The problem is, when you project a futuristic, magical and otherworldly image, you’d better have the sounds to match. And unfortunately, Ice On The Dune is a four-to-the-floor electro-pop album that has literally nothing to do with the cheesy fable invented to go with it.

It's eclectic, but the linking thread is insistent dancehall beats and a sense of dumb, colourful fun.

The departure of backing vocalist Ryan Richards robs the band of one of their dimensions, and come the lunk-headed thrash of ‘Grey’ you’re left wondering if this renewed heaviness is there to paper over a lack of ideas.

He’s writing about his time in hospital (‘Hospital!), his new home (from ‘Good Morning Berlin’: “Hipsters with beards eating falafel / Wander these streets like herds of cattle”) and desire to remain relevant in his forties (the title track’s indie shuffle). Well, fine, but such navel-gazing offers us little reason to love his album.

By the time you reach the halfway point and prepare for CD2, you realise Opposites is not, as feared, an unedited expanse of rock-band mind splurge, but two albums' worth of well-constructed songs.

Goodnight Unknown is another understated treasure from the prince of the perpetually bruised heart.

The 13-track album is an absolute riot, falling somewhere between the meticulous dreamy psych-pop production of Tame Impala’s 2015 breakthrough album ‘Currents’ and the loved-up summertime vibes of Tyler, The Creator’s 2017 record ‘Flower Boy’.

The whole thing wafts along in a pastel anasthaesia, Dadone's vocals rubbing against barely-there songs crafted with shards of synth, glockenspiel and harmonium. Conversely, the only times Weathervanes descends into twee is where it tries too hard to be noticed.

It's not the world-claiming masterpiece it could have been. But as an evolutionary step from world-party-queen towards a more complex beast, it's intriguing.

Adele is not yet ready to produce an album of sufficient depth to match her voice.

It’s truly dreamy.

It’s skillfully realised, but feels like a soundtrack missing a movie.

Focus-grouped, paranoid and please-all.

America Give Up is, quite simply, an effortlessly brilliant debut.

Sounding more like Animal Collective than The La’s, in these times when one wrong move is seeing bands of Kasabian’s stature sink like stones, it seemed a brave comeback.

This is a fine record and you can add an extra point to the score if your stereo cost over a grand.

Head First, enjoyable though much of it is, is disappointingly determined to return the favour.

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.

It doesn't seem the product of so revered an artist. [29 Apr 2006, p.37]

Downbeat dinner parties, say hello to your new soundtrack.

Produced by Boyz Noize, this is the sound of a rook shuffling with a maverick king, full of harpsichords and pianos and sexy European beats; it will arouse the mind and stimulate interesting positions.

If there's one thing that this Arizonan four-piece have been masters of since their inception in the early '90s, it's consistently possessing the over-bearing sentimentality of a teenage girl. Their seventh studio album certainly doesn't veer very far from their past emotional sensibilities.

If the band scraped away the torrential bluster in favour of more subtlety, then their next record could be a portrait of artists. As it stands, they're not there yet.

Their head-fuckable tunes warp and distort everything into a kaleidoscopic pulp.

While there are clichés here that love songs struggle to escape from, I Thought I Was An Alien dumps twee cold and hard, running into pop's warm embrace.

These drifts of pop cultural flotsam feel eerily dislocated, as if there was little joy in the psychic bloodletting. Strangely compelling, though.

Not just a fan oddity--a fine pleasure.

After the twin peaks of 'Watch The Throne' and 'My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy''s rap-pop grandeur, Cruel Summer feels slight in comparison. Still, as a cross section of the most brilliant, solipsistic mind in rap, it's an essential purchase.

Here Brian Fallon’s voice is as beaten and battered as the perfect leather jacket, and all the more beguiling for it.

It’s a moving and important work, and one that reminds us why MNEK is the pop star we need in 2018.

‘Sorry I’m Late’ is a lot more fun when it stops trying so hard to prove itself.

At its best [Four] excels with a glut of sensitive pop tunes which, although no substitute for exhilarating, provocative post-punk, prove Bloc Party are still capable of depth.

Reasserts what's great about her. [2 Oct 2004, p.64]

Freshly hooked-up with Ed Banger, Oizo has made a joyously daft party album.

Their songs are either shitty soft-rock or worse, wink-nudge pastiches like the new-wavey 'Someone To Love'.

