There’s enough allure in Poison Season’s oddities to make it highly listenable.

By marrying the subtle ethereality of bands like MBV with the swashbuckling pomp of a modern-day Iggy, they are a band at once single-minded and confused.

Emmy the Great's debut is a triumph, with a maturity beyond her years, and with a humour no less enjoyable for being subtler.

In its imperfections Amphetamine Ballads occupies an especially human place. Saviours of rock n’roll? Nah. It doesn’t really need saving, and anyway this lot are far more about destruction. A modern classic? Just maybe.

Unlike other would-be indie-dance pretenders, this is properly danceable stuff; fat basses and catchy percussion beats are punctured by intoxicating keyboard motifs.

The Divine Comedy are, 26 years on from their debut and six on from Bang Goes the Knighthood, making a kind of pop music a million miles away from anyone more likely to touch the singles charts (assuming those are still a thing). It’s good to have them back.

The key to 'So Jealous' is that it's a mall-prancing hit jukebox but with, y'know proper non-bubblegum pop sensibilities.

Despite his various left turns, the one constant in Carlson’s work is the unrelenting hypnotic power of repetition, and a conviction that “the best music feels like the melody has been around forever.”

Claustrophobia feels richer and more worthy of exploring than the likes of ‘Hardbody’ or his Phenix releases.

This is Ash ready for stadiums, standing their ground and treating us to the kind of rock their heroes made.

Each song is chocked full of inventive counterpoints and melodies making it the most cohesive album Tiersen has released for a decade. With each listen you uncover another facet not just of of this complex and charming album, but of yourself too.

Gimme Some delivers more than a few pop songs, a legitimate pop album written with the subtlety of a band that has come to appreciate, instead of run from, their hit-making ability.

This feels like a deeper record than its predecessor, 2012’s well-received Blunderbuss, not as pretty but certainly sharper and more elegantly formed, something that’s reflected in the respective titles.

For the most part it's good. Very good.

Little Fictions, their seventh, is, reliably, a very good Elbow album.

Their most restrained and finely detailed record to date.

Overall, Spring Tides is the record Jeniferever have undoubtedly spent the past thirteen years of their existence building towards; an epochal moment that was well worth the wait, and can only whet the appetite in further anticipation of where their next journey of discovery will take them--in their own time, of course.

Much as it tries to be quirky and difficult, it is in fact a wonderfully satisfying listen.

BRMC’s third album is a triumph.

Like most of the album, “Soft Place to Land” is precise in language, but not in meaning. The album’s songwriting strength lies primarily in this sort of poesy, as effective as it is understated, and resisting paraphrase.

As it stands though, data Panik etcetera is still a hell of a ride, and though new ideas aren’t exactly widespread across its 12 tracks, it gets its kicks from perfecting bubblegum-stomp electro party post-pop, and does so rather thrillingly.

This isn’t a few Eighties synth presets stuck through a distortion pedal--it’s music that resonates far beyond a simple aping of well established precedents, often managing to be funny, sad and thought provoking in the space of a single track.

It's fair to say Smoke Ring...'s reliance on gloom and loneliness rarely lets up. But he's trying to find beauty in it, which I guess is the point.

Going, Going..., the group's ninth record, is full of bizarre twists and turns that make it unlike any album they have released to date.

An endearing, very likeable record indeed, and a confident first entry under the Flock of Dimes handle.

Though The Night is Young may start in relatively familiar territory, it soon branches out and is possibly the most diverse record he’s produced as yet.

Now we have Accelerate; the actualisation of a new found urgency. Gratifyingly short at under 35 minutes, it’s a summation of much that is or was great about R.EM.: wordy proclamations by Stipe, ringing Rickenbacker trills by Buck and lush backing vocals by Mills.

It’s this seamless motion and playful interplay that makes Polar Bear such a thrill; they seem to know exactly what to do and when – when to surprise, when to comfort, when to excite, when to calm.