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

The most electric and exuberant record he’s made since ‘Up The Bracket’.

As is often the case when a rarefied musician enjoys themself too much though, this is a wildly self-indulgent release; 16-tracks which veer between excellent and average.

Leaves sound zeitgeisty and minty-fresh enough to inject some cold fire into the soft-rocking mainstream.

As it clatters into earshot, the most immediately surprising thing about We Be Xuxa is that it sounds pretty much how you’d expect it to, ie confused, teenage and drunk.

Beneath their notorious humour, 11th studio album Coaster is less angry than previous political witch hunts, but Fat Mike and co still love to offend.

No matter what instruments are used, their weedy, aggro-pop retains the impression that it’s the chosen soundtrack for lifeless 35-year-olds stuck uncomfortably in suburbia.

After a few listens, just when these songs should be beginning to grip, you get the creeping sensation Black’s slick production chops are essentially papering over flimsy songs.

Unless you’re hyped up on a cocktail of Sunny D and Haribo yourself, you’ll find most of this album very annoying indeed.

There’s enough sonic meat here to gain him fans, but not enough depth to build a fanbase that will remember him once he’s off the airwaves.

Pretty, but all too forgettable.

The Betrayed plays to their strengths in that it sounds more like the work of blue-quiffed CGI-animated ninja warriors than real people with wrinkles.

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.

As an instrumental album it's vaguely impressive, but overall it's incomplete and lacks the pop touch to transform things from cerebral to listenable.

Problem is, there's a dearth of ideas here that means the whole shebang clings to cloying, torturously repetitive pastiche rather than doing anything particularly innovative.

It's not quite pop enough to dance to, and almost shlock-country enough to make you give up listening to music altogether.

It's as dreamy and atmospheric as you might expect, but the truth is that only a handful of Jónsi's 15 tunes here really work without the context of some CGI tigers.

It's a great shame that this album's component parts don't raise the whole above 'nice to know they're still around' status.

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.

There’s still a sense, at its heart, of a warm, yet slightly neurotic overthinker, sat at a mixing desk in his bedroom, possibly in his big white underpants, and just going wherever the spirit takes him.

All pleasant enough, but makes you wish he’d just let his songs explode into a euphoric mess every once in a while.

Mournful, moving and minor key, Age suggests The Hidden Cameras’ defiant sexual politics are still vital.

While their true believers might not mind the record’s overall lack of variety, for anyone new to the band there’s little on None The Wiser to separate them from the indie-rock chaff.

Equal parts lo-fi sketch-like song structure and buffed-to-a-shine ’80s soft rock, these 12 songs are evidently personal and, at times, thematically obscure.

The music itself, meanwhile, has become more brooding and lugubrious: in keeping with the old clichés Spector seem to live by, you could characterise 'Moth Boys' as their 'difficult' second album, the product of failed relationships, life on the road and more disposable income to spend on synthesizers.

If the band suffer from anything, it’s being too serious for their own good, but the sheer propulsive nature of the majority of the record makes it undeniably attractive.

Risk To Exist is a cracking post-debate disco record, certainly, but no one ever changed the world over cocktails at Club Tropicana.

Songs like ‘Backstroke’ and ‘Pirouette’ show flashes of experimental tendencies, but are bogged down by repetitive melodies that’ll briefly make you wonder why you even bothered moving out here in the first place.

Some may tire of Honne’s romantic lyricism, but it’s undeniably what they do best.

This mixtape is a step away from his usual sunny LA sound, but 03 Greedo knew what he was doing when he enlisted the help of Kenny Beats. This link up has resulted in an entertaining, yet simple record, the concept expertly executed.

While her words don’t always deliver, ‘Petrichor’ stands best when her emotionality and innovative soundscape take hold.

As a whole, though, ‘Swag’ often feels poorly edited, its 21 tracks accumulating into a directionless slog. The production may have its moments, but the lyrics rarely deliver the depth to match.

A mixed bag, sure, but there's signs that they are still fighting the good fight for weirdos everywhere.

Unquestionably, every song has been written to add firepower to the band’s live show, but it’s nonetheless the strongest and most confident Prodigy album since ‘The Fat Of The Land’.

If The Strange Boys were Brits, you get the impression they'd officially be a big deal by now.

Poetic lyrics, tender guitars, tortured synths and Olivier's heavenly vocals. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

Their attempts to assimilate their record collections often fall between two stools--unlikely to do the business on a dancefloor or spirit you away at home through the power of its sequencing.

