It's difficult to detect any flaws in Attack Decay Sustain Release. Simian Mobile Disco have created a seamless electronica album that can carry the torch for the New Rave movement, and prove there's a great deal of substance beneath the fad to be found.

Sometimes the sound can appear overly clean, but on the whole Arnalds makes intelligent, informed decisions on the musical options available to him.

There's an exciting and engaging mini-album here but, across the album as a whole, PVT seem to be straining for a gravitas that their music does not entirely justify.

It is, amazingly, surprisingly, spectacularly, their best record yet.

Perhaps it's the weight of expectancy that renders this a flawed if enjoyable effort.

Miami frustrates and falls well short in terms of capturing hearts as readily as it will minds.

While Art Of Doubt doesn’t quite touch their previous high points, there’s still more than enough to keep many a Metric fan happy.

There’s still a distinct Penguin Cafe magic to Handfuls Of Night. The music here won’t come as a surprise to people familiar with their increasingly tightly managed aesthetic but it still provides a wonderfully calming sanctuary to temporarily get lost in.

Skinner has matured remarkably over the past two decades, and None of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive is a refreshing marker of his evolution from shy hopeless lad to eloquent wordsmith, and it is packed with poetic realism that tells an inconvenient truth. In all, nine years was well worth the wait to see Skinner return to form.

There's so much of this record that causes a big smile to split your face that it can't be described as anything other than a success.

While At Best Cuckold is an album of entertaining truth and teenage legitimacy, and while its sprightly sound and pleasant air create a funny kind of optimism, it does not offer material that will sustain itself over time.

This is a protracted album centred largely on song based material, and its rather inconsistent levels of success rely heavily on the quality of the melodies and textures, and on the strength of communication from the vocalists.

The pedal steel guitar playing on the whole record is breathtaking.

The Tarnished Gold sees them return sounding fresh and revitalised, delivering an album that more than matches their earlier output.

Put simply, it's a deeply beautiful record.

There’s plenty to enjoy in Uptown Special, even if there are some tracks that end up sounding insubstantial and a bit unsatisfying. If you’re looking for a party album, there are songs on here that will sound fresh for the rest of the year and beyond.

This is never going to replace your favourite Kevin Morby album, and it’s unlikely that it will make him new fans, but it feels like the kind of private delight that great artists bestow on their fans for their loyalty from time to time. Sundowner is Morby’s Harvest Moon, his Nebraska, his Hejira – a statement of intent made in the quietest way possible.

The album flows well, with a funky instrumental interlude picking up the pace nicely around the middle and its relatively short run time making it a light and breezy experience.

A blindingly bright future beckons.

It's speaker-shakingly loud yet somehow far too chilled-out to be anything but background music.

The Whitefield Brothers have somehow succeeded in folding the world in on itself with Earthology. The sounds on this disc are mixed together in such a way as to be totally surprising, totally new, and yet completely cohesive.

While it's quite pleasant and occasionally curious at first, the novelty wears off.

There is some magic to Mann's music and it's often hard to define.

Lissie’s third album is perhaps a patchy affair, but when it hits its high points it works beautifully. Next time round, a bit less of the FM radio sheen could see her step forward with a truly great record.

Such a musical melting pot can easily turn into something inaccessible and lifeless, but that’s never the case here. Skill, knowledge and passion clearly inform what this band do, but what comes across most strongly is a sense of joy, and that makes it difficult to feel anything other than wholly engaged as a listener.

Slow Club have always reinvented themselves with each album, and this is another example of the talent of one of this country’s best kept musical secrets.

A record to cling onto in the darkest of times, until the inevitable light starts to breach through again. Those TV montage soundtrackers may well have just found a new source of music.

For someone as forward-thinking and experimental, playful and funny as King Krule, Man Alive! is just too dull of a work to celebrate.