Delve into the lyrics a little deeper, particularly the title track, and it becomes even clearer that Bauer sees his old band's split as the first step towards spiritual enlightenment and finding certainty amid the chaos.

Even if Ones And Sixes doesn't end up the proverbial fan favourite, it maintains Low's status as a reliably moving creative partnership.

The darkness that gripped Stevens during his last outing seems to be still tugging at his heels. But compelling as those moments are, more fun are the tracks where he puts his expansive imagination to use and lets go a little.

By total accident they seem to have stumbled upon the perfect formula for the indie-rock disco anthem, and for this they should be lauded.

There are plenty of songs here you won’t want to listen to more than once, but plenty that’ll also lodge in your skull like fragments of glass from a smashed Coke bottle.

There are just too many ideas for a first encounter. The good ones are special, no doubt, but a lot of the others are just other people's and lack the stamp of a band who know exactly who they are and what they're about.

The album you always want Sebadoh to make: unrestrained, kinda sensitive, speckled with paranoia and insecurities and, best of all, in love with the very idea of making music for the sheer thrill of it.

Though occasionally too florid, this bass cat’s on the path to majesty.

Discipline plummets you into the band’s shadowy world but remains loveable--like a brighter, warmer Savages.

It all amounts to a rich, evocative expression of a mother’s optimism and anxieties.

Just when you thought Chi-town loner Owen Ashworth couldn’t trump his previous four efforts in terms of schmindie obscurity, he goes and wheels out a bunch of twee reinterpretations of oldies and rarities.

While Food may be more home-cooked comforts than Blumenthal experimentation, at its best it’s a fulfilling portion.

VHS Or Beta hit on a candy-coloured disco-funk previously only thought possible by men wearing daft robot masks. [9 Apr 2005, p.58]

For all its technicality and viscerality, the album never packs the same emotional punch as 2013’s Arc and some songs--like the glitchy, overlong ‘Warm Healer’--never quite seem to find their own centre of gravity. Still, few records released in 2015 will feel as true to the times as this one.

It's hard not to enjoy being alive while listening to this album. [25 Feb 2006, p.31]

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is itself the Little Prince: guileless and dreamy. Quite a bold statement to make, but this is an album of equal valour.

Three decades on, a mini Canadian chap is bringing things full-circle and thanks to an all-star cast including the brothers Soulwax and Gonzales, he almost pulls off this grand appropriation.

If you’ve ever been enticed by Spanish guitar, here’s your rock’n’roll introduction.

It's a fine album, but signposts a possible future rather than taking us there directly.

The best Levi since 501s.

The downside is it's a couple of tracks too long--'Just In Case' being a slow jam too far--but a confident strut of a debut nonetheless.

False Priest is also Of Montreal's first and only adventure in hi-fi, a co-production job with Kanye West consort Jon Brion.

This fifth album resolutely refuses to tread water, instead coming on like a literary pop version of The Maccabees’ recent explorations in jittery psychedelia.

The second half is noticeably weaker than the first and the constant perkiness will grate if you're in anything other than a blinding mood, but there's plenty here to appreciate and it's perfect iPod fodder. [Sep 2008, p.46]

Mica's choppin' and screwin' attempt at repackaging its intelligence and emotion makes it something fresh that you can feel. Drink up.

The fact is, there's a vitality, a shamelessness, an energy retained throughout here that shows why they mattered so damn much, and why they shouldn't – and couldn't – ever consider doing anything else.

There are a few radio-friendly moments. Happily, they're so sufficiently steeped in classic rawk that songs like 'Curl Of The Burl' don't sound like cynical stabs.

It’s not original, but you’ll love it for the summer at least.

Their debut album is a short, sharp shock to the system. Yeah, they may look like a band that would steal your library books rather than your girlfriend, but that just makes us love them even more.

At times that flow can feel fractured, but the underlying consistency is a singular vision and an irrepressible sense of purpose.

Now shorn of vibraphonist Keaton Snyder, San Francisco's The Dodos remain a three-piece with the addition of alt.country chanteuse Neko Case.

'Tongues' contains some of the most uneasy listening ever.

