HHowes’ debut album infuses swirling soundscapes, muted beats and nebulous bass into 43 minutes of forward-thinking electronic music.

It’s just a little too saggy round the middle.

The band have taken on an ambitious project, and have pulled it off with much aplomb.

While New View may be musically somewhat muted, sonically a touch predictable and backward-looking, Friedberger still crafts utterly charming songs with brilliantly observed moments and a real sense of life’s great adventure.

Whatever the case, Adore Life still feels like a step forward, not because it’s different, but because it’s more so.

Studiously crafted and meticulously executed from start to finish, if any doubts remained as to whether Fat White Family were the most important rock and roll band of their generation, this should put a lid on it once and for all. For Songs for Our Mothers is of a rare breed of record that's both of its time yet timeless in nature.

This album is another positive step in the evolution of an intriguing band.

Some might sneer at its twee nature--especially in light of the extraordinariness of the recently departed, but Spilt Milk captures an ageing songwriter catching a second wind and reflecting with wit, charm and humility.

The album proves itself to be as an unusual cocktail of all of the band’s previous guises--Urie might have gone mad with power, his band purged to its brittle skeleton, but when it comes together, it can still occasionally be thrilling.

Mystery Jets are old hands at this now--and while this offering doesn’t have the immediacy that classics such as ‘Two Doors Down’ and ‘Serotonin’ bring, it is a necessary record from a band that needs to work out where it goes from here.

The nature of this very premise could so easily have made for a messy and confused effort, but Africane 808 somehow manage to make a cohesive piece of work out of so many conflicting elements.

Perhaps pushing their relentless extremity of the music is not the best way forward: there’s a more nuanced, skilled band lurking in here and it will be interesting to see to what extent they are allowed to emerge.

With Many Colours, Tan proves that whatever happened over the past decade which meant we didn’t get any music from him, it only made Many Colours a stronger, and ultimately a more enjoyable record.

It’s not so much sidestepped the perils of the second album as trampled them, taking the sound that won the band all those packed festival tents and driving it forward, matted and bloodied like Miles Teller at the end of Whiplash, no longer weeping and withdrawn but pulsing and alive. And it’s genuinely exciting to hear.

The result is a more sober work than the group anticipated--sad, even (their words)--but an unexpectedly lovely one for being just so.

Blackstar sees him and his band nail a haunting mood.

This is a fine debut album.

Wells’s piano is still the most dominant instrument on display, and Moffat is still crafting haunting tales of ageing regret and frustration. There is, however, something bizarrely hopeful about The Most Important Place in the World at times.

The tracks themselves work if you can get past the contrast. That might even be what makes you love it rather than hate it. The problem is that if you’re going to have a deep concept behind your pop tracks then it really needs to be stronger or more current than something that has gone before.

This is a beyond-commendable comeback, so much better than it probably has any right to be.

These are strong songs. This is a coherent, mature piece of work.

A set of incredibly well put together takes on all of your favourite nursery rhymes.

Chorus serves to highlight what a vital band Lush were. Understated and underrated yet undeniably consistent throughout their tenure. And with new material set to surface next spring, their story hasn't reached its conclusion yet.

The head feels weighed down with unresolved torment, the smile forced and awkward, the colours garish and messily-applied.

There’s no doubt that Few More Days To Go is an intriguing record by a very promising band--but it also feels like this is just a taste of their true power.

Considered as a retelling of McCombs’s career thus far, A Folk Set Apart mostly agrees with the original tale, but adds some new aesthetic information.

Other than the production, Tell Me I’m Pretty sits very much in the same league as Melophobia--a confident, eclectic rock record with heaps of personality and charm.

Charm aside, it's an album by a cat.