As a reminder of Eminem’s vocal showboating, ShadyXV is impressive. The problem--and it’s a persistent one--is that where once his anger was energetic, now it simply betrays lethargy.

Blige’s enthusiasm is most powerful on Follow.

They might be reaching into the past for inspiration, but Savages are pushing restlessly forward.

Power's handful of great tunes make it worth the wait, but its more affected moments make it difficult to love.

He’s crafted a tender and often forlorn eco-treatise.

Although this self-titled debut contains shades of their previous bands, it's noticeably more direct, and rockets onwards, simple and straightforward.

Listen speckles similar crackers (‘Goodbye Friend’, ‘Hey Mama’) between gushes of sizzle sewage, as if all of Ibiza’s been trying to get high on glittery laxatives.

A Better Tomorrow isn’t all good (most noticeably, it’s lacking killer verses from Raekwon and Ghostface Killah), but it’s a bold, clever album that’s thankfully positioned away from the hip-hop zeitgeist.

An hour of intuitive improvised excellence.

Monuments To An Elegy is essentially a Corgan solo record which shows flashes of his old power, while also straying into some seriously dodgy attempts to update the Pumpkins sound for 2014.

The pair attack a chunky selection of bluesy Wilko originals with gusto.

Austra’s music has always felt like it comes from the same place, too--a dark dancefloor mania of hot-blooded movement and dark sentiment – and new EP Habitat is no different.

Constant jangle blurs the songs, and a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Revolution Blues’ only emphasises Ranaldo’s newfound likeness to the Canadian in one of his dirgier moods.

AC/DC’s first album without their founding member is a crisp Brendan O’Brien-produced musical wrecking ball.

pite. ‘Sanctuary’ sums up Final Days best, a nine-minute odyssey of guttural vocals, noise and melody.

The fidelity is satisfyingly chunky, though, and while you’ll find better takes on, say, 1988’s ‘Fugazi’ EP, the previously unreleased ‘Turn Off Your Guns’ perfectly encapsulates their blend of wiry funk and firecracker dynamics.

Mission Desire, a token shard of folk gloom, does little to undercut the finely honed futurist gleam elsewhere.

Too few tracks leave as forceful an impression however, and for all its added bells and whistles, Palme comes off more mildly quirky than exhilarating.


It feels distant and phoned in.

It can be a harrowing listen, but Wheeler sugars the anguish with slabs of OMD synthpop on the title track and 10-minute centrepiece ‘Medicine’.

Namechecks for Peter Beardsley and Peperami show eccentricity, but once you get used to his atonal delivery, Dawson emerges as a talented chronicler of the tiniest, realest details.

While it's an impressive document, it can’t quite recapture the nocturnal intimacy of ‘Nothing Else But This’ and ‘Dream’.

This is more than just a superior soundtrack album, and the 18-year-old prodigy can mark it off as another job expertly done. Her approach to alternative pop music is frighteningly adventurous.

It’s another excellent addition to Brewis’ catalogue; for Smith, it’s a confident step towards the avant-garde.

It's the sound of a band once introspective but alive, now lost, depressed and completely unavailable.

His default mode--brisk canters with elements of beefed-up psychedelia and proto-punk--can be a little samey, but deviations occur, see the bludgeoning folk of ‘Dark Road’.

Ultimately though, sensitivity outweighs ’80s cliché.

TV On The Radio have returned from an uncertain period sounding remarkably fresh.

It’s funny, melancholy, randy, touching, disgusting and deeply, deeply strange. It will baffle many--but at 17 tracks and 70 minutes, it has the feel of a magnum opus.

The Curse Of Love is a neat record, filled with the mystic folk and lithe psychedelia that made them so refreshing back in the day.

This compilation may only offer a limited snapshot of the Dunedin sound, but rarities like the unreleased ‘Christmas Chimes’ make it worth the trip.

The resulting album is a heartfelt set that showcases the 42-year-old singer and pianist’s elegant style.

A diverse but wholly coherent set of songs, this spaced-out odyssey is well worth the trip.

At times its Cure guitars, thudding drums and eerie vocals get lost amid the fog (‘In The Mirror’, ‘South’). But when it finds a solid rock stomp, as on ‘Crest’ or ‘Raptor’, 2:54 loom like a monster in the mist.

It’s still clear that The Voyeurs aren’t reinventing the wheel. But they’ve greased it with enough fun that it scarcely matters.

This is an album of difficult rhythms, squawking guitars and bohemian eccentricities that will leave fans delighted and everyone else baffled--just as their 12 others have done. Business as usual, then.

It all adds up to a cerebral and entertaining tribute to the many and varied incarnations of dance.


Factor in some brilliant shards of melody in songs like 'Clearing', 'Call Across Rooms' and 'Holding' and Ruins becomes an unexpected gem: that rare album that reels you in without even trying.

IX sees the Texans at their most focused and thrilling.

It skilfully combines Neil Young’s dusty American songcraft with scratchy lo-fi and wandering electronic influences.

While the quartet's reference points (Weezer, Pavement) are hardly unusual, their sound is fresh and invigorating.

The important thing is, the tried-and-tested and the "new" mix fairly well.

While the journey isn't quite as as spectacular as you'd hope, the destination is reassuringly familiar: Foo Fighters making fist-pumping rock'n'roll.

The Hum is all feel, no bullshit, and it truly gets under your skin.

It’s interesting from a certain geeky perspective, but it's never quite as satisfying or substantial as you want it to be.

Cranking the urgency and confrontation of last year's self-titled debut to neck-breaking intensity, RTJ2 is an urgent, paranoid album for a violent, panicked time.

