It lacks cohesion, with eerie instrumentals featuring with gentle acoustic tracks, it is a noble attempt to progress a rather formulaic, albeit excellent, musical career.

While Daughter of Cloud houses a number of Barnes' most flamboyantly weird musical ideas, they're also frequently some of his hollowest.

Napalm is a long ass 18 track slog, and the pointless thug boasts scattered throughout the album.

This effort is laudable, but she sounds best when pushing the envelope. A lively talent like hers shouldn't be so concealed.

Good rather than great, and enjoyable if rarely fully captivating, what's clear is that Barthmus has a talent both as a producer, arranger and writer that could well pay dividends a couple of records down the line.

One day the mainstream is going to claim him and he'll lose a little something, but for now he's still the prince of the misfits and the martyrs, the waifs and the strays, Sundark and Riverlight is him at his distilled best, tears in his eyes, glitter on his cheeks, tragic, magnificent, ours.

Metz make you want to rock and then roll and then rock a bit more. By the end of this album's 30 boisterous minutes you'll feel absolutely exhausted.

All We Love We Leave Behind retains the fire of Jane Doe and harnesses everything they've learned since, combining to create something unrelenting, brutal, and never short of magnificent.

His songs are chiefly good, and there's little more you want of a loose garage punk rock record than that.

While The Bloom and the Blight may have fallen short in some respects, in others its style blossoms. Two Gallants have matured their sound, and clearly so.

Mumps, etc. simultaneously feels like a fresh start and consolidation for the band; it encapsulates what makes them so unique while subtly expanding and pushing forward their sound, and as such must be viewed a real triumph.

Jiaolong is a living, breathing animal, and all the better for it.

With nothing masking itself as filler here, it would be difficult to trim anything off without Mauve losing any of its impetus or impact. Indeed there's very little negative to say.

A couple of tracks at once would probably be the best prescription to suggest, rather than ingesting as a whole.

Circles revels in its consistency if nothing else, and while the element of surprise is something one is unlikely to be greeted with by a Moon Duo record, they make business as usual seem like an enjoyable pastime rather than a laborious chore.

If Transcendental Youth is the best thing Darnielle's ever done, it's only because it's about five per cent tighter and better-played.

It's amazing, actually, that despite having been around for over a decade, through trauma and breakups and now their fifth record, Menomena still sound fresh and uncontrived and, well, endearingly innocent.

He is, however, a radiant example of an artist with the ability at his fingertips to close the schism between the true avant-garde and the leftfield mainstream, and in this respect Until the Quiet Comes is the record to date we'll most likely crown his masterpiece.

As adventurous as it is tuneful, and sealed in cover art even Def Leppard wouldn't sign off, it's an aggressive little record that takes you into the cosmos without making you leave your bedroom or put down the joypad.

The 2nd Law is seriously fun.

On Sugaring Season she captures both the melancholy and the confidence that comes with growing older really rather well.

Putrifiers II is clearly a collaborative effort, and all the more delightful as a result.

Order of Noise shows how to balance the two extremes without committing to one single constant, and that anyone can make an original noise, but to make one that's accessible takes skill.

These 20 minutes are of a higher quality than many, many bands manage in a whole career.

The result is exactly what I Believe wasn't: tasteful, sensitive and containing a fair few memorable tunes.

There is no concept, because sometimes an album just doesn't need to confuse itself with one, this is simply a collection of heavyweight dancefloor bangers and should be enjoyed as such.

Piramida is undoubtedly the band's most immediate work to date and it might be strange to be writing it, but nearly each and every track would work standing on its own.

¡Uno! finally sees the Cali-punk trio letting themselves sound like Green Day, releasing the pressure and defaulting to what they do best.