He’s made an engrossing, highly original album with disarmingly simple tools.

Try as he might, though, he can’t cover up his odd but undeniable talents.

The resultant album is exactly what you’d expect from this mix of personnel.

There’s still enough dusty amplifier buzz and garagey thump to keep indie aesthetes happy, but intentionally or not, Spectrals now sit in a sonic nook which most resembles the stolid pre-punk orthodoxy of pub rock.

This is an album that rings with the honed precision and craftsmanship of a job thoroughly done.

It's a pounding alt-rock dynamo with its head sunk in Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr rarities.

In an attempt to purge themselves of the jaunty millstone that is "Young Folks" and all the joyous indie pop that went along with it, PB&J have ended up with a purely draining effort. Living Thing borders on the narcoleptic.

It's a substantial and rewarding work.

Despite the presence of ex-Razorlight man Andy Burrows on drums and extra songwriting oomph, their latest offering feels like another exercise in anonymity.

They return to their roots for the addictive ’90s swing of ‘Make U Love Me’ but--frustratingly--after the sultry ‘Summer Rain’ the album quickly slips off piste. ‘Who Hurt Who’ is a wet Disney ballad, while the limp dancehall and incessant pitch-shifting of ‘Ratchet Behaviour’ grates. Third time lucky it might not be, but it’s not a million miles away.

While it's briefly thrilling to hear Young's bolshy take on Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land', it's nowhere near Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin standards, or even a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

As things stand, it too often feels like a watered-down version of what Jack White peddles.

With Simon Taylor-Davies' walloping guitar scree lancing through it, it also sounds distinctly like the work of four individuals who have transcended the genre-meld they spearheaded when new rave broke in 2007 and become a great British band.

The Voidz and Julian might not be the most predictable band to pin down, but there are at least some things that we’ve come to expect from them: whatever they do will be interesting, unusual and thought-provoking. On Virtue, they’ve hit the jackpot with a bonus ball--fun.

Revisited ‘Are You Experienced’ cuts ‘Fire’ and ‘Red House’ set the tone for power trio workouts topped by the title cut, while live favourites ‘Hear My Train A Comin’’ and ‘Lover Man’ show that Hendrix needed his own studio to replace the rubble they’d have left behind at NYC’s hallowed Record Plant.

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

This album may be svelte, but it’s far from slight.

While this second LP broadens their scope to take in baggy, shoegaze, jangle pop and even some ill-advised bits that sound like Travis.

Goodwin could be a solo star yet.

Green Language is an adventurous, enthralling, emotional and frequently brilliant album, then. And yet, from an artist of such rare talent, it’s also a frustrating, slightly underwhelming one.

While it's interesting to hear Grace pour his heart out on 'All Of The Future (All Of The Past)' in a pained fashion, it makes for a record that doesn't really demand repeated listens.

Across is nonetheless a very fond retread around the outskirts of a dank, delectable career.

A clear progression from 1997's broody 'Vanishing Point' and 2000's abrasive 'Xtrmntr', the seventh Primals album is genuinely their most diverse and consistently thrilling since 'Screamdelica'.

It's a bit cheeky, but that's Kylie, and that's pop. Where the songs are as good as 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' it works beautifully.

They’re a shaggy-haired, surf’s up pop band and painfully vulnerable all at the same time.

Listen once, chuckle lightly, rip 'Together,' then run a fucking mile. [9 Oct 2004, p.57]

Timberlake, having failed to imprint his personality on 'Justified', simply stands or falls on the strength of the songs. Luckily for him, half a dozen of them - mainly Timbaland's - are brilliant.

This one fares better than most in audio form, but whether ‘Natalie’s Rap’ will be enjoyed by anyone who hasn’t already wet themselves at the video is debatable.

Ultimately, despite all its self-defeating limitations and annoying, fey affectations, this remains a superb record.

The hardcore will find ‘Live In Liverpool’ too light while new converts would be better off delving into the treasure trove of old albums.

‘Trip At Knight’, like many of the rapper’s other projects, is an uneven affair that suggests a lack of quality control.

Perfect pop is not something you can design; it’s an alchemical accident resulting from a freakish alignment of melody, words and rhythm that unifies all who hear it, an H1N1 strain of music. That Little Boots so nearly achieves the ultimate chart-slaying, cerebral-cortex tickling, Bradford-hen-party-and-Shoreditch-rave-soundtracking album is, frankly, amazing.

