Anyone already in love with tracks such as 'Good Arms Vs Bad Arms,' 'Backwards Walk' and 'Poke' will probably enjoy hearing these live versions, and for others this will serve as a good primer and incentive to go back and discover the original recorded versions.

Overall, though, The Stars Are Indifferent is a quick listen, filled with nice hooks and effortless melody.

The impression is that the same tale is being told on every track, just with slightly adapted words each time, and this too undoubtedly contributes to the sense of overall blandness with which this album is suffused.

Overall, though, the music is worth wading through everything else for.

There are a couple of fillers on the album, but Girl At The End Of The World is a strong, distinctive addition to the band’s work.

Playful and spontaneous.

Catching A Tiger has its moments of spontaneity, marking Lissie's talent for songwriting and blending genres, but also of calculated engineering, designed to make her into the Next Big Female Songwriting Sensation.

Despite some intriguing musical excursions though Views is very much the Drake record in excelsis. It’s staggeringly long at 20 tracks and 80+ minutes, and is a grind for even the most ardent fan to get through.

Life After Defo is both complex and accessible, intricate and immediate.

The Life Of A Showgirl isn’t a particularly bad album, but given Swift’s immense back catalogue, too much of it sounds like an artist on autopilot and in need of a rest.

An unfettered sonic experiment from a commercially unconcerned duo, Clay Class, whilst often pushing itself successfully into unexplored melodic territory, feels unfinished, difficult and hesitant.

Like a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon causes a hurricane on the other side of the world, Breton’s attention to detail has made the all-encompassing tone of War Room Stories differ vastly.

There's a breathtaking array of bleeps, quirks, bits and bobs popping up to keep the boogie busy and the mind attentive.

It’s fun, but accomplished too, and shows how Hesketh has taken her knocks, used them and come back bolder, brighter and better.

It is a straightforward and solid return from a band who sound unsure whether to stick or twist.

The band still have the knack with a melody, and there's always room for a winning formula melding atmospherics with a good tune, but somehow the addictive charm of the highlights of "Citrus" such as 'Thursday' and 'New Years' just aren't present on Hush, and you're left feeling underwhelmed.

In Without Your Love he shows that he’s evolved from sinister experimentalist to a creator of powerful and highly original songs.

The barefaced Daft Punk-like sampling culture is really ephemeral, now that DJ Food has upped the calibre of practical electronica and aesthetic trip-hop.

There are few laughs here - but there are plenty of thrills, the hug of the band's name now delivered of a tighter chest and noticeably sharper nails in the back.

There are mixed results as some tracks on Something Else feel like the band are going through the motions, while others flow with more energy.

In the right London bar, on the right night, bands like this can change your life… but for everything else, there’s much more joy to be had in the originals.

There are certainly some nice tunes here though it's doubtful if Underground buskers will be swapping them for the likes of Wonderwall and Don't Look Back In Anger in their Christmas run-up repertoire.

The formula is executed well, while the production and songwriting keep the Australian four-piece ahead of any imitators. ... Yes, new music is good to have and good to experience, but when the tunes become interchangeable that notion starts to feel hollow.

It's sustainable, technically sound, and part of a much bigger feast that happened a couple years ago.

It may not quite have the immediate irresistibility and wide-eyed innocence of its predecessor but it successfully builds on and expands the sounds previously established.

Although a tad overlong and samey after 15 tracks, occasionally drifting into wine bar background music territory, there are some immediate standouts on Room Under The Stairs.

Although Storytellers' qualities imbue it with sufficient class to shine forth from the background (in much the same way as Air's Virgin Suicides score, perhaps), its gentility and decorum are so consistent that this is an LP that needs to be sought out.

There is also a notably darker, murkier imperative at the heart of Original Colours and the results are sometimes a little introverted.

Write off Jaguar Love at your peril; this is one of the best albums of the year so far.

This Is… Icona Pop is a worthwhile listen because it doesn’t dumb down. It’s not trying to enlighten, either.

It may well be Múm’s most balanced, enjoyable record yet.

Some will find A Letter Home something of a gimmick and it’s hard to see it being anything other than a peripheral addition to his substantial catalogue.

Musically it’s a subdued affair, but there are echoes of the dancefloor euphoria mixed with relentless paranoia drifting in and out throughout the song’s duration, conjuring up images of the long walk home from an unsuccessful night clubbing.

$O$ is mostly forgettable, not working as either a comedy piece or as actual, you know, music

Hysterical marks a significant return to form and fortune for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The overall impression [is] that Alarms In The Heart is overall an opportunity missed.

