This is dead-eyed pop with aspirations of being your comfort food but turns out to be a starchy soulless slop.

Erland and the Carnival make good at being a group who successfully accent their modern indie rock with olde world aspects of folk in a much more effective manner than so many acoustic troubadours.

If these average songs existed without the mercurial glow burning beneath the surface, you could unconcernedly dismiss it as another so-so album.

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.

Much like kindred spirits The Beta Band once did, this is a band plugging the gap between pop finesse and esoteric art school gristle without reverting to gimmicks or cliche. And, for Found, that's very little to be surprised about.

Angles doesn't feel like an over-indulgent record, nor one that speaks of a dearth of ideas.

In shedding his layers of pain, Pearson reveals his heart: broken and bloodied, but still beating, still fighting. We share and revere in his redemption, rarely has something so physically fragile sounded so mighty in its emotional resonance. A truly magnificent record.

It's a solid addition to Greenwood's burgeoning catalogue, and worthy of a listen in its own right.

On this record, Yellowcard cover all the same territory as those latter bands, with vague stories of broken friendships, frustrated romances and perfect summers that they'll never get back. Because… you know… growing up, like… sucks. The lack of detail is the problem here.

Kiss Each Other Clean makes Sam Beam four for four--more if you count the EPs and 2009's rarities set Around the Well.

The band has pulled off the difficult trick of sculpting a record concerned with weighty, complex themes and made it sound like the breeziest, most effortless thing in the world: a collection of fleet, shimmering pop songs; a master-class in sonic splendour; a bold, beautiful and brilliant reinvention that should surprise as many as it will enthrall.

Leanness is their ideal body state, dirt under the fingernails a sign of rude health. No doubt Riot Now! will only be purchased by those who know, but it's a commendable album.

Every note is considered and played with joy, care and a sense of craft. Together with the record's beautiful packaging, Cervantine feels like a personal historical document, speaking to and from the soul.

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.

With a little more focus and a little less self-doubt, The Chapman Family's second record should easily surpass this still pleasing statement of future intent. Just so long as they don't take too much time recording it.

This record is a welcome addition to the long-haired monosyllabic troubadour's more than impressive back catalogue.

Michel Poiccard is an inconsistent, raucous, sleazy mess. But that's what The Death Set do best--and you sense that Beau Velasco would approve.

Completely nonsensical, yes; yet also the perfect way of describing this album as the whimsy-filled journey through life it is.

Whether this latest release is merely another development or a sign of things to come, it is their most beguiling collection of songs for a number of years, a labour of love, and a record that that deserves more exposure than it's probably going to get.

Land and Fixed's deliberately obscured pop elements--irrefutable though they are--come across slightly too studied to tempt that kind of empathy. The album hovers between the audacity of no wave at its most impulsive and the poignancy of crossover artists who've openly borrowed from the genre, reaping the benefits of neither extreme.

It's been nearly two decades at the top for this seminal hip hop group, and on this evidence they show no signs of losing their edge.

My only qualm with The Magic Place is with its song structure. Each of the nine songs starts sparsely, weaves into an intricate texture, bulges with layered loops and then tails off.

It's not a bad record (they knew I was going to say that) and in the Eighties-MTV alternative rock-lite rush of Thrones it does have one genuinely great pop moment, which as far as I'm aware is more than can be said for any of its predecessors.

It is, all at once, accessible as a song, but interesting as a piece of music. But the problem with Let Me Come Home overall is that, as before, there is a bit too much of the former and nowhere near enough of the latter.

With Last Days on Earth, the persistently-versatile Noah continue to set to music those picturebooks of get-togethers, easy plateaus and break-ups that we've all got stored in our heads and add to year-on-year – and, in the process, they've managed to forge some great big tunes. More or less irresistible.

If in the meantime you've lost your copy of Loveless, you could do far worse than listen to Colour Trip.

Like all of R.E.M.'s most recent albums, Collapse Into Now is flawed; a reflection, I'm speculating, on the fact that that band's working process is now flawed.

Boys And Diamonds is an album that takes two different roads. A journey down one avenue finds Rainbow Arabia exploring the unrefined, bespoke freedom of African rhythms, ad hoc instrumentation and unfiltered self-expression.