At 32 minutes, it’s a short album--but one whose brashness and pace you won’t soon forget.

May embraces the darkness and finds slithers of light shattered within. And while it might be haunted by a black dog, in Broken Twin's company, it's one that you too will want to walk alongside.

Die-hard fans of Civilian may be wary but after a few listens, this will sit proudly alongside some of the band's best work.

There are occasional lapses (‘I Run’ is textbook Embrace, and thus completely forgettable), and probably too few ideas to really sustain a record, plus of course Editors have made pretty much this exact album at least twice in the last ten years, but still--it’s a hell of a rug-pull from a band long written-off, and a reminder to some of us that everything should be approached with an open mind.

Everyday Robots is a lovely record, and in its lack of duds or whimsical twattery it’s probably one of most consistent things Albarn has ever put his name to. That doesn't make it the best, though: it doesn't take risks--not by Albarn’s standards, anyway--and in the most literal sense it's not all that exciting.

When all's said and done, there are worse things in life than being the fifth-best Pixies album. So I guess we'll just leave it that and say no more.

For the most part, though, Candy for the Clowns is very good fun; straight-up rock and roll, with no interest in pretension.

It’s a strange collage of effects and affects that sometimes don’t coalesce and sometimes do.

The outcome is both comfortingly retro and exhilaratingly fresh, a modern twist on a classic dish, the aural equivalent of Natalie Coleman’s 'pimped' roast pork belly and quail scotch egg that triumphed in the 2013 Masterchef final.

If you want an album that is easily digested, doesn’t require much thought or attention, but still ticks all the right boxes in terms of beautiful guitar playing and vocal work, then it’s the one for you.

Vezelay's sensual poetics melding into Rix-Martin and Paradinas' lush electronica on an album of retro-futuristic pop that improves with each spin and shimmers bright with widescreen radiance.

It's a shame The New Classic can sound so heavily manufactured, if anything because interesting things happen from time to time.

Eels may not tread any new ground musically (aside from being generally less noisy), but never before have we seen such raw emotion on show.

There’s nothing on Undress that diminishes her as a songwriter; it’s just that it seems a mistake to strip some fine tracks of what made them so enthralling in the first place.

This album runs the same gauntlet as any best of: inevitably any one given will adore 50 per cent of the selections and being various-levels-of-nonplussed about the remainder. While the collection does slightly skew towards the contemporary material, May Death Never Stop You essentially plays out like an evolutionary tree of My Chemical Romance’s sound.

Sisyphus is almost certainly the greatest hip-hop folk-tinged electronica with a deep techno pop groove record you'll ever hear.

In its imperfections Amphetamine Ballads occupies an especially human place. Saviours of rock n’roll? Nah. It doesn’t really need saving, and anyway this lot are far more about destruction. A modern classic? Just maybe.

This project is evidently a labour of love for Polachek, allowing her to capture moods and ideas in the immediacy of the moment. But the result isn’t matured enough to be considered a definitive statement of artistry.

It's far from perfect, but Smoke Fairies can be viewed as a record that speak of future potential, rather than wasted potential.

There isn’t a bad album in the Whigs / Twilight Singers / Gutter Twins back-catalogue but Do to the Beast manages to be at once more varied in style and more consistent in quality than any of its predecessors.

You can’t help recognising a kind of supreme inspiration behind the thing, fuelled alternately by manic rage and exultant gratification.

That this split LP showcases is two bands from different cities, on different labels and of a largely different generation of musicians--yet it's unified and generally very good throughout.

Brutally hip-hop with post-punk tendencies, Ratking’s debut album is a wonderfully dystopic record that is as progressive as it is anarchist. Ratking really is that thing.

Enter The Slasher House sounds like a direct sequel to his swampy solo album, and wrongly marginalises the influences of his collaborators.

This is one person using only the bare minimum but still crafting something beautiful.

It’s by no means a flawless debut but it provides a perfect platform from which SOHN can only rise.

It’s the unmistakable sound of a band comfortable with having discovered that quiet is just in their character, and that those with the quietest voices can still cut through the squall.

It’s an album that provides a taste of something familiar, yet somehow flavourless.