though the songs are both numerous and short, they’re mostly a solitary musical idea that tends not to be explored too far, well done as it might be.

Lyrically, things grate from the off, with cringe-worthy and rudimentary rhyming couplets being Peñate’s irritating stock in trade. By the end, everything has blended into a graceless, jaunty melange of up-down guitar strokes, bellowed vocals and mid-tempo skanks.

If electroclash left you cold... then this is, idealistically, how it should have sounded.

I was expecting a record full of opportunities to hang BFS out to dry, but there aren't any obvious faux-pas. Fishin' for Woos is solid because when a band is together this long they know what they're doing.

A sprawling debut which is as rich in its influences as it is in its sonic make-up. It is by no means an instant record – unless you happen to find yourself amongst some dynamic scenery or situation – but what it does is unravel, slowly and surely.

A deeply personal, occasionally lifeless but equally insightful passage into the latest chapter of Richard Ashcroft's life story.

Slipway Fires is preposterous, and in a way I actually wish I liked it more.

I have to accept that the band I once loved is now nothing more than a distant memory. Songs such as 'Tangerine' and 'Crash' have long been replaced by the new sound which owes much more to Keane and Coldplay in their melancholic approach.

This is an utterly pointless record with no artistic merit, creative spark or genuine ambition whatsoever.

An unremarkable, yet solid record.

A few highlights aside, it’s hard to understand why at least a half-dozen of these over-glossed R&B-lite numbers ever made it out of their maker’s mind.