I Still Do is solid, unspectacular blues. Take Clapton’s voice out and this could be one of those Jules Holland collections they promote at weekends on Radio 2.

For an outfit who've been heralded as the industry's great white hopes of 2009, The Big Pink undoubtedly have several moments of pure genius here, but ultimately, A Brief History Of Love lacks the consistency to elevate it from the status of a good debut album to that of a great one.

Whereas Pollock’s 4AD debut was fairly charming and instant but a little slight, The Law of Large Numbers is the total opposite; a wonderfully simple, clever and loveable record initially masquerading as a complex and awkward one.

As the album enters its second half a number of elements which made the its first half so enjoyable begin to get tiresome, particularly the over-reliance on piano.

It’s still simplistic and limited but it’s meant to be. That’s the whole idea. The converted will remain.

There are moments which hint at Casablancas’ underlying skill as a writer on Phrazes, but there’s such a ruinous deployment of disparate ideas that they never form a cogent whole.

At times hypnotic and otherworldly, it's a soothing, unsettling and challenging listen.

There’s a difference between original and interesting, though, and there’s plenty of the band’s own identity on Cursing the Sea, which marks the start of what could yet be a tremendous 2014 for the quintet in deliciously dark fashion.

As side projects go, this is one of those that will happily turn left rather than right when climbing onboard that transatlantic flight to you.

Although much of Heligoland suggests that Massive Attack might finally have burned out, the glowing embers of what they once had can still be glimpsed providing a light in the dark.

These climactic moments help Belly Of The Lion to ultimately feel more consequential and less of a project for a moonlighting soundtracker. He’ll need some help to recreate it live, but on record David Wingo has shown that he can pull it off on his own.

It's not an album that will be remembered for its songs, but it's coherent enough as a whole to make up for that. In 2016, it's refreshing to indulge in a collection of songs that work best when they're heard all together.

French Kicks cannot rightly be pegged as a one-trick pony but the formulaic organisation of this record emphasises lushness at the sacrifice of any surprises.

I’m sure there’s a decent record in here somewhere, but it’s hiding in amongst the detritus which seems to have been added in almost at random.

The cover of the Isley Brothers, "Why When The Love Is Gone" after "Don't Make A Sound" seems like sloppily tagged on attempt to be shown that the group's influences are genuine. Otherwise, Release Me is a perfectly produced pop gem with all substance and a lot of style.

Jukebox is an unsurprising album. It sounds exactly how you'd expect–-classic, but not overly well known, songs, like Dylan's 'I Believe In You,' squeezed by the Cat Power sound into tracks that sound like they could feature on "The Greatest."

The whole of In Our Nature benefits from the air and space around the songs. Rather than attempting to embellish his new album in an attempt to garner a wider audience, Gonzalez keeps to minimal pleasures that make his work an unfussy yet sophisticated joy.

Mark T. Smith from Explosions in the Sky and Matthew Cooper of Eluvium have come together as Inventions to construct something that leans on the ingredients of their day-jobs but is simultaneously exactly what a combination of both acts should sound like and somehow greater than the sum.

Whether Colors will be a success within the pop world it is clearly aimed at remains to be seen, but one suspects even pop fans will see through this for it appears to be: an album documenting a mid-life crisis.

A carefully considered, exotic and mature record that stands out as a blueprint of how to handle the move from lo-fi to, well, just –fi.

The details rest comfortably in the background and add only to a sense of ambience, not to a bold artistic statement.

In producer David Fridman, whose psychedelic instincts have added glow to everything from Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev to Creaming Jesus, MGMT and Sleater Kinney, Lovely Eggs have found a collaborator who understands that warmth, weirdness and wit can be melted into walls of queasy noise to quite gorgeous effect. Between them they’ve made something genuinely glorious. There’s nothing funny about that.

It remains, at its heart and in the best possible way, a very small record of considerable charm. Warmly recommended.

Volcano is a fun album of tightly-crafted, catchy melodies. But it’s in no way reinventing the genre the band members so keenly idolise.

Repeated listenings reveal the record for what it truly is - the most human of comeback records.

Overall though, Travellers In Space And Time is a fascinating collection that won't be everyone's cup of tea, but should at least cement its creators cult status for the forseeable future and some.

The template hasn't changed much, and to some extent this is no bad thing.

As it meanders towards its conclusion, the LP melds into a uniform mesh of pleasantly forgettable ditties.