Ultimately Snow Patrol fare best when they play to their strengths.

There are certainly active emotions fuelling the themes laid out on this album, and I daresay you could identify fragments of meta-commentary. It's just that you need to take most of it on good faith.

Treefight For Sunlight isn't a knockout success, but it just about contains enough to suggest that, if there's any justice, the Danes deserve a second crack of the whip.

The most important thing to establish is that most of this music is extraordinary and that the first half is nigh on faultless... much of the second half really does feels like band or label have tried to airbrush out the stuff the Yanks didn't like so much.

It's a well recorded, well played effort, and it nestles into genre expectation very nicely. But weirdly, with one extremely notable exception, the songs are predictable and average.

Take Care is dense and takes a while to digest, but once you're in Drake's world there's no escaping.

The Soft Moon's mission to transcend all levels of tolerance and pleasure via the conduit of sound is well and truly accomplished.

There are moments of brilliance; sketches on a theme but with no real conclusion.

One thing that is immediately striking from the first tentative piano notes and discomfiting cello hum is just how accomplished it all sounds.

While sometimes left wanting for redeeming bells and whistles, where Big Bells & Dime Songs sporadically strikes gold is its distillation of tumbleweed folk Americana.

A shimmering DJ compilation which sounds a bit cerebral, all in all.

Its incoherence might prove a bit frustrating, but Eleanor has proved that she can do perfectly well away from her sibling.

If you've refrained from taking advantage of more illegal means of hearing this thus far in 2011, you really have no excuse not to listen to this subtly charming record.

Instead of jumping on board the reformation circuit like many of his Nineties contemporaries, Haines has released a concept album about British wrestling. Haines is not mad. He is an artist in the truest sense, and for that he is to be applauded.

From the filtered Cut Copy of "Hours" through "Adrift's" hip-hop tape signals to the final patter of "Elegy," Dive is a postcard from a pantone Miami, and a perfect memento for the summer weather we've all been deprived of in Britain.

It's a solid performance, by far their most coherent yet, but missing some of the flair of previous bouts.

Empros is consistently epic and life-affirming without ever delving into over-emotional cliché.

Whatever the case, 50 Words...demands to be listened to as a whole.

If you want a record that sounds a little out of step with everything else around it, which brightens its corners with all sorts of musical curios, then it's a yes for Every Step's A Yes.

His heart is worn clearly on his sleeve without becoming too overbearing and the final product is nothing short of profound.

The genuine article, Sets and Lights brings coldwave a step closer to realising the vision of the sub-genre once proposed by Blank Dog's Mike Sniper; a new underground form of internal transmission Sniper christened 'Impossible Folk'.

It has an idle drifting quality that suits casual listening very well. Whether that's all you want from an album is another question.

Severant's biggest strength is its optimism--very few of the tracks here fall into introspection, with nearly all of them boasting a crystal ball looked into by the meanest of hawk-eyes.

If you love Shonen Knife wholly you will probably enjoy Osaka Ramones to some extent.

Yes these notes may occasionally be pretty, and delicate, but for that kind of money you expect something spectacular and groundbreaking, something either heart-wrenching or extravagantly euphoric. What you really have is a record with all the spirit of Microsoft Excel.

The latter, less Smoke Ringy tracks are a worthwhile stepping stone for him, but Kurt just doesn't quite pull them off with that catchy, carefree artistry we all know he's capable of.

The music itself is epic, and not in that wanky overblown stadium rock way--epic in the way of glockenspiels and falsettos and cello bow scraping against guitar strings and pounding drums and explosions of piano chords.

Oneohtrix Point Never has gone further than most, especially with Replica, in proving that our heritage doesn't always need to be "rehashed" to be replicated with real style.