For all its stylistic diversity--bluegrass, bossa, jazz and electro all get a look in--and voracious internationalism, Floating City is a work with an identifiable centre.

Achtung Baby is worth the admission fee alone and ultimately a must-have addition to anyone's music collection.

While it's hard to critique The Vision for its scattershot successes, as a whole the album is just too erratic to have any sort of lasting impact on formerly ardent fans or casual admirers.

Moments of genuine marvel, each one craving its own flowery descriptives, come thick and fast.

It is arresting, but not desperate for your attention like an invalid. Coming down or getting up, Coracle will do the trick.

Straight out of a John Hughes screenplay, Welcome to Condale pulls off the feat of being thoroughly POP--polished and plump, preened for the screen and sequinned to the hilt--yet, somehow, marvellously INDIE.

As a second album, it is perfectly acceptable and there are many aspects of it to admire. But the static present on much of Ceremonials cannot quantify the record as anything but a regression in broader terms.

This is a piece of chewed-out gum; with no viable nutrition, no flavour and no joy. Do yourself a favour and spit it out.

Essentially, if you like the sound of men that sound like they drink a lot and make a lot of bad decisions in life, have people die around them and then like to sing about it, set to a raucous soundtrack of guitars, drums and piano... then Strange Boys are pretty adept at all of those things.

You Are All I See is all about the shimmer, as if rather than playing with cutting edge tech Grossi's touch is so deft, and the sound so seemingly in tune with the natural world, he somehow is able to play with light.

Bad As Me sees the performer reaching back into his bag of tricks to pull out a few favourites in a characteristically exhilarating, terrifying, heartbreaking, tear jerking, bone-rattling style.

Much as [Bjork's] presence is immediately arresting and enhances its charms no end, it's a testament to the strength of Longstreth's songwriting that Mount Wittenberg Orca wouldn't suffer were she not a feature.

Smoking in Heaven is a still novel and mostly welcome dive into an often ignored and overlooked era.

Even with these small blips, Peggy Sue have made the transition to a darker and bolder sound with ease.

It's popcorn music, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But trying to dress it up in big concepts only belies the belief that it's somehow lacking, which leads to its undoing.

This is a dense, rewarding--and yes, fun--record.

There are times though, when the record slips into a degree of smug self-reference that leaves you wishing that Lewis would spend less time considering what it means to be a songwriter, and more time just being one.

With Emika, then, the hiding is over, her close-up appearing clearly on the cover of this varied and impressive 12 song record.

Fundamentally, this EP is the sound of a very good band becoming a great band.

It actually feels quite sterile in a lot of places; a bit too afraid to show its cards, a bit too afraid to get its hands dirty.

On Romantic Comedy the fuzz has been wiped away, leaving a shiny surface that, whilst impressively gleaming, suffers from a lack of texture.

Hall Music, continues this reticent foray, concealing its quaint charms until six or seven concentrated plays have been sucked up and digested.

It's the extraordinary ordinariness, sophisticated simplicity, that redeems all this: even when bass drums calmly clatter wall-to-wall like hungover flies in a jar, there's a gentle edge that's mellow and mellifluous, distant yet direct.

Tick the boxes, add a few strings, loud bit here, quiet bit there--it presents as the musical equivalent of a catering buffet that while attractive, initially satisfying and never truly souring of the palate, ends up quickly becoming a homogenised sprawl that fails to tempt you back for second helpings.

American Goldwing isn't bad, but it's not particularly exciting when you consider the band's usual standards.

This is a somewhat underwhelming effort, once again pushing any idea of recapturing that lost magic even further towards the back of their cabinet of curiosities.

For an album with no discernible weak links--we'll deduct a mark simply because half these songs were previously available--the final quarter is where Veronica Falls finds itself elevated alongside 2011's best.

Double albums are necessarily somewhat hit and miss. That's part of their pick'n'mix charm. But M83 mostly miss me here.