With two songs playing out at over nine minutes long, one feels that a decent edit would change things from somnambulant to plain dreamy.

It's got the charm and spark of the Weezer of old, and that's a quality you just can't fake.

There's plenty of interest here, then--but is anyone still listening?

An album with a distinct dual personality, Marina’s dazzling ‘The Family Jewels’ pitches the confident, MTV Awards-headlining superstar of our dreams against a more self-deprecating girl-next-door Marina who’s dead set on Supertramping and vamping her way out of her fug.

Her debut had some killer pop singles like 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree', but on Drastic Fantastic her talent and quirks have been mostly hidden under a gloss of studio production and bland AOR.

The record is most effective at its most gentle and sparse, his voice given room to breathe. Where the lyrics becomes too grandiose, words clash with the folky style, leading to abrupt jarrs in pace and direction. Yet, as with most of Corgan’s solo projects to date, there are still plenty of moments of beauty here.

Ultimately, Rebel Heart feels like a wasted opportunity.

Menace Beach’s debut may relish a world on the brink of chaos, but this is a band with their shit together.

Frontman John Dwyer still sounds like he's singing through a kazoo, the drummer is still obviously banging away on cardboard boxes and keyboardist Val-Tronic plays like all her fingers are broken. [5 Mar 2005, p.50]

An enjoyably kaleidoscopic experience, Better Ghosts pays good homage to its influences but doesn’t strive to do much beyond that.

A release packed with bangers and choppy breaks.

Chasing Yesterday has its flaws, but they’re far outnumbered by moments where it succeeds in catching up with its titular quarry.

Opener ‘Game Of The Heart’ is the closest he gets to the sound of his old band, and is an undeniable gem of New York rock’n’roll. Elsewhere he tackles new styles.

There are some bangers that you’ll know, such as ‘Manic Monday’, which was written by Prince for The Bangles, whose singer Susanna Hoffs lends some warm guitar and vocals to match Armstrong’s silky sentimental side. It’s the perfect soundtrack to lazily whiling away the monotony of quarantine.

While the singles released for ‘Model’ were strong and lively, the album as a whole sounds like a band that has withdrawn from taking a risk and stepping back into their comfort zone.

here’s no doubting that the beats on Mastermind, as you would expect from a production roster including Kanye West, Jake One, JUSTICE League and The Weeknd, are exceptional, lush and bombastic and full of zaftig soul samples. So, really, it’s all down to Rick and whether he shows up. And he does.

'10,000Hz Legend' is nothing like 'Moon Safari', then again it doesn't really bear a resemblance to much. Instead, it's a glowing, highly ambitious, quasi-concept album that sees Air spiralling off on a wildly idiosyncratic and brilliantly insane tangent all of their own.

It’s not all dark and uncomfortable, though – both the pretty ‘Save The World’ and ‘Ripe For Love II’’s arpeggio guitars balance things out nicely.

It’s a beautiful, unnerving experience that rattles on long after its final notes fade.

Musically it’s not a huge departure from Subiza, but if it ain’t broke there’s no point fixing it.

A twisted, mucky treat. [15 Apr 2006, p.35]

III largely eschews fuzz but has plenty of rough edges.

‘Let Her Burn’ is worth the wait.

These vipers may be tiny, but there’s a bite to Fortino’s harrowing vocal that’s sure to leave its mark.

It’s flawed, it’s imperfect and it’s downright odd at points, but it is packed with belting tunes. Most of all, it’s fun.

Gorgeous.

Most of the time, though, Be Your Own King is so chipper and catchy it comes over like an indie version of Alphabeat.

Taking common inspiration and twisting it into their own shape, Childhood have concocted a debut that’s more than capable of standing up to the rougher approach of their geographical peers. In doing so, they've uncovered a diamond.

Songwriting low on insight, high on moaning.

Imagine if your diary was published in a national newspaper two years after writing it. Now consider what dull and repetitive reading it would make, and welcome to 'Return To Saturn'.

Despite the mutant promise of the title, 'Eve-Olution' is hardly startling. Yet as proof that mainstream hip-hop can still learn new tricks, it's a success.