Rossi has worked well with producer Steve Albini to clean up the tracks, and pick up the pace, making them sparse and wonderful, like intricate machines.

They provide a helpful and--mostly--enjoyable overview of the scope of Ashworth's work.

All The Plans is full of driving piano, anthemic guitar, and a bit of swagger. They owe a huge debt to Coldplay, Ocean Colour Scene, and Oasis which, in itself, must be quite galling.

A statement for all of the limp new rave pretenders to pack up and fuck off, a return to form rarely sounded or felt so exciting.

Middle Cyclone is the sound of one of the most interesting, independent, and consistently brilliant artists recording today at the top of their game.

As far as exploration goes, U2 seem to have finally found what they were looking for.

The success of such tracks generally rides on the melody, and here Bell X1 get two out of three pretty right.

In the final analysis, The Whip need to focus more on the dynamics of the dance floor and less on looking cool for the covers of inkies.

Eccentric and idiosyncratic while still being enjoyably accessible, this is an album that reinstils the ideas that Warp's early releases did: that electronic music can be thought-provoking and stir emotion as well as moving people to make shapes.

Nadler does what she does so very well. Even on familiar territory, like the dreamy, shoegazey closer Mistress, she's in sublime, beautiful form.

All too often, overly simplistic melodies meander repetitively as Moffat struggles mightily to stay on key.

Fine Fascination is a very listenable debut.

That this glorious album will be remembered long after this week's hyped offerings are forgotten is a testament to its power.

Sure, nostalgia abounds (albeit with a bit more modern sheen), but The Bishops have, in a terrible way, outdone themselves in their songwriting, and have given new meaning to the term 'autopilot'.

It means that the album’s instantly accessible and familiar to anyone who’s ever smoked a cigarette, flipped the bird to The Man or nailed the pastor’s daughter in the churchyard; but is subject to the law of diminishing returns which kicks in every time the fuck-you teen persona is reincarnated.

The results are, predictably enough, a mixture of the great, the average and the bloody awful.

While the closing tracks have some flashes of interest, they repeatedly fall into the same saccharine McCartney-esque cliches, making the last chapter of the album as unremarkable as the first.

While the album is far from musically innovative, to cite it as an entirely unrewarding and joyless listen would be hyper-critical and plain wrong.

They make the point that Condon has the talent to move in any direction that he pleases, but the reliance on smart ideas means that they only occasionally create a similar emotional impact to the work that got us so excited about Beirut in the first place.

Hold Time goes one step further by drowning the whole caboodle in a bizarre new sound that incorporates cheesy synthetic-sounding strings, a hint of Phil Spector as well as that resolutely unpretty croak.

Years Of Refusal is Morrissey on top form.

It may not receive the attention its predecessors did, from me at least, but it's an impressive return to form; that in and of itself is worthwhile.

Ultimately The Century Of Self won't trouble the charts and Trail Of Dead's status as a cult act will be assured. But there's enough here to keep their small group of followers very happy indeed.

The band still have the knack with a melody, and there's always room for a winning formula melding atmospherics with a good tune, but somehow the addictive charm of the highlights of "Citrus" such as 'Thursday' and 'New Years' just aren't present on Hush, and you're left feeling underwhelmed.

The spirit of hip hop lives on in N.A.S.A. Investigate this album if you have any taste.

A sweet, cheery and summery collection of folk tunes that sometimes verges on a more commercial surfy sound akin to Jack Johnson while still remaining on the right side of lovely.

The highlight, however, comes at the very end. The dense and deeply hypnotic title track Goodnight Oslo could well end up on the list of class A drugs the next time the government gets round to discussing such matters.

Not a bad addition to the Antipodean canon then, and an interesting mix of the macho, the sensitive, the timeless and the "cool right now"--although one suspects that the latter is not something the band have deliberately aspired to.