Fans of Animal Collective will be familiar with the expressive freak-out moments here, but Akron/Family are secretly far more at home nestled somewhere between Fleet Foxes and Led Zep in your collection.

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.

Blige's best yet...

Not all of it works... but the 'What's Going On'-sampling 'Modern Marvel', mumbling folk-soul of 'Boogie Man Song' and widescreen shuffle of 'Champion Requiem' prove that not all hip-hop albums come with an expiry date. [23 Oct 2004, p.51]

While it's still shrouded in the frontman's down-in-the-mouth moodiness, its slinking rhythms offer the album's most striking and effective contrast between light and dark.

Its portraits of downtown legends like Lou Reed and Alan Vega are far more affectionate than much of his scabrous output, with music that flits between dreamy Velvets simplicity and the synthetic throb of Suicide.

Though The Futureheads' established formula still sticks steadfast, there are enough wild cards peppered throughout to prove that, far from stuck in a rut, they're still moving playfully forward.

Uncomplicated, Spinto Band-ish jangles like 'Second Look', 'Tallboy' and 'Everything I Know' plough casually and happily along without a care in the world, very much like the band themselves.

For, as derivative and daft as The Apples are, it's impossible, like a scowling adolescent laughing at the antics of his irritating kid brother, to hate them.

A wonky, Teutonic thing full of outré drama and should-be pop classics.

As ever, the detail is dazzling: snippets of woozy orchestral dinner-jazz, wibbly-wobbly pastiches of children's TV themes... But in the fabric of the music itself, Mike and Rich seem to be running out of steam.

Feels a bit like your bedroom partner trying on all kinds of flash costumes and gadgets to try and excite you, and the realisation that it wasn’t really necessary and they wouldn’t have had to bother had you just shown them a little more love in the first place.

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

Guilty of knocking underdeveloped material out one minute and trying to be too clever the next, It's What I'm Thinking... is surely the most focused and mature record of his career.

Rule of thumb for this album: ballad good, uptempo shocking. [20 Nov 2004, p.57]

Fearless himself assumes vocal duties, although Austra's Katie Stelmanis is also occasionally employed to help the music transcend the dank analogue dungeon of its creation.

'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.

It'll sit nicely at the ultra-sad end of the CD rack, but if you have to listen to it more than twice a year, you should definitely drink less, get out more and consider relationship counselling.

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

Much of the charm of The Deserters lies in the winter-blasted chime of Zeffira’s voice, and those frozen-hinterland soundscapes.

Lyrically and musically, Gallows are a very different band from the one who made ‘Grey Britain’, and the fact that you can’t imagine them making this album (or its predecessor) with Carter will remain a deal-breaker for some.

Tortoise have made a welcome escape from the dusty ’90s indie crypt.

Equal parts The Runaways and Weezer, but still going, and still good.

The Queens trio still flow properly and cut a dash.

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.

The Lo-Fi's are still operating more than competently, but this time round they're not likely to blow any minds.

The purely audio side collected on this debut album is artfully coiled Vampire Weekend world pop.

In under an hour B&S have reversed their decline, producing an album that ranks alongside ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’.