Stateless is impeccably executed, but also unsettling to the point of off-putting.

Ultimately, though, Rip This prevails through bloody-minded ear battering.

While this record smacks of a youth spent listening to Blur, Oasis and their baggier forbears The Charlatans and The Stone Roses, its pool of influence is bigger.

Complex, original and even sincere, it’s a brilliant new departure.

Overall, it misses Hot Chip’s outsider appeal completely, coming off as whingey and middle aged. Don’t bother.

A debut brimming with bile.

There are sparks of new wave brightness and Beatles lustre, ensuring an album about uncertainty and dejection remains beautiful throughout.

Weatherhouse properly uncovers Selway as a compelling songwriter.

This follow-up to April’s excellent ‘More Than Any Other Day’ debut is a scattergun 24-minute journey, and its every destination is a delight.

s. The result is a delightful tribute to The Beatles and a record that has made so many turn on, tune in and drop out.

Barring a late collapse into soft-rock mush on the drifting ‘This Love’ and weepy ‘Clean’, Swift’s plunge into pop is a success.

It’s a shame the saccharine musical backing too often makes it hard to empathise.

Soused manages to feel understated and ripe for listeners to engage with entirely on their own terms.

A sullen and graceful record that brings out the very best of the gruff veteran.

A little bit new, but mostly the same, then. The Best Day is the refreshing sound of Moore addressing familiar musical themes with renewed energy.

The sound has clearly dated, and John Cooper Clarke’s guest vocal on ‘Let You Down’ feels phoned in, but uptempo limbshakers ‘You’re So Good For Me’ and ‘Changes’ are as solid as anything they did 20 years ago.


Their first record is good; their next could be mega.

While Tyranny is wildly self-indulgent--and often at the expense of quality - you could never say that it's boring.

Rips is a reminder of rock’s glorious communal potential.

Interesting but inessential.


Twinkly epic 'Cruel' is especially outstanding, while collaborations with Dev Hynes (‘Want Your Feeling’) and Miguel (‘Kind Of… Sometimes… Maybe’) save the latter half from drifting too far into languid MOR ballad territory.

Largely, Trick measures up as a solid modern dance record and bears no trace of Bloc Party, proving that a lot can change in nine years.

There’s an Afro-funk air to the bouncing ‘Money Man’, while the languid ‘Mary Mary’ offers some chilled Orb-style breathing room during one of the most joyful dance releases of the year.

The shortcomings of Bainbridge’s own vocals, which sometimes lack soul and are rarely memorable.

This is that rare music that genuinely deserves the descriptor ‘visceral’: sonic body horror that comes on like avant-garde composer Diamanda Galas scoring David Cronenberg.

They normally strike a few bullseyes per record though, and so it is with Hold It In.

...And Star Power is the sound of record-collection rock having a nervous breakdown.

Although inescapably discomfiting, the music’s complex textures keep the listener snared.

The Moog returns here, but 'Suns'--two minutes of busted TV static--is an inscrutable opener.

Bazaar elevates Wampire alongside those bands, while retaining the skewed oddness that made them so likeable in the first place.

It’s no Pinkerton, but Weezer, finally, are back on track.

At 18 tracks, Aquarius may be overstuffed (the ambient interludes offer little) but it’s an impressive statement that should elevate Tinashe far beyond the hype that has surrounded her mixtape releases so far.

Heartbroken, but heavenly.

He ought to save the apologies and descend into full-on self-loathing mode more often.

Tighter than anything they've recorded previously, it’s a great return and a slick change of direction.

Gloomy as it is, there are some brilliant flashes of light to be found here.

There’s something so deliciously wrong about hearing these usually graceful instruments and sounds turned wicked in Iceage’s hands, like being read a nursery rhyme by Jack The Ripper.

Our Love, then, is the moment it all came together for Caribou.

If ‘The Messenger’ was everything anyone could want a Johnny Marr solo record to be, Playland is pretty much all anyone could hope for as a follow-up.

You’re Dead is a madly inventive record, one that takes hip-hop and jazz as starting points, beats them both to death and then brings them back to life in an almost unrecognisable form.

His production work on this fourth album adds a brittle EDM crunch to their formula, but lacks enough choruses ripped from the candy-curled fingernails of the Pet Shop Boys to stop the likes of 'Chemistry' and 'Real Real Love' sounding painfully dated beside Jungle, La Roux or even Daft Punk.

The barbed musings on dead scenes (‘Dull Boy’) and vacuous hipsters (the aforementioned ‘Big Toe’) add lyrical bite to an album that, sonically, barely strays from good vibes territory.

It’s hardly love at first listen.... Yet across repeat plays, the album’s charms begin to unfurl.

The tunes offer a smooth enough ride, but The Vaselines aren’t really stretching themselves here.

Shot through with warm hooks, it's a worthy retooling of old synth styles.

Moments when his former wretchedness is recognisable rescue the album.

Not to be outdone by US stoner-rock peers Sleep and Earth, who have records out this year, the Dorset satanists have spat out this eighth album.

Gerard Way has wiped the slate clean and started afresh, with invigorating results.

No Romeo may be sweet, but it doesn't leave a lasting impression.

Worship The Sun continues that approach, sounding more cohesive in the process. Somehow, though, it’s also more sluggish--their ‘60s indebted garage-rock drags where once it excited.

Black Moon Spell is scuzzy, wired and bulging with Marc Bolan vocals, riffs Jimmy Page forgot to stick on any Zeppelin album and a bunch of outrageously catchy choruses. Big fun.

Their first new music in three years, is a cohesive listen.