The result is a curious mix: a subtle and often beautiful record about not very much at all.

Too True amounts to little more than a succession of cliches and wall-to-wall empty stylisation, with the femme four-piece seemingly unaware that mimicry is not art, and nor is seriousness the same as being a serious artist.

EX is not awful, but it’s certainly not good either.

The album’s periods of gestation and decomposition so outweigh its moment of flowering that a full listen is much more a chore than a pleasure.

The Flower Lane is arguably not as essential, nor quite as oddly memorable as previous collected Ducktails instalments, but it does appear to be a new phase of the band.

[Ciara sounds] blissfully triumphant and uncomplicated on a record from start to finish.

Transverse is an exceptionally immersive, expertly captured documentation of a tumultuous performance that has already earned a place in recent history.

Overall, Jamie Lidell errs on the side of caution with its inherent love affair with Prince but remains playful and original in almost every other respect, which is what makes it such a cohesive and enjoyable listen.

Tanlines's debut comes across as well-meaning but overly earnest, overly-invested and trying hard to do many things at once.

It's playful and skittish, with equal time spent showcasing Black Milk's sample (and scratch!)-heavy beats and Brown's rhymes.

Flop moments aside though, Rebellious Soul ticks the prerequisite boxes of classic r’n'b: confessional tales of love, loss and longing sung with passion and sincerity.

Even when new ideas poke their way through, the knowledge in the back of your mind of how great a Terror Danjah album in 2012 could and should be sours the tight-lipped lack of fun on display here.

Stealth Of Days is sonic candyfloss, delectable on the taste buds but fleeting too. Added to which, as with candyfloss, you might find yourself tiring of the flavour before long.

Primal but denatured, >> leaves you feeling wired, lethal and focused; dehumanized.

While this EP showcases some interesting ideas, even its best moments fall short of his work as Audion or False.

Ticks all the boxes you'd expect of retro-futurist cosmic disco – chugging italo basslines, chunky synths, ridiculous arpeggios, crashing guitars straight outta Miami Vice – but it's the way they're put together that elevates it into more interesting and original territorry.

Overall, Homosapien doesn’t possess quite the same spirit as Church With No Magic but is certainly a surefooted step somewhere.

It's very difficult not to like these songs--for their clarity and craftmanship, but also the strength of their ideas.

Faced with trying to communicate a feeling as raw as lost love, he too has reached for the cliches. They may be banal and apparently devoid of sincerity, but for Blunt, they capture our inability to say what we mean or mean what we say in these strange, post-ideological times.

It just is: mindless, unfathomable--a little like the digital fracas of our online lives.

Remember Your Black Day is about that feeling of grim portent, the cold fear that leaks in through your TV screen, the dread that hunts you down, even as you sprawl on a sun lounger and sip your cocktail and stare out at the sea.

The Keychain Collection is an album of miniatures painted in tiny brushstrokes, and its relative attenuation belies the richness of its details.

Instrumentally, the record has all the hallmarks of Super Furry Animals meeting Boom Bip--Rhodes and Wurlitzer, squelchy analogue synths, guitars and keyboards, metronomically tight live drums, Rhys’ brilliantly Welsh-accented American falsetto. Musically and lyrically it also possesses all of the keen humour of the former, modest and understated to a tee.

When Teengirl are on form, their music is a heady thing: house music sent delirious on a glut of ideas, or pop working to some half-known criteria. It's an unstable edifice, though, and too often the results fall flat.

If someone compiles their favourite 12 tracks from it, they may well have their album of the year, but in its current state With Love is pretty far from a classic.

I'm still waiting for the Tin Album that will bowl me over and convince me of his importance, but Vienna Blue is a loafered step in the right direction.

A creative leap forward doesn’t always have to mean changing your entire identity, and few albums show that as lucidly as The Weighing of the Heart.

While a demonstrable knack for narrative composition gives the album much of its immersive power, Kuopio isnʼt a huge departure from the blueprint.