As the album progresses, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish between one song and the next.

If by representing these protest songs Ono intended to convey how little has changed since she first recorded them in the spirit of social activism then she has succeeded, but Warzone also highlights how the conversation has evolved.

It's the sort of album that makes you want to lay down between the speakers and close your eyes; it's an album in which to get swept up.

While it doesn't quite account for the storied legend of the band behind it (these guys wrote Sonic Reducer, Ain't It Fun, and Final Solution, after all), Barfly is an album that sounds immediately important.

Despite its gloomy subject matter, it's really quite a fun listen.

If you relax into it, and not expect the same experience as seeing Steve live, it's pretty good.

Some people may find the intensity a bit too much, and it’s fair to say that this is an album that you can only listen to if you’re in a particular mood. Yet the beauty to be found in Henson’s bleakness is undeniable, and in Kindly Now he’s created what could well stand as one of the best albums of 2016.

It feels like a work in progress, skeletally over-precise and over-long.

The album is at its best when it explores glam influences: the campness and flamboyance nicely mirror the theatrical nature of The Decemberists’ established repertoire. But they would do well to learn that sticking some synthesiser parts behind a guitar band doesn’t automatically make them New Order.

It is a debut album of real class.

To describe it as the best Strokes-related work since 2003’s Room On Fire might be damning it with faint praise: better to say simply that this is one of the year’s most easily-overlooked gems.

An album full of perfect pop songs, which borrow and rework musical themes and motifs from across 40 years of McCartney's career.

Long term fans might find Worship not as visceral as previous outings, whilst those intrigued by occasional flashes of melody might find themselves beaten into submission by the album's oppressive nature.

There is a lot at play here, both sonically and lyrically, and the album rewards repeated listens. Most importantly, Little Broken Hearts is an album that just works.

Dananananaykroyd are, on this album's evidence, a fine band.

This is an illuminating and captivating insight into the world of Zero 7. Far from being coffee table fodder, it provides a near perfect chill out soundtrack - easy to relax to, but always rewarding closer inspection, especially deep in the small hours.

Hunx And His Punx are happily basic, and that has resulted in a half-hour of impeccable golden-age pop, but there's certainly no great cosmic significance here. Yet it's still easy to get excited about a half-hour of impeccable golden-age pop, and in that mindset it's well worth a few spins.

There are flourishes throughout, but there are also too many pretensions and, ultimately, the album is undone by an unwelcome abundance of unresolved ideas.

For a debut effort, Amanda Mair's record offers both startling clarity and cohesiveness, a cherry picked smattering of so many inter-related pop elements, here weaved together into a lustrous tapestry of accomplishment.

These slight niggles [Failure never fully reveals itself and feels a little like an idea that never really developed. Similarly, K Street is short, sweet, and fun, but doesn’t really anywhere] aside, Volume X finds Trans Am in rude health and still delivering fresh exciting music. As an introduction to the band this is a good starter for 10.

This is more than just a collection of blackened tectonic riffs however; Doyle’s deft songwriting ensures that there’s considerable subtlety and hidden depths to these songs.

It’s tough to spot much progress on Foxhole when compared to Wooden Head. In fact, it’s more devolution than evolution but the simple sparseness works well in moderation for some well penned songs.

It Won’t Always Be Like This has its moments that suggest something promising is within their reach.

Obviously nobody's expecting them to record anything revolutionary at this stage of their career, but it's fair to say that this album will probably only get Cure enthusiasts excited.

So it isn’t better than Swift’s album, as that would be a pretty hard album to improve on. What Adams has done though is to look at it through another prism, and created a pure break-up album.

For aficionados of his gnomic genius, and there are many, this new collection provides further reasons to invest time and money in his eclectic works.

Like the recent offerings from the aforementioned pair, Rapprocher is properly cinematic.

It’s pleasant enough, but there are not enough killer tunes to make this a standout.

The album has been patiently developed and refined over the last few years and it shows.

Where Campbell and Lanegan's first album of dusty duets was an unexpected treat, this is less of a surprise but builds on that record's success, exploring the musical chemistry between the two still further.

Morrison does not have the same vocal power or raw intensity as a performer as he did when younger, but his voice has become deeper and richer in tone in later years. Roll with the Punches may show him playing it safe but there’s every sign that the prolific 72-year-old has plenty of more rounds left in him.

The lingering sense, though, is one of repetition. Now the novelty of her songwriting has worn off, she needs to find a whole new language again.

