There are moments of brilliance and experimentation, but these are too often outweighed by pedestrian tunes and indistinct vocals.

While he’s sounding as bold and varied as ever, White’s songwriting feels a little less focused, with tracks like the seven minute opener and single Genuine Hesitation and Take Your Time (And That Orange To Squeeze) tipping over into self-indulgent dirges.

Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time is a rich and literate album, which inspires conversation and debate.

As it stands Water is a transition record, signalling a direction of travel but inconsistent and frustrating.

There’s certainly nothing as immediately compelling as his collaboration with Fiona Apple, Left Handed Kisses. However, if you’re in the mood for a Sunday morning coffee and contemplation session, this is a perfect soundtrack.

If you're in the wrong mood it can be a touch wearing by the end, but more often than not this is 21st century funk gone right.

It underlines that Pottery have made a record meant for a party that never stops. Bobby’s Motel is surely a place with more to it than meets the eye.

Admittedly there are sometimes a few too many overwrought guitar solos--moments where Eitzel and Butler may have been better off toning things down--but overall this is a surprising new partnership that works very well indeed.

While the dynamics may be a little different, her wonderfully expressive, kaleidoscopic guitar playing and that voice, capable of alternating within the space of a few notes from a barely audible whisper to a wailing banshee, both remain as compelling as ever.

It’s a typically resourceful, subtle and mesmeric addendum--and one that underlines just how consistently excellent an artist Harris has been.

Champs deserve to be gracing grander environs on the back of this album, and while that may not happen, Down Like Gold does ensure that they’ll have thousands of eyes trained on them when they make their next move.

There is no radical change from their first four albums, but anyone familiar with MGMT knows that means plenty of musical exploration, a refreshing flick of the fingers up to the norm. There are many lyrical gems, too, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser maintaining their happy knack of writing songs that connect, songs that their listeners will want to hear on repeat.

For the most part The Universal Want lives up to that triumphant return presaged in Carousels. Calling back to various touch points from Doves’ career to date, it’s a fitting summation even if not a culmination or a career peak.

Lazaretto is an album of singles--it’s also a pretty revelatory record of healing and perseverance for White--that bounds rapidly through America’s South from the ’50s-’70s. It’s another great side to White, and another feather to stick in his pretty feathery cap.

An album that sits comfortably in the 4AD canon of excellence.

Music For People In Trouble will perhaps be a surprise for those who came to Sundfør via her last album, but they won’t be disappointed. This is an album full of hidden depths, stark emotion, and most importantly, absolutely beautiful songs.

It’s a combination [simultaneously sound contemporary and old-time] that has been present in his music from day one and Bright Sunny South proves it’s one that still reaps significant dividends.

It’s almost inevitable that an urban record made by an American rock classicist--especially one who moved to New York as a teenager like Morby did--will evoke Lou Reed. ... Shooting for a rawer, more stripped-back sound has left certain songs on City Music feeling under-powered and –developed, however.

The concept is realised for the most part, and while some more variety in the 'musical memories' might have been nice (along with a little more length), there's not much to knock in a cracking example of that rare phenomenon--listenable concept art.

A quite astonishing record then, and one which establishes Chasny as a bona fide guitar god, proves that Comets On Fire are much missed, and knocks the notion of guitar music being dead into a cocked hat.

Swing Lo Magellan affords generous breathing space to Dirty Projectors' music: a context in which new levels of unpretentious eloquence positively flourish.

With Lost Songs, Trail Of Dead certainly have their hearts in the right place; sadly, though, that's the best one can really say about this album.

A strange end possibly, but The Dusted Sessions seeks to encapsulate the essence of the vast landscapes the band experienced and does so quite incredibly.

Like the film it accompanies though, the prevailing sense is that it will be remembered principally as a top-notch tribute to its timeless progenitor; first class entertainment but without those inimitable zeitgeist qualities that made the original Trainspotting so uniquely compelling.

All Thoughts Fly is undoubtedly a peculiar album, but absolutely one well worth investigation.

Distinguished by its wide eyed, maddeningly flamboyant mélange of ideas, these Perth psychonauts’ latest is so potent you risk getting tinnitus and/or a contact high from each monolithic twist and turn.

3AM (La La La) feels like an album to lift Confidence Man up to the next level. As Brat Summer draws to a close, it seems like we’re about to prepare for a 3AM winter, and this will be the soundtrack.

It’s true, the constant drone can prove a bit wearying over the course of an album. But Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights is an album that will reveal its charms to anyone willing to make the effort.