A few more years playing together has refined Desperate Journalist’s songwriting significantly. There’s more emotional and musical depth to the songs on Grow Up, the slow-dance of ‘Purple’ being probably the biggest example of this.

Livin' in Elizabethan Times is 28 minutes of big dumb fun. Big dumb fun with a great concept. Each song is full of hilarious deadpan lyrics, delivered like only Mason knows how, intricate composition that showcase both Mason’s and Duffy’s skill and prowess. If this is a one off, then we’ve been given something special, if this is the first instalment in a series of releases, then we’re in real treat.

Last Building Burning feels like you’d hope it’d feel, as a 36-minute rush of blood to the head.

Some of the weakest, most un-affecting songs that Kurt Wagner has ever written. [combined review of both discs]

That’s what this is, a record with definition and character, a pointed move away from the nerve-frying, oft random lurches of HEALTH.

All fascinating stuff, and the resultant album is a fitting testament: exciting, yet flawed like the man (John DeLorean) himself.

With their third album, Liars have succeeded in creating the near-impossible; a conceptual work that speaks to the emotions and the intellect simultaneously.

This Old Dog is the sound of an artist on top of his game. An artist shedding every inch of wackiness from his bone and sounding all the better for it.

Listening to Beings though makes one thing abundantly clear: Lanterns on the Lake are one of Britain's most crucial bands of the present moment.

For the most part, it feels like either overweening confidence or desire to snare rudderless Oasis fans has led to Kasabian attempting the sort of conventional guitar pop record that they've always so successfully avoided making.

Prisoner isn’t a heartbreak record--it’s potentially the heartbreak record, for my generation at least. Turns out sadness really is quite the currency.

It may eschew the rough edges of their earlier records, and adhere to the templates the Fannies have used since Songs, but when you’ve got the formula just right, and have the songwriting chops of three of the finest melodic songwriters these isles have to offer, then the result cannot be anything less than sheer joy in the here and now.

The album will appeal to new fans, but for anyone that has followed Nite Jewel’s creative ascendance over the years, Real High will stand out as the artistic apex of what she has attempted to create during her short but eventful career. The overwhelming impression is that of authority; an artist at one with herself and her vision.

A realistic, delightful and emotionally accessible record.

Whatever happens next, she can rest assured safe in the knowledge that together with her beau they've conjured up one of 2012's--or any other year in recent memory--finest debuts.

As it is, they're more than quite good, and all the better for the tracks that surround them.

Although La Grande is no huge departure from what Gibson has been practicing for years, it's a wholesome and welcome addition to a back-catalogue which has very few flaws, even if the moments which stand up and make you take notice are not numerous.

These old balladeer's tales are fleshed out with metaphors and all the tricks of a great writer. The burble of guitar lines complement it all artfully. That doesn't mean the criticisms go away--there is a lack of invention within any genre, and too often the lustre dulls.

'The Warning' will claim your souls and break your hearts.

Despite being an album that appears to be made up of such personal and reflective lyrical themes, the tunes themselves mostly rattle by in a flash with less regard for steady contemplation.

Whereas the band's 2004 long-player was a studied exercise in melancholic understatement, melded to some mightily addictive pop hooks, this ten-tracker is an immediately gratifying affair that pulls not a single punch in the catchiness stakes.

By the time of Smote Reverser's finale 'Beat Quest', it's plain difficult to not be impressed by this insanely talented band yet again--may their reign long continue.

The Last Panthers is a thoroughly original take on a very familiar aesthetic, and by sheer will Clark’s produced something that ranks amongst the very best of its kind.

Although there is nothing world-beating here, Kinsella has been quietly plugging away at this project for over a decade now, and as he approaches middle-age, may well have struck a formula that propels his Owen project into the stratosphere of other highly regarded midwest-American contemporaries Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens or Tallest Man on Earth.

Here, Laura Jane Grace is emerging from her shell, grasping her icon status with both hands and speaking up for what she sees as a largely invisible, voiceless group of underdogs. And it doesn't get much more punk rock than that.

It’s not a pretty record; while of course, being at times a very pretty record.

[An] intense and epic album.

Enough variety is here, and it all fits together as beautifully as Let It Die did.