The album is a collection of songs from a band at the peak of their powers having their cake and eating it too.

Disquiet, the group’s fourteenth album, is their most direct and to the point release in some time.

It’s definitely not a ‘grower’, but you won’t love it for two minutes then leave it, either. Rather, it sits somewhere in between: impressively easy to like, refreshingly difficult to get tired of.

It's so proud to be pop and hopefully this'll make others realise it's never a guilty pleasure to enjoy songs that make you happy; songs that make you wanna dance your ass off and songs that perfectly fit the criteria for pretending to be in a music video.

On Why Choose?, they sadly lose a lot of their manic, propulsive momentum.

Skits and the odd miss accepted, and the Anonymous Nobody… is a grand achievement. Regardless of whether their next project requires outsourced funding or not, De La Soul fans worldwide will just be happy if the group can keep up these standards while never forgoing their wayfaring creativity.

Their music really does speak for itself through just their voices and a drum kit. Anyone suspicious of how that might translate can put those fears aside, Be OK is a fine record, and fitting document of the group that created it.

The nicest aspect of this thoroughly nice record is that Black manages it without sounding either insipid or cloying.

Bon Voyage is a foray into the world of spiritual healing and rediscovery through a various musical textures and emotions.

Despite Angry Cyclist’s shortcomings, the peaks are high enough to earn its place in the band’s long, lustrous discography.

The record is at its best when kept simplistic and spontaneous, but for much of it you sense they have thought about it a little too much and become a little too self-aware; for a band like Deerhoof that can lead into some pretty iffy territory.

If the easily distracted are at risk of sleeping through this, fans of emotional tours de force will have a great new addition to their 'best albums of the year' list.

What’s striking though is that a band known for a very particular sound can produce such individually distinct pop songs, with equal aplomb, while remaining within their self-defined parameters of 'the Dutch Uncles sound'.

Every Open Eye seems neutered, the rough edges sanded back on an album that fits a mould more than it breaks it--which given the band’s confrontational media stance seems something of a waste.

Though it has merit in the strength of its content, Pond Scum may be only one for the collectors.

If you need something to invigorate your soul and send you on a journey then look no further.

To conclude that Bromst is a triumph of inventiveness is too easy. It is wildly inventive, but what impresses most is that for all the levity, Dan Deacon has managed to impressively reign in his flights of fancy.

Atomic is a soft reset that will allow the band to move in new directions in the future. Its curiosity is infectious and immensely exciting, and it sounds like the result of a group refreshed, hungry and eager to grow.

Tunes-wise there’s some strength in depth here but it’s telling that, in spite of the lip service being paid to various left-of-centre influences, Santogold feels a strangely conservative listen, in danger of satisfying neither fans of M.I.A.’s wild stylistic forays nor the bubblegum masses thirsting after their latest dose of content-free self-assertion.

Listened to absentmindedly, its deep, rumbling groove and overlapping rhythmic lines may initially seem nothing more than an artfully assembled soporific swirl. Live with it a while, though--give it time and space in order that it may weave its beguiling spell--and delights aplenty unfurl.

This is a fast-tempo, punk and metal-tinged homage to days gone by and those yet to come and, as a result, may well be the band's best effort since their much-lauded debut.

It is a joyous, emboldened return to form and one that reminds us of what a treasure Edwyn Collins is.

A Snowflake Fell could have worked as a series of effective B-sides or bonus tracks on the aforementioned album package.

With lyrics so accomplished, entertaining and labyrinthine as these to be matched with well-measured, anti-bravado beats and textural sensitivity it’s difficult not to see a bright future for Speech Debelle.

Apparently, lightning does strike twice. It has for The Go! Team at any rate.

This represents their first attempt at creating a bonafide album and when all's said and done, they should be proud of their achievements.

The focus is there, the execution is there. It’s a record that delivers, satisfies, challenges and is occasionally sublime.

It's the interpretation of a human voice that elevates this record beyond a curious obscurist record and makes the simmering (but never boiling over) electronica truly shimmer.