The Evening Descends isn’t actually a concept album (at least, I can’t find any hard evidence saying it is), but the mixture of overblown seriousness and misfiring silliness, cut with a bludgeoning lack of subtlety and some well-worn-out running themes, mean it sure as hell sounds like it would’ve been if it’d been given half a chance.

Lyrically, things grate from the off, with cringe-worthy and rudimentary rhyming couplets being Peñate’s irritating stock in trade. By the end, everything has blended into a graceless, jaunty melange of up-down guitar strokes, bellowed vocals and mid-tempo skanks.

What The Portrait Is Finished… evokes is a sense just like that of its inventive title: an ultimately unsatisfying portrait that fails to capture beauty, even though it's clear that true beauty is there to be captured.

Yet even for all the familiarity to be found within its looping guitars and drums, I’ll Be Lightning also announces the arrival of a promising voice.

Save the odd occasion where Merritt opts for smirking affect over emotional resonance, it all adds up to an excellent addition to an already distinguished back catalogue.

Essentially, Made Of Bricks is comprised of a lot of below-par b-sides, three pretty special tracks and then bunch of 'nice tries'...but don't expect anyone to be whistling them in three months' time.

A comparatively sterile shadow of its predecessor.

All in all, it’s the usual captivating chaos.

If you were there and want an audio-postcard of the night when noise and flashing lights broke your brain then add four to the given mark. Otherwise this is like pretty much every live album: pointless and skippable.

Big Doe Rehab is another valuable insight into the skewed world of Ghostface away from Wu’s taming Shaolin stylings.

Shelter from the Ash is another masterpiece.

Trouble is, B-sides have never exactly been Albarn’s strong suit, thanks mainly to his incurable dilettantism and aforementioned onanistic tendencies.

Seriously: this is one of 2007’s finest LPs, no question.

It’s a frighteningly powerful album that will be adored by open-minded newcomers and "Miss Machine" converts alike.

Patchy, perhaps, but there's plenty over the course of American Gangster to suggest that, even if sullied by a lack of prolificacy, at least the Brooklyn beatnik is keeping the right company again.

Unbalanced and ill-executed at times, Hvarf-Heim is a supplementary release.

What gives this album more depth is the focus, the rolling symmetry and cinema.

At times the levels of raciness reach Spinal Tap levels of hilarity, as on 'Ooh Ooh Baby's' slinky Glitter Band stomp.

Teenager is consistently rewarding, then; what it lacks though is bite.

Sadly, there’s little to add to that post-Bracket mixtape here; aside from the single and 'UnBiloTitled'--a track that first appeared on internet forums years ago. Sedated by Street's production, the band lose the wild, rubbish quality that Mick Jones' incompetence presented them with just as they're learning how to write focused songs.

It’s a well-rounded album that defies the notion of a man being allowed to rock himself to sleep on the porch of rock’s sappy dotage.

Black Dice still belong in the DIY basement space but with Load Blown they’ve made their most accessible album yet.

It's not that bad an album--it's executed with all the gumption you'd expect from the SOAD mainman--but if you've heard any of the band's previous output you just don't need this in your collection.

It’s no laugh-a-minute ride, but there’s a beauty in Raposa’s misery that’ll appeal to acolytes of Will Oldham and his aforementioned collaborators alike.

Questions aside, it sounds badass; dope, even, like any good hip-hop record should.

Preferring patience and restraint over explosive blasts of atmospheric wailing, iLiKETRAiNS slowly build up these songs to climax, careful not to move to quickly to alter the mood that this entire collection expels.

But most of all, these songs really blow, man. Way to top-load it with three half-decent tracks at the start.