This album may be out of time, often boring, but is just too competent to lend itself to any fun.

Overall, Alive As You Are's sea change is perhaps just a little too severe to fully engage with in one sitting, and despite the band's insistence this record represents a significant step forward, its retrogressive veneer casts something of a bewildering shadow.

It's more than a return to form for SSLYBY--it's potentially their finest hour.

While sometimes The Final Frontier seems to mine the Maiden groove until the canary chirps its last, the better songs are an indication that they aren't yet trading solely on their reputation.

Musically, the song structures are as bog-standard as Britpop, the lyrics constantly teeter on the edge of nonsense, while the lack of any real change in style save for rotating the guy on vocals means the tracks continue to merge into one another even after a few listens.

With a soundtrack that captures the spirit of the comics with such fervency, conviction and discipline, Scott Pilgrim vs The World looks set to be a lot less dislikable than you might've hoped.

Kaleide is immediate and it rarely dulls, bar the slow start to "Anjelica Huston," before it bursts out into sparkling keyboards at the tail end.

h each subsequent listen, the readout dial wavers more wildly between the 5 and the 9 mark, never quite deciding on where it will come to fall. The enigma that is PVT, then.

In a nutshell, The Suburbs' two most important achievement are to a) be good and b) not be a rehash of its predecessors.

What Wavves has created here is a collection of gleaming pop gems, laced with self-hatred and a keen sense of rebellion.

It seems it will take a third record for it to be fully realised, meaning that 'promising' once again seems like the right word, but on Where The Messengers Meet the Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band do a good deal of delivering too.

Where Future Perfect knocked us right off our feet, Transit Transit doesn't seem to have the energy to even push us slightly to the left. We miss 2004's Autolux.

For those of us who hadn't got our hands on the earlier mixtapes or his remixes for the likes of Blackalicious and Rob Sonic, Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 is an opportunity to assess El-P as a beatmaker on his own merits.

By drawing from her vast catalogue of experiences, she finds the scope for an engaging range of musical tangents. Yet somehow, she has made an album which is not confused or disjointed.

With Mines, Menomena have shown that they are a trio of reliably progressive, thoughtful musicians.

While The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness is not a complete disaster, even the most loyal of fans will find it difficult to love. The end result sounds quickly thrown together and unusually bereft of ideas.

It's the simplest track on this album, built from ascending string motifs, plonks of piano, and a straightforward beat that offers welcome respite from Rossen's obvious obsession with dislocated rhythms.

Throughout Infra, Richter's skill lies in his ability to re-emphasise and reinterpret, to construct an instrumental dialogue and a kind of imagined narrative through repetition and subtle alteration.

The I Am Arrows project clearly has potential, but at 14 tracks, Sun Comes Up Again can feel like a trudge through the outback of mediocrity rather than an exciting exploration into new territory.

While being pleasant and listenable enough, Pink Graffiti simply doesn't do enough to set itself apart from the post-chill-glo-surf-wave-fi trend, which is ultimately its downfall.

As long as her music remains as bold, inventive and occasionally thrilling as it is here, long may that continue.

Often collaborative projects end up being an average of its participants, merging in the middle in a grey mulch. Dark Night of the Soul escapes all of that, Sparklehorse bringing the songwriting genius, and Danger Mouse the production, and the details - the watery sounds, the effects, the atmosphere.

Serotonin makes its intentions pretty clear – it is a pop record, it has themes, it knows where it wants to go, it knows what it wants to do. It does those things – it is melodic.

This album is grounded. Slightly lost and, sadly, all too findable.

Flaws is perfectly executed and well produced and if you inhale the album in short, sharp breaths, then you may just find the middle of the road a charming place to be, for a brief moment anyway.

Ultimately, an interesting album within its constraints rather than a hands-down triumph, but there were a lot of constraints.

The biggest crime here is that it sounds so dated-listening to Flesh Tone is a bit like watching a filmmaker failing to ape the innovation of The Matrix more than a decade after it was made.

It's a record which brilliantly lives up to and even exceeds all the hype, mystique and hyperbole that has surrounding it since it's inception, and it's essential for anyone with even a fleeting interest in rap music.