A vital trans-Atlantic concern, the point where Dizzee meets Jay-Z. [3 Feb 2007, p.33]

When the songs descend into repetitive strummed choruses and tired imagery (“Ain’t it so good to be young in America and watch the world burn”, on ‘If The Moon Rises’) you realise a bit of rock-star pomp could’ve livened things up a little.

Sure enough Freddy Ruppert's second album as Former Ghosts is as warm, life-affirming and snuggly as a coatless night on the Siberian steppes.

The star’s hubris is no more apparent than in its sheer breadth and lack of quality control. At 25 tracks in total, Scorpion is way too long--even by Drake’s own standards--and simply doesn’t need to be.

When she strains so hard on ‘Alive’ that her voice becomes pretty ragged, it’s thrilling. If you can buy into its concept, Sia’s play-acting is very entertaining indeed.

A mammoth indulgence, an 80-minute justification of his own ill-defined status.

A spiritual follow up to 2003’s ‘Untitled’, ‘Nine’ sees the trio as confident adventurers. Dealing with the ideas of despair, loneliness and longing, the record doesn’t shy away from the shadows but you’re never far from a dash of hope.

Aphrodite is her most unified work in ages.

Moments do [stand alone]--instrumental 'Enrolment' is dark, stark and almost krautrocky, while closer 'Graduation' lilts with beautiful melancholy--yet, devoid of its context, it all feels somewhat banal.

It sounds like a long-overdue coming-of-age. It’s never been easy being a fan of Doherty, but it’s certainly getting more rewarding.

Memphis sextet Magic Kids started out in the midst of the city's celebrated garage-punk scene, but you'd hardly know it on the basis of this airheaded and obsessively nice-ified debut album.

On the one hand it's easy to knock; on the other it's difficult to dismiss. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

They build a monumental wall of hardcore noise on 'Egophillia', before taking a wrecking ball to it and screaming wildly into the mess. Elsewhere, there are tight grooves on ‘Disdain’ and ‘Terrible’, and the guttural riffs on 'Starved For’ offer plenty for bleeding gums to gnaw on.

His spectral vocals comfort like new bedsheets, lyrics straddle tranquillity and loss (‘Ghost Of My Old Dog’) and there are enough sun-over-hill-moments (‘Brand New Sun’) that hold their own against his Snowdon-high standards.

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.

It's accomplished but occasionally overbearingly earnest and calls to mind the Foos' acoustic alter-ego, bolstered by Sufjan Stevens-ish banjo plucks and, in 'Hard Sun', the kind of play-it-again chorus made for credits rolling over a stunning landscape.

The major swings he takes not only pay off, they highlight his uncompromising spirit.

It's a more honest title, for starters [Astrological Epochs & The Sands Of Time]--with 10 songs that, like the starry-eyed indie pop of Constellations, rather than cosmological in scope, are uniformly short, sweet and were recorded on a laptop.

At best, these are semi-finished rejects from 'The W'...

There's a more commercial edge to the beats, as well as a subversive edge you'd expect from an MC who's cribbed from Eddie Murphy routines.

Ultimately, Maximo Park have bravely taken a chance with this album, trying to experiment with their sound rather than settling for what had previously brought them success. Shame they weren't up to the task.

The magnificence of their live show is lost a little on an album that screams 'organised fun' more than 'spontaneous party', but mostly it's giddy garage rock.

However successful the whole endeavour (¡Dos! and ¡Tré!) might end up being, ¡Uno! can only be judged on its own merits, and those merits are somewhat erratic.

Gone completely is any passing trace of the grubby, US college rock that made them so beloved underground when the real world wasn't taking notice. In its place, is an awful lot of big, blustery ballads.

The abstract hip-hop guru’s fifth full-length offering, in the tradition of wayward cut-and-paste instrumentalism, is one almighty mess.

Though it's pretty easy to be the best band in their self-created genre of 'love metal', if you can ignore the cartoon goth twaddle that comes out of Valo's mouth, you'll find an extremely well-executed pop-metal album underneath.

Despite Cee Lo's vocal guidance (Brixton Briefcase), you almost black out from the terribleness before coming to and realising you're too good for this soulless nonsense.

By going back to the sound of his early work, Scott steps back into the gargantuan shadow of his mentor. Kanye West – particularly the mechanical abrasiveness and fragmented textures of 2014’s ‘Yeezus’ – is not just an inspiration but an apparition that looms over Scott’s identity on this album.