Somehow they’ve retained their pop nous, making for an album that’s unique, but maddeningly all over the place.

An uproarious set of rock songs that audaciously ape the styles of several of his current iPod icons.

While the music works when it’s slow, sparse and emotional, the band’s debut comes into its own when it steps up the pace.

It's one drawn-out primal scream that goes from dark and broody to blissed-out drone. [11 Mar 2006, p.43]

The advance buzz about Luke Temple’s first record as Here We Go Magic suggested the Brooklyn-based songwriter could be about to do a Grizzly Bear, but his latest project is a far more introspective beast.

A few of the songs stick too closely to the originals, going to show that it's best to do something daft and unexpected rather than just trace the lines of greatness. You can't improve on perfection, but you can certainly play around with it.

If you don't already know the Mac, treat this as your way in. You won't be coming out in a hurry.

It’s a difficult album and requires repeated listening for some of the subtler parts to sink in.

The result is a set of remarkable electronic rituals with an endearing, mystical quality.

They're songs infused with bite and bile, quite ridiculous, very bombastic - and let's make this point one more time - utterly, utterly thrilling.

You hear a band capable of genuine prettiness as well as arch cleverness. [6 Jan 2007, p.26]

Strange Weather, Isn't It? returns as a more disciplined, ziggurat kind of groove odyssey, where the modular sounds are rhombus and the emotional undercurrents darker and more demure.

An inventively arranged mixture of blues, hip-hop, strings, folk and metal, 'Eat At Whitey's' is like Fun Lovin' Criminals' cameo in The Sopranos: by turns, flash, atmospheric, melancholic, and very masculine.

This is a surprisingly decent album, as good as anything they've ever made.

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

Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride have the Human League/Thomas Dolby textures down to a tee but, crucially, they haven't skimped on the songwriting

The populist music-for-the-people philosophy embodied at the core of Harris’ anthem-heavy new record--which is basically the aural distillation of his hedonistic yet geeky everyman persona--is something to be cherished right now.

Amped-up, aggressive and with a deep love for our canine friends, he arrives once again, shadow-boxing to the max. [19 Aug 2006, p.33]

"Relapse" should have been the end of his career, but by admitting his mistakes as well as trumpeting his successes, Shady's given himself one last stand.

Frenzied excitement still prevails.

It's a surprise and a pleasure to report that much of The Ecstatic is--whisper it--simply good, honest hardcore hip-hop given a twist by MD's slurred, inebriated delivery and use of odd imagery.

It’s the vividness of the lyrical themes and rich, poetic words that ultimately carries the record over, but unfortunately so much attention is paid to crafting the perfect setting for Graham’s brooding lyrics that they all too often become lost, a nuisance among an overly eager wall of sound.

All perfectly good stuff, technically excellent. But 'American Life' also feels like an unnecessary sequel, a 'Men In Black II', made because hell, if it ain't broke...

A bit less front and slightly more of her crazed, talon-nailed, plastic surgery-enhanced Bratz doll-persona would've made for a classic. [12 Nov 2005, p.41]

This is Swell's most constricted, least dynamic album to date. All songs move along at almost exactly the same pace and there is less breadth to their vision both musically and emotionally.

Cool cover or not, 'Strange House' is a strong debut from a band who, many sceptics believed, were at their best in front of a camera rather than behind instruments.

Afraid Of Heights takes the formula he toyed with there and beats it into something more coherent, focusing on decorating his punk with this new sonic tinsel.

No prizes for guessing who's been reading Guy Debord then, but it's these touches as well as his reverb-laden sound that makes him vaguely modern, unlike some folk artists who'd be happier pretending the 20th century never even happened.

It’s nothing you won’t have heard before--the clue, after all, is right there in the title--but hearing it done as well as this is rare indeed.

While ‘Dancing On The Wall’ does tread newer ground lyrically on songs like ‘Big Stick’, and at times dabbles with heavier, rock-influenced sounds, it also doesn’t divert too far away from the hyper-saturated synthpop sound the band have nailed since day one. And in MUNA’s world, precise, irresistible consistency can be just as compelling as constant reinvention.

