Fight Softly isn’t in the same league as Clouds Taste Metallic however, which, let’s face it, is among the very faintest of criticisms, but the fact remains that it is slightly hit and miss in places.

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 a creative artefact however, its merits are limited, and does little, if anything, to contribute to Tim Burton’s creative vision.

The vocal strength that he displays elsewhere on the album isn’t there. There is the decided feeling of potential not being realised.

Endless Falls is the most complete version of Morgan's vision for Loscil to date. It's an album that's easy to get lost in after a few cursory wanders into the ether, where the amalgamation of barely-musical sounds sucks you in and seems to produce something different every time.

What is different, however, is the focus the band have found. In the past, there's been an unfortunate tendency to take songs a chorus too far, but that doesn't appear to be an issue any more.

Come Down With Me has solidified the band as their own entity; it has forged all of the disparate pieces of the past into something evergreen. There is no inclination to pander to any preconceptions of yore and this has now, undoubtedly, made Errors the force they always threatened to be.

On One-Armed Bandit they’ve mutated into an even stranger beast; a chimera constructed of parts from wildly different musics that somehow work as a whole and which should only really exist in the most fevered imaginations.

[The] expansive and slightly melancholy tone which has always been at the core of his music does feel slightly constrained when he tries to squeeze it into a verse chorus verse structure: the best moments on Similes come when he simply lets it wander free.

It is more fluid, more subtle; as such, it pulls you in gradually, irresistibly, its icy black under-current taking hold when you least expect it.

Magic Chairs is an album that understands the importance of harmonies, and the importance of the score.

There will be those who'll look at the sleeve, read the controversial title and dismiss the record on the assumption that Anton Newcombe has lost his marbles again. However, venture beyond Who Killed Sgt Pepper's disparaging parameters and there's several exquisite gems to be discovered here.

Most of the remaining 11 songs on Dear God, I Hate Myself are built around sequencers and beats rather than guitars, and while they’ve by no means called off their flirtations with dramatic bursts of noise, they are only intermittent over the 38 minutes

It is a stunning and ambitious piece of work; one for the ages.

There's an inherently joyous delivery to them that offsets their recurring themes of age and mortality from start to finish.

Although this doesn't quite scale the heights of their two previous LPs, "Death Is This Communion" and "Blessed Black Wings," it shouldn't be thought of as a point of no return. As ambassadors for metal, they remain near-peerless.

Luck In The Valley is a brilliantly strong record that reminds you both of Rose’s own majestic ability, and the playful power of these seemingly ancient and ‘primitive’ musical forms, something Rose understood as well as anyone.

Holly Miranda makes nice music, sometimes really pretty, but it doesn’t say anything real or move emotions to anywhere even nearing an extreme. As a result The Magician's Private Library fails to tick that most important box: evocative.

This isn’t an album to expand musical horizons, as much as it might expand a few minds. Yet it’s deeply enjoyable and more often than not thrilling to hear a band mouthing “We don’t care” over and over before showing two riff shaped fingers to the naysayers.

You expect there to be an abundance of vibrancy and passion on European, the band’s third release; though tempered by doubt and restraint, emotion lies beneath the layers of onion peel in the grey gutter of sadness.

The problem isn’t in the songs themselves – there are plenty of choruses to sing along to, and some interesting lyrical snippets – it’s just that Fray has made such an effort to prove that he’s more than a swaggering Gallagher-ite that he smothers the record and doesn’t allow it to breathe.

Despite any popularity which may come their way, what Mumford & Sons have produced in Sigh No More is nothing more than an empty shell of a half-decent record.

Through his Tindersticks outlet - now a staggering 18 years young--has created a record that certainly rivals, if not betters any of its three predecessors from the past decade.

Life Is Sweet! veers so frequently from densely orchestrated to intimately raw and back again - often within the same tune - these little throwaway breaks tend to work as conveniently placed little palate cleansers.

Minor Love is a record of succinct pop ditties, with only three clocking in over 150 seconds long.

It pretty much wouldn't be a Silver Mt Zion record if it didn't have a pretty-much-impossible-to-understand conceptually connected section at one or more points. Tracks four to six fit this bill, being alternate spellings of the album title.

For something so sprawling, Field Music (Measure) is impressively cohesive, particularly when considering the styles of the two brothers are more distinctive than ever.

Reportedly taking as much time to arrange harmonies as write the music, Gorilla Manor is a definite labour of love, and you know what they say; you get out what you put in. Though it may not be revolutionary, for me, this album is a little gem.