In Time To Voices is an extremely impressive and clever modern rock record.

It would be easy to look at the words and assume that this was a band on the brink of a split, were it not for the fact that their first album featured a very similar outlook and identikit themes. Essentially, it is hard to see where the band might go from here.

Yes, it’s Elton John by numbers, but it’s his talent as a songwriter that has solidified his stature in popular music and that wide appeal will only be further cemented by Wonderful Crazy Night.

Mike Skinner seems to have produced a funny, sad, emotional, honest album to rank up there with his very finest work, making us fall in love with him all over again, just as he leaves us.

The voyage is not a wholly successful one, due in part to its short length which makes it more lengthy EP than full length album, but there's also an occasional lack of musical focus.

The sub-two minute ditties appear out of sequence and fail to offer much narrative glue to stick the album together. But at least they threatened to provide some structure to an album that sounds great but leaves you starved of proper sustenance.

Gravenhurst's most solid and unsettling work to date.

An instant classic for some, a slow-burner for others; this is what we've come to expect of Stars.

The result of using these familiar names is that Simian Mobile Disco lose something of the edge that gave "Attack Decay Sustain Release" such a heavy clout as a sharp piece of electro.

While the anodyne Around U and the UK garage stylings of Devotion could easily be jettisoned, lessening the stylistically jumbled, overlong effect. Ultimately, though, Goulding’s experiment with carefully crafted but impactful Big Pop was a success.

There’s no big anthem like Landed, and sometimes you do yearn to hear Folds properly hammering his piano like in his early solo days or during his time with Ben Folds Five.

Another superb Zero 7 album.

Whilst it might not always be a pleasurable listen, there's something visceral and exciting about this music.

Plants And Animals can write good songs, but because they tend to be quite long and full of melodic meandering, they were better suited to their old acoustic style were the electric guitar was used sparsely to take the song elsewhere and captivate the listener. You can have too much of the good thing. But at times on La La Land, the guitar work is undeniably brilliant.

They’ve certainly aimed for the mountaintops with Himalayan and quite often they reach the summit.

It's a slight album, but by the standards he himself set, and patchy Black Francis is better than no Black Francis at all.

Tonight... isn't a bad album by any means, and it's certainly an improvement on their last effort, but at the same time you can't shake the feeling that they missed a trick.

Fans of Joan Wasser's previous releases Real Life and To Survive will find plenty to fall in love with on this third album.

y may want that you are always happy, but, while there's much for the listener to enjoy here, they will need to be more concise to achieve their obvious potential.

There are still several moments of brilliance--including the mesmerising and cinematic Bloodflow Pt II, which revisits their debut--but it is also found lacking when it comes to the overall end product. That said, it remains a worthy and accomplished follow-up from Alt-J.

It is to Dry The River's credit, however, that they have in Shallow Bed created an album that both plays to their strengths and showcases a diversity of modes, each sculpted authentically. An outstanding effort.

In lesser hands, the sheer number of collaborations on I Remember could have spelled trouble, but AlunaGeorge are no ordinary band. They are so much better than that.

There are moments of raw beauty in some of this music.

There’s no doubt that tracks like Full Back and Sweet Moon make for nice background music, but after 60 minutes of songs that sound pretty similar, they seem a bit inessential.

It might be a bit too idealistic for some people, but these are songs with melodies in abundance, and appealing melodic and lyrical quirks.

More often than not you do wish another eternity was a little less slick and had a little more of the oddness and darkness which permeated Shrines in another eternity.

The music here is a weird mish-mash of FM rock, folky ballads, and funky, poppy dance tracks. It makes for a diverting, interesting listen - but not a totally successful one.

On the whole, it’s business as usual; a collection of brilliantly composed melodies that just lack the gravitas to lift them higher.