This album at its best can be genuinely explosive – see Holding Back with its booming trap beats and chipmunk-soul hook – but Banks’ central problem on Serpentina is how to channel emotion without straying into musical indulgence, and how to evoke situations without wallowing in them.

Gathered is very much an album that needs time and attention to allow its strengths be isolated and to surface. Long term Gelb fans will appreciate his continued work rate, the extension of musical themes and hints at his past but overall it may be too slight and unprepossessing for the casual, passing listener.

Ultimately the album is three or four songs too long, but Man Of The Woods is rarely less than entertaining. Too slick to be a genuine man of ‘rough’, Timberlake nevertheless continues to lead the way in his field, even if he does so without consistently reaching the greatness he so clearly strives for.

On a technical level, Wolf People are a competent outfit but, for all its repetition, it doesn’t leave much of a dent in the brain.

The only problem is, that like other Charly Bliss records, it sounds better in little chunks, rather than as a fully-fledged album. There are 12 tracks on Forever, and it’s undeniable that after a while, the songs begin to sound rather the same.

While Tedder can on occasion craft lyrics that strike the perfect balance between simplicity and grandiosity, he flounders a bit too often on Native.

Its experimentation is narrow, its mode virtually constant, yet given time there are shades, hues and tones to discover.

While this different feel to the album leaves some of the pacing feeling a little repetitive, there is no doubt that the talent shines through.

Divorced from the context of the North Korea shows the purpose of these songs seems a little unclear, even factoring in the wordplay of “How do you solve a problem like Korea”, so the final few tracks are crucial to the album.

The production drips with gloss, but unlike Acolyte, it’s a gloss that obscures rather than glimmers.

Hockey are not yet the finished article and are still finding their sound, but judging from Mind Chaos they're having a bloody laugh looking for it.

Long and short, it’s hit and miss.

Little here really pushes the boat out for Rhys, and some of his eccentricities seem to have been toned down in favour of a casual and restrained atmosphere.

The music's catchy, sure, and this time round it's undeniably uplifting in both tone and substance, but there's precious little about Night Train that's surprising enough to elevate it out of the realm of song-of-the-moment radio pop.

Overall, Tomorrow Morning is a good, but far from great, record.

This is what could be termed a healthy dose of parent-friendly hip hop, though now and again it threatens to spoil its reputation as it comes close to one of those dreadful ‘friend chip' adverts.

[Where We Go] is far and away the most interesting, listenable yet challenging, thing on this patchy and unfocussed album.

It has the feel of a transitional record; having proved to himself that it’s possible to pair up heartfelt songs with sometimes incongruous music, perhaps Lekman will hone this concept further in his future work.

It is a polished sound, one the band does very well. The musicianship is solid and the mixture of high-energy vocal performance with the instrumental post-rock passages is uplifting and at times enthralling.

All this amounts to, in the nicest possible way, is an album that sounds sleek, professional and (say it quietly) a little safe.

For the tale is only partially told here - which, when you compare The Most Incredible Thing perhaps unfavourably to the great ballets of the 19th or 20th centuries, is the one thing most obviously lacking. For now we should admire the abilities of Tennant and Lowe to move from structures of four minutes to those of an hour and a half, and hope this encourages them to continue in a form in which they have made a very listenable start.

Fans of David Sylvian will doubtless appreciate the elegant compositions and Sylvian's self-indulgent but soulful insights, but there is little to entertain the casual listener who may be better off back cataloguing Tom Waits and Nick Drake and realizing that they are not the same thing.

It doesn’t have the timeless quality of her classic material, but it’s good to have her back nonetheless.

La Liberación is not a new lease of life but perhaps a glimpse of one - if only in moments, if only in one track, there still seems to be enough to keep them going. And on those good bits alone, they're worth just one more chance.

Loud Like Love has bright spots, but the laborious moments threaten to undo their good work.

If a handful of tracks from the first album had been replaced with the best tracks here then Marr would have produced one of the best guitar albums of the last decade, but taken on their own individual merits, neither quite achieve greatness.

If you're looking to buy this record on the back of Heartbeats you may be disappointed as it bears little resemblance to the Knife's current work.

While this never quite touches the highs that Erasure can produce, there’s enough moments on Ten Crowns to convince that Bell and Aude make a good partnership for when Vince Clarke wants a rest.