Because a grand and fabulous mode of theatre pervades everything about this band, you’re often a few degrees off completely connecting.

Bereft of blues bombast, electronic trickery or bothersome concepts, when E's not coming on like Red House Painters he's getting seriously classical.

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.

What this collection of songs from his mid-'90s creative purple patch shows is that few people in recent times have done sadness so exquisitely.

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.

Aside from an introductory impersonation of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' (on the title track), they continue where their 2010 debut left off.

It’s bread and butter blues-rock, packed with lyrical anachronisms and clichés, but it’s done well.

Weirdness far from gallops across the dozen songs that make up the pick'n'mix bag of The Whole Love though, as the straight up alt.pop of 'I Might' testifies, coming across something like a breezy Weezer packing PhDs and lime-topped Coronas.

'Chosen Lords' is proof of Aphex Twin's uncommonly rude health, artistically-speaking. [15 Apr 2006, p.33]

It doesn't always work, and the softer 'Awestruck' is kinda preachy. But when the vitriol is squeezed into Fugazi-via-My Bloody Valentine-via-Sonic Youth swagger, as on the mighty 'Catatonic', it's admirable.

Frustratingly, though, White Chalk isn't consistent enough to be a classic PJ album, and if you're new to her music, this isn't the ideal place to start.

'Mythnomer’'s nightmarish pitch-shifted vocal and claustrophobic beats are a misjudged move, but on the whole Breathing Statues is a world that's ripe for sinking into.

When Dinowalrus get it right, they do Britrock rather well indeed. From 'Riding Eazy''s shimmering funk to the dance-punk strut of 'The Gift Shop', there's a lot to like--even if on paper it does all appear terribly clichéd.

MS MR might lack some of the extrovert star quality of the acts Plapinger usually signs, but 'How Does It Feel' is an emotional ride that shows she has plenty of her own worth sharing.

Gatekeeper's Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkel crunch elements of '80s post-industrial dance, horror/sci-fi soundtracks and computer game music into an enjoyably garish whole.

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.

A pop album that comes giddy with detailed digital patterns,

Anxiety moves between smooth grooves and kaleidoscopic electronics, but it’s the sensual vocals that carry the record.

Given that this album spans nearly a decade of the band's huge and peculiar journey, it's odd that its somnolent air actually renders it slightly one-note.

While Negativity is an apt word to describe the impact of the events that inspired Deer Tick’s fifth full-length, it’s not an overwhelmingly dark record.

Often shocking and consistently, unapologetically direct, every word and note here is positively swollen with meaning.

It's hardly 'The Cutter', but it can just about handle the mustard.

It's more chillout room than chillwave, all dub and little step, and the better for all of that.

He's a white man crafting beats behind street-level odes to marking out territory from the likes of Detroit's Guilty Simpson and Marv Won, plus others, and he draws on a cornucopia of cultures to do so. Latin, Middle Eastern, African and, worst of all for Starkey, freaky German (NOT THEM!) Moog music rears up on a seductive record that reveals itself in layers.

If you've the stomach to set aside your indie sensibilities and endure the occasional terrifying flashback to '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You', Battle Born holds some majestic moments.

It’s a groove and a mood piece; a funk report for the ages and the future--and, after less than 40 minutes (including the bonus tracks), it drops out of space at exactly the right moment.

Half of it’s as good as anything TVOTR have ever done.

War On Drugs engineer Nicolas Vernhes smoothes restrained standouts ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ and ‘Room’ into two of Kalevi’s best songs yet, but the whole thing bathes in glorious groove.

There’s enough musical ambition, heartbreak and menace on The Big Dream to keep the Lynch nerds absorbed.

As long as he keeps on being this magnificent, Mr Ripley can be as avaricious as he damn well pleases.

It's masochistically delightful.

The only downside? You don't get to see the band's plentiful hair thrashing about. [30 Sep 2006, p.39]

Intimate, unpolished and worth getting to know.

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

Lashings of reverb and experimentation with acoustic instruments draw the music into something much more evocative.

Large Hadron pop that'll frazzle yer neurons.