If there’s a fault to We Are Love, it’s probably that the immediate hooks that define The Charlatans’ best moments are missing. It’s an album more built on atmosphere and feel, and you do sometimes miss that exhilarating rush that tracks like One To Another, Love Is The Key or Weirdo had in spades.

It’s a good solid album, but far from essential when it comes to Justice.

There’s certainly a lot to take in on Ben Howard’s fourth album – not all the ideas work in fairness, and there’s a few too many moments which feel like half-sketched ideas. Yet Dessner makes a decent foil for him and for those who have joined Howard on his career journey to date will be more than happy to continue travelling with him.

Part of the difficulty with this is, simply, that--taken as a body of work (album) rather than a collection of individual tracks--interest can start to wane. This isn’t helped, either, by the chiefly indistinguishable lyrics: that character-and light/shade-drenched vocal might be enormously listenable, but for most of the time we aren’t able to make out what it is articulating.

Overall, this one's largely forgettable, and plays primarily as a jokey--if not well produced--one-off continuation of The Red Album.

A painstakingly constructed and constantly challenging work, Mirror, Mirror requires considerable perseverance to allow its unorthodox appeal to slowly seep into the listener's consciousness. Its sheer relentlessness and absence of hooks will undoubtedly deter the less adventurous, and runs the risk of alienating and confusing some of their existing fan base.

No Compass Will Find Home is yet another curious listen from Merz.

This is not necessarily a needless welding of two disparate musical styles, more a lost opportunity for a magical fusion of two sonic diviners.

Rewild is a decent debut album with enough promise to justify keeping a watchful eye for the future.

Skull In The Ice is an exception; perhaps the most tender of all the songs, it begins with a stripped-down strum and evolves in the chorus with luscious, rich surroundings. It's the sort of crescendo all these tales deserve, but the hungover state of affairs that rings supreme in this record seldom allows for this to happen.

Overall, Sound The Alarm is an experiment that sometimes wildly succeeds, sometimes pleases, sometimes bores, and sometimes crashes and burns.

There's a feeling that This Is My Demo is just geared too much towards the commercial audience.

A slight whiff of missed opportunity perhaps, but this is by no means a stinker.

In stepping outside of her recent comfort zones Kylie sounds so relaxed and liberated that it's difficult to escape the sense of untapped potential.

The Happiness Waltz may not be the most exciting record you’ll hear this year, but it does exactly what it says on the tin.

As an homage to bands that paved the way, though, Fuckbook succeeds.

As a whole, this EP is not a disaster by any means, and as such it's perhaps an exaggeration to call it a disappointment. But for those familiar with a body of work that's to date shown an impressively high quality control there's cause for concern.

The final few tracks have an appealing sense of character to them, harnessing the potential of organic and programmed elements intertwining. The rest of Eyeroll is so abrasive that it’s hard to love, but fans of experimental electronica could certainly do worse than give it a listen.

On The North Sea Scrolls, Haines stays true to his own brand of dark, surreal mystification and harnesses two other individual talents to create something that some will find highly satisfactory.

They will remain a formidable live proposition, but Maximo Park's third album has to go down as a disappointment--especially given the band's previous high standards.

Hardy's undeniably a talent, and Songs Lost & Stolen is a tasteful, better than average folk record that many aficionados will enjoy, but it lacks that extra ingredient to make a lasting impact or reach a broader audience.

Pretty, but ultimately uneven record.

The album dips when they try too hard not to be pop.

Halfway through a song like Blouse (think Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young but resolutely uncatchy) this reviewer begins to yearn for the Clairo that worked with Danny L Harle and Mura Masa, though Sling is an album that at least works on its own terms.

While The Golden Record is far from perfect, and occasionally falters and fails to make the impression it should, there is much to recommend here.

Hughes isn’t about to change that with Eirenic Life, but this work offers a warming, soothing relaxation state that is a welcome antidote to the troubles of everyday life currently engulfing us, and may appeal to fans of Brian Eno in particular.

Lesser Evil is an album that is a bit too cluttered and patchy to stand out as a classic debut.

Mr Oizo is not a man with a long attention span, and that shows as each track zips between styles and moods relentlessly, entertaining but sometimes maddening.