It's a well-assembled album, and the steady trance-like flow of 'The Forest At Night', and the eiderdown of sound on 'Transcend' are absorbing.

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.

Young Magic are even more dizzyingly chaotic [than The Ruby Suns].

The most obvious progressions are the band's clearer song structures and Lee Spielman's vocals.

It’s respectable enough but a stronger dose of Fink’s maverick tendencies would be welcome.

While the nine-year break has seen the duo barely switch up their instrumentation--Warren Fischer is still blasting drum machines and moody synth underneath Spooner’s vocals--the band’s friend and new producer, R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe, seems to have generally smoothed the scruffier side of the duo’s compositions.

It has taken Brooklyn's Vivian Girls three albums to expand their musicality beyond the (unquestionably ace, but repetitive) garage racket that characterised their last two.

In defiance of a criminal lack of universal adulation, they just get better, harder, faster, stronger, and you boggle at just how formidable they might be in their dotage.

Overall, it’s a brash, shiny, confident record, careering along on a second wind, or as one jaunty number puts it, “the return of inspiration.”

Ultimately, it’s confusion that remains at the end of Amnesty (I). Crystal Castles always were an uncomfortable band, but the bumpy conception of this album and the awkward introduction of new ideas dampen even its most teeth-chattering moments.

In the end, whether it's a cynical bid for the mainstream or an experiment gone wrong, Riot barely registers as a minor disturbance.

Former DFA man Tim Goldsworthy has helped them find more sonic sparkle in the production of their second album Dunes, but they nonetheless remain a confused proposition.

'Nothing To Do' is a real struggle to hate. The fact is, they have an undeniable knack for turning out two-minute garage pop songs with such warm-hearted, wide-eyed brio that shooting them down seems as callous as steamrollering a basket full of kittens.

A fun comeback album filled with screeching and penis jokes.

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.

It's exhilarating, daft and triggers spontaneous hair growth better than a vat of Pantene.

This is no identity crisis, it's the sound of beautiful evolution.

By overtly embracing radio pop, Gameshow adds further froth to the wave of popified guitar music that TDCC triggered by giving rise to Bastille and The 1975. That they do it with such panache, melody and inventive edge will further inspire this new synthetic indie strain to hold themselves to higher artistic standards and maybe even become a full-blown genre worth worshipping. Until then, here’s what they could have won.

It's all as comfortable as a favourite battered chair, but give it a chance and you'll discover a gem of a record. [2 Jul 2005, p.64]

Maybe they're just too solid, too classic, too... lacking in danger, but Bruiser proves they're still putting up a hell of a fight.

Pretentious, yes, but wonderful.

At 16 tracks long, it’s a dense, textured offering that--on numbers like the lush ‘Love Streams’--manages to shimmer with both nimble experimentation and languid pop finesse.

'Recordings…' might lack the obvious brilliance of his movie making, but it's more than just the dabblings of an enthusiastic amateur.

The record is both labour of love and exorcism - Frusciante plays every instrument himself and every song is, without exception, pointedly self-analytical and emotionally probing. This, combined with Frusciante's ropey but breath-catchingly fraught voice, can make for uncomfortable listening. Nevertheless, there remains an underlying optimism and fondness for unapologetically pretty melodies that imparts a redeeming and lasting warmth.

Insipid marshmallow post-rock that occasionally sniffs in the direction of Yuck or Mogwai, but mostly glowers in a dismally cloying, precious nostalgia.

The only real lump-in-the-throat moment is ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’--although admittedly, said lump is gobstopper-sized for the duration.

Lindberg’s first solo LP moves in mysterious, often circuitous ways, emphasising mood over melody and aesthetic over dynamic. Which is a polite way of saying that it’s something of a grower, whose charms are revealed like arcane secrets only to those with patience, persistence and a lack of proximity to heavy machinery.

While there are moments of brilliance, it’s clear there are too many chefs in the kitchen.

The Mountain Will Fall sounds, at best, like a decent mixtape made by someone with pretty good taste. Thing is, you can probably make one of those yourself.

There’s nothing complex about what Rick Ross does. ... Ross consistently portrays the ‘old Rozay’, garnering successful results more times than not. Sometimes simplicity is key: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Tinashe and her fans were kept waiting a frustratingly long time for Joyride, but perhaps it was this extra time that gave her the opportunity to craft the album into the sensual, star-ridden offering she’s released.

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

Although those searching for a raised pulse will find the title all too appropriate, Blood From A Stone’s hushed, held-breath, Cocteau Twins-ish atmosphere is addictive.