In many ways, Outer South feels almost like a coming of age for Oberst. His voice is way stronger than it has been in the past.

It’s a bold album, even in its prettiest, most pastoral moments.

Primary Colours is a reminder that young British bands can actually progress to brilliant new heights, and perhaps, just perhaps, the occasional surprise in these media saturated times isn’t as endangered a beast as previously thought.

This is a solid collection of pop-tunes, but not for connoisseurs.

It’s a proper album, in the sense that a divide is made at four of seven, the title track a segue between halves – its makers clearly bear download culture little respect, constructing their latest so that it’s best experienced as a whole, bridging arrangements as vital as the blustering bombast and constitutional inflections of grandly designed standout pieces.

It’s vital for the maintenance of Gallows’ present profile that they curb their enthusiasm for experimentation and pushing the envelope of aggressiveness to some degree, and by doing this sensibly, they’ve produced an album that’s big on surprises but that also ticks the essential boxes of heaviness and melody.

Anyone who owns the 1992 Sub Pop compilation The Way of the Vaselines might be thinking there's nothing for them here, but beyond the re-mastering adding significant depth to Dum Dum (the difference it's made to the EPs is negligible to my admittedly rather damaged ears) there's also a second disc of previously unreleased material.

It seems a little mean to judge this against song-based records - if anything, the narrative arc suggests it's 'about' the deterioration of meaning / tunefulness / drama into the inconsequentiality of real life; still, on its own terms, it's rather precious.

Really, what you’re left with is an accomplished album, delivered with passion and feeling, that’s easy to acknowledge as pretty good--to admire, even--but hard to be seriously moved by.

Not that anyone really expected or wanted a laugh a minute, but whilst these 13 tracks are certainly eclectic in style, the atmosphere throughout, with the exception of the bubbling melodic analogue chug of opener ‘A New Error’, is almost uniformly bleak.

Like any covers album that translates between genres, there’s an occasional sense of frustration or compromise...but that's "occasional" within tracks--there are no duds here.

Despite the so-called grandiose statements of intent such as strings, pianos and soul-trained female backing vocalists, this is simply a case of mutton dressed as lamb and those lambs eventually being slaughtered.

It’s just a shame to have squandered the momentum of the Brits by turning in a weaker album than the lower key "Fundamental;" a good two decades after the event, the Pet Shop Boys have well and truly entered middle age.

If it’s their lighter side that appeals, they’ve never made such a consistent pop album, and I use the term with not the slightest hint of cynicism.

Sounds Of The Universe arguably goes on for a bit too long--it doesn't help that closer 'Corrupt' is throwbackish bobbins--and it certainly could have done without token Gore vocal ‘Jezebel’. But other than that it’s just a damn fine record, possessed of the kind of unshowy high quality the Basildon band have seemingly actively opposed in the past.

Occasionally shrouded in sadness but with happiness always beating from its core, My Maudlin Career lays bare the sweet melancholy of love.

It stands alone as an album which is well-rounded--there's not much here which is lacking in quality, but much is lacking oomph.

It’s a fatal flaw that rears itself again and again as a bastardised version of blue-collar Americana is force-fed a mass-produced strain of bland modern rock throughout all eleven tracks.

There are moments of decently sassy pop-rock here, songs that you can just about see someone singing along to, hairbrush for microphone, in front of the mirror before a night out. But these moments are few and far between, and are exclusively the tracks featuring a vaguely vibrant BPM count.

Throughout, Sitek’s production dusts the stark techno basslines and percussion with ambient touches, and renders them human again, embellishing with swathes of guitars and treated synths, and allowing the vocals to come to the surface; untreated and clear as glass.

To that extent Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle seems like a return to older pastures--Callahan’s vocals again dominate, the production is more intimate, the songs themselves are again driven forward by the self-same rhythmic percussion and simple guitar riffs that became Callahan’s signature style over the last decade.

You can’t help but feel that all those who have ignored Metric in 2009 are simply missing out. Fantasies is proof that you can make big event music that doesn’t make you die on the inside.

Even a past-it Smashing Pumpkins ‘reunion’ with only Corgan remaining is more acceptable than this awful mimickery and that’s not a good place for a band to be.

Amongst the nine tracks are some of Black's best work but although the album's ambience shifts - from the darkness in 'Black Suit' and 'Long Song' to the whimsy in 'Volcano!' and the breezy 'Break The Angels'--the consistency does not.

It's a matter of personal taste, but Herren has largely shaken off these doubts with a rich and intriguing piece of work, the strengths of Everything She Touched... largely outweighing any reservations towards this sonically evocative album.

It’s a swaggering, pyschedelic road album, which we’ve generously been allowed to ride shotgun on. Buy the record, take the ride.

Overall, Spring Tides is the record Jeniferever have undoubtedly spent the past thirteen years of their existence building towards; an epochal moment that was well worth the wait, and can only whet the appetite in further anticipation of where their next journey of discovery will take them--in their own time, of course.

This record is one made with the artist’s full investment, every ounce of heart and soul poured into it visible for all to see.