One suspects the end product here may have had more to do with the record's producer than its creators, and as a result, this album is as unconvincing as the band's hollow assurances that they're open to embracing new horizons.

Rainwater Cassette Exchange confirms--Deerhunter may never make a loud or abrasive album again, but they have other, deeper fires, burning away fierce as ever.

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.

Just as Waits has the power to infuse you with familiarity with the return of a chord, so do the songs of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, like an embroidered pillow on an old porch that says ‘home sweet home’.

This may be a more suitable album for a man of Iggy’s age to put out than his last, but that doesn’t make it a better one. Indeed the idea of an inoffensive Iggy Pop album seems itself almost offensive.

This emotional rollercoaster of an album has a few cleverly disguised cliches similar to 'emotional rollercoaster' embedded in the music and lyrics.

Really, the only fault of this record is that its most arrestingly beautiful minute is its final one: everything that comes before, however brilliant it is at the time, pales once that choir swells, just for a few too-fleeting seconds.

Whilst Wolfgang Amadeus... is clunker-free, with high points from start to finish, allow me to abandon my critical faculties and gush about 'Love Like a Sunset Part 1', as this instrumental is by far the most incredible moment of the album and also quite possibly the best thing they've ever done.

Black Moth Super Rainbow is unable to even meld the far out periphery around a dreamy passive sound.

Somewhere around track eight, the formula starts to wear thin, and the mood lightens a little to a sort of murky, sleepless pre-dawn--it’s not quite sunshine, or it’s supposed to be, but Blank Dogs can’t really make sense of the big glowing thing in the sky.

For anyone interested in music that works both as art and an intensely new exciting experience--this is easily the best album that has come out this year.

Bike For Three! don’t often have the danceable poppiness of Neon Neon (though don’t get me wrong, they never drift into the background) but it’s hard not to think of that other collaboration for the simple reason: embracing a slick, futuristic, highly-produced sound has unexpectedly brought about the best album yet, by all concerned

Let's just call it an hour's worth of creepy, organic, nearly always-tension-building electronic ambience which certainly owes as much, if not more, to the hidden influences as the obvious ones.

The question remains unanswered, because while it was, undeniably, dull without him, Relapse is less 12 steps than a stumbling one backwards.

It’s Frightening is by no means a record which is without merit. I suspect that the production work of Spoon’s Britt Daniel has infused it with more presence than it might otherwise have had. However, that notwithstanding, the album’s lack of anything substantial to get your teeth into proves fatal.

Despite an opening volley that suggests Ghandi himself would have felt the urge to tell Passion Pit to stop being so bloody silly come the end, it finds a slightly more meaningful note surprisingly soon.

Occasionally vague, sometimes incohesive and a little self-indulgent it may be, but ultimately Abnormally Attracted to Sin is an abnormally attractive piece of work, and another fine example of the shining talent that is Tori Amos.

Unlike the best of those artists, however, the variety of ideas on Further Complication do not have a uniform success rate to bond them, and this is what stops the album short of reaching classic status.

‘Organic’ is a word that has influence and is often applied, but hardly does justice to so otherworldly a record as Yesterday and Today’. A pulse very rarely makes you feel this alive.

Listen to Still Night, Still Light for what it is and its unlikely you will end up disappointed.

If perhaps before Lewis's music had a tendency to be swamped by small-print, here the songs know when to step back, to give way to a catchy chorus or a hummable riff.

Clues offer precisely that: hints at considerable future potential, and, for any budding gumshoes keen to probe the mysterious fate of The Unicorns, arguably something of smoking gun.

Though the songs are both numerous and short, they’re mostly a solitary musical idea that tends not to be explored too far, well done as it might be.

There are certainly some succulent dishes on the album ('Xerses' and 'Eats Darkness' for me) but all together I do wonder if someone ordered a bit too much?

Though no longer flavour of the month in 'cool' circles, as far as The Warlocks are concerned it's business as usual, and The Mirror Explodes is up there with their finest works to date.

There’s no doubting that sensory sensations offered here can hold the listener, but most likely they'll be enjoyed a helluva lot more while chemically-enhanced; essentially this is not a record designed for home listening.

Quicken The Heart represents Maximo Park settling into a rut, albeit an intermittently attractive one.

For all the darkness of Actor's concerns, however, it remains an exceptionally pleasurable album to listen to.