Smart and funny. Bold and layered. Witty and affecting. Roll on the next reinvention.

Acousmatic Sorcery won't propel Beal to Lana Del Rey levels of fame ... it's too weird, too spooky, too idiosyncratic for that. For those who do connect with Beal's gloriously skewed vision though, you're in for a treat.

If they only had slightly better tunes, the temptation to highlight the supposedly novel elements of their act might prove easier to resist.

This is an album of largely superfluous material, made only to exorcise some creativity.

When We Stay Alive is an illusion of a record but, once explored, an apparently endless labyrinth unfurls.

This is a perfectly OK record: no more, no less.

Musically there is little to remember, lyrically some of this is challenging to forget. For a 19-year wait, this is a mild payoff indeed.

That Lucky Old Sun is a brave but failed attempt to add a new chapter to the ongoing story of a pop legend.

Let Me Come Home is a very straight faced record, yet for all of its apparently bleak subject matter; it is an album that revels in the restorative healing power of music and song. It is also beautifully written and performed and deserves to be up there with this year's best.

It's taken a while to get here, but Ultraviolet finally introduces a fresh talent who may not have too much to say just yet, but what's going on in the background goes some way to making up for such deficiencies.

Cope as a whole is a valuable addition to Manchester Orchestra’s ongoing canon.

In the end, the repeated invocation of booze, drugs and sugar betrays a semi-permanence, with Welcome The Worms feeling like more of a quick fix despite some effective catharsis, and it’s disappointing that a band held in high esteem for their live energy have yet to fully realise that on record. That doesn’t dull the album’s instant charm, however.

It’s unlikely there was any desperate clamour for a new Ratatat album during the duo’s prolonged absence from the scene. Nevertheless, Magnifique is a nice reminder of the band’s command of their tiny, unfashionable corner of the music world.

As Getting Back Up rides out the album on the back of some more glorious brass melodies, it proves that not many make pop music that leaps off the page so high and vividly as The Go! Team.

It's not all bad, but there's no getting away from the fact the main problem with this lifeless debut is Elkington's voice.

It is an oddly affecting and [Dark Destiny is] a neat way to close out an album that, despite dropping the odd clanger, pillages the '80s with considerable style.

It won't be a surprise with such an approach that The Body of Christ... has its weaker moments, but it almost seems to miss the point to care. Fight Like Apes delight in their own cackhanded methods, and the odd sloppy sample or laughable lyric are merely grist to their deliberately anarchic mill.

Yet after this strong opening half, the album struggles to maintain the same level of interest over the uneasy feel of Second Nature and the dramatic distant pianos and glitchy noises of Easy.

Ray sounds rather like a lot of other people, but nothing really makes her stand out.

Despite the band's relapse into '90s Grunge, Sirens vaunts the odd track that testifies to the band's invetiveness.

As a stand-alone piece, it is unremarkable, and even A Violent Sky--the beautiful and wistful closing track--can’t redeem it entirely.

Division Street finds Simon in the midst of finding his own voice.

At times Lightning Dust produce some sublime moments on Fantasy but there are too few of these to warrant repetitive plays of the album as a whole.

Ultimately, Bitter Rivals is a mish-mosh of songs: some good, some of high quality though tempered by and succumbing to poppiness, and some that shouldn’t have made the final cut.

Ozanne has stayed true to his roots and is peddling a gloriously emotional torrent of untamed electronica, soul-pop and darkwave. It’s both uplifting and tormented, both grandiose and intimate.

Lion City is a strong, viscerally stirring album and a true highlight of intercultural awareness in the contemporary music climate.

The noisy production doesn’t fall into the trappings of obfuscation, and with more adventures in the world, Dub Thompson should iron out the flaws of their debut into a more conceptually realised sound.

It really is a shame that the production is so muddled, because Soon Away has some incredible moments that are marred by the sheer inability of the fidelity to convey what GRMLN and Park are feeling.