An inviting, maturing album that still shows enough vitality to still be classed as a good rock album.

Whether thrashing out punk anthems Bikini Kill or turning out dancefloor-ready disco pop as on ‘This Island’, Hanna has always had something to say, and never has her message sounded so clear.

Fans of The Music will love 'Welcome To The North' but it is unlikely that detractors will be converted.

The most fitting of testaments -- a flawed, courageous, beautiful and intimately human portrait of the self.

A thoughtful and inventive debut album that is more accomplished and accessible than the first offering by [The Coral].

It’s got something for everyone, providing everyone is at least a little fucked in the head.

It’s an intriguing and refreshing listen.

'Mercury' from 1993 is widely regarded as AMC's finest moment, albeit their flawed masterpiece. This new album is right up there with it, and 1990's 'Everclear', too.

[An] intense and epic album.

There’s no way he sounds 19.

Succinctly, it's a crap record.

Where the two remaining musicians in the band appear to have gone astray, Michael Stipe sounds positively lost, never to be found again.

Tough going and very samey, both in sonics and lyricism. Even if you enjoy the basic template, you may well run out of steam before the end.

The only spoiler is Sam Herlihy’s lack of vocal abilities.

‘Burned Mind’ isn’t music; it’s a vision of a decimated future.

Equal parts heavenly aural relief and blood tripping, screaming noise.

Interpol have produced a soaring, inventive album that, while incorporating the deliciously dark atmosphere of ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’, merely uses it as a base to create more ambitious, warmer soundscapes.

It’s spellbinding.

What really let’s this collection down is not the quality of the songs – everything about their tunes is well considered and slickly executed – but the production.

An album that doesn’t sell us short on the pop hooks of albums past, but one that also delivers a healthy dose of politics to the mix without sounding like a six-legged cliché-riddled embarrassment.

To put into context, it’s a damn sight less disappointing than the new Duran Duran folly, and over time even many of the lesser tracks begin to sink in to the psyche.

It's certainly not a bad second effort; simply they have attempted to downsize the large breast-beating anthems to something a little more crafted and understated, while still retaining their populist nous.

If electroclash left you cold... then this is, idealistically, how it should have sounded.

The key to 'So Jealous' is that it's a mall-prancing hit jukebox but with, y'know proper non-bubblegum pop sensibilities.

Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art-rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way towards justifying the amount of gushing praise that's been heaped upon this album since its September release on Merge last year. The fact that the music is so paradoxically life-affirming and euphoric makes it much easier to write, what now feel like, trite hyperboles.

It’s all over the place, yet perfectly fresh and maligned.

Unlike other would-be indie-dance pretenders, this is properly danceable stuff; fat basses and catchy percussion beats are punctured by intoxicating keyboard motifs.

Here we have a garage-rock band with lounge-pop leanings. Which is fine - but that’s all.