Strange Boys are not revivalists, and they're not out of touch. Instead, they offer exactly the kind of rock 'n' roll slap in the face we need in this angular, post-modern 2010. The garage hasn't sounded this good in a long time.

Crocodiles are a talented rock band with a strong sense of songwriting, for sure, but they're also very happy to be playing music, and that joy shines through any amount of fuzz Sleep Forever might throw at you.

This is something we've been waiting a long time for - a truly great Manics album.

Light The Horizon could very well be their best album to date but, at just 10 songs in 34 minutes, it will not be enough for fans, especially the new ones that are hearing them for the first time.

Drummer Gianni Honey and bassist Daniel Rumsey create a magnificently grungy smear of grinding fuzz, before Bell’s squalling guitar adds just the right amount of 1950s style terror to proceedings. And there are sufficient quantities of those sort of moments to make this a very fine debut.

If this is their worst album, and you might believe that it is, then they very well may be the best band in the world. If quality is more important that quantity, then they must simply be the worst band in the world. It’s all about perspective, and at 80 minutes and 22 songs, you’d expect some measure of clarity to emerge from Notes On A Conditional Form. What you do get is a Taylor Swift album in the midst of five great songs, five decent tracks and 12 give-or-takes. And that, in today’s artistic climate, is tantamount to excellence.

There are very few albums being made quite like this, so do partake.

For its maker, it’s a chance to cut loose under the banner of diminished expectations; for the listener, it’s a temporary distraction at best.

Anastasis is certainly an accomplished record and one that fits well within Dead Can Dance's output, but it is a hard listen.

The off-kilter choruses and softly-voiced lyrics take their time to reveal themselves.

They're still a band with huge potential that isn't yet being completely fulfilled. Kaleide might please die-hards but for the rest it lacks in progression and new ideas.

Snowbird have created a record to be cherished.

Year Of The Snitch feels totally alien. It is an exhilarating release that doesn’t let up, and proves that six years on the group are still a force to be reckoned with.

The full blast of bass and guitars from Nic Bueth and Alex Sprogis that respectively fortify tracks like The Big Curve, Decoration and Slideshow are as grotty, inexorably heavy and domineering as the world frontman Charlie Drinkwater finds himself lashing out at.

We Built A Fire is an unassuming, quietly smouldering flash of brilliance to carry us from the deadened depths of whitest winter into the slanted and enchanted light of a spring well spent.

It’s when the pop sheen is dropped and they head in a twitchy, darker direction that Hurts are at their most effective.

Inevitably there are moments when you wished they’d rein it in a little and take a breather from the very many sonic tricks they’re painting with. And you often can’t help but lament the lack of human compassion: the affecting and crafted songwriting of Merriweather Post Pavillion is somewhat lost. But there are glimpses of that capacity on Burglars which has some lovely Beach Boys-esque backing vocals, and many of the tracks are far more intoxicating than their previous record ever offered.

An album of murky depth, of seductive charms and no end of style.

Hearts is not an album of change, but one that revels in the joy of what you know.

Foster The People make infectiously good music, don't stick to a formula and make you yearn to lie on your back in the middle of a field, feeling the hot sun streaming down on your face.

Pinkus Abortion Technician is another solid album from Melvins, but is nowhere near their best. It’s not strange enough to be labelled a curio, it’s not massively experimental and there are very few surprises even with the two-prong bass deployment.

While it may not break any new ground, there’s an oddly addictive ingredient to the Cigarettes After Sex formula, which this album has in spades.

This rather bloated record should be regarded as a disappointment - an interesting one, but a disappointment none the less.

One of the standout albums of 2012 so far. Tremendous stuff.

RUFF will win no prizes for compositional elegance, but it’s never boring.

Each of these tracks - the duelling-banjo Train Song; the elegiac And He Would Say - is really perfectly formed, beautifully satisfying in structure alone.

As a collection in the SMD back catalogue, Unpatterns is certainly their best work since Attack Decay Sustain Release, but it still falls a little short of those admittedly towering heights.

For Dead Meadow this is growth of a kind, and it is certainly a move away from their old sound. Whether this is positive growth or not depends on what you want from the band, but as a soundtrack to getting well and truly caned, you can't go far wrong.

All that said, there’s a lot to love still, and if you carefully trim around the dross, you’re left with a stunning product and some phantasmagorical slivers of sonic mastery.

One can't escape the feeling that, for a writer and performer of Banhart's undoubted talents, this album sees him rather treading water, and failing to match the originality of his persona with correspondingly original or engaging material.