Here he summons the spirit of Zappa, Blackalicious and Gil Scott-Heron to stunning effect. But when he’s speeding through neighbourhoods of clownish rhyme schemes, alliterative gibberish and sped-up Mozart sonatas, you wish he’d take his foot off the pedal slightly.

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

By the time closing waltz 'Bring Me Down' ends, intimacy levels are so high that you feel like a contented voyeur.

They may never recapture their ‘Dirt’-era majesty, but AiC’s second act is turning out very nicely indeed.

Good news for OutKast fans, basically, although the pair’s debut works best when it’s playing it weird.

Succinct, tiny pop gems like 'Milk Bottle Symphony' and 'Relocate' are beautifully realised. [11 Jun 2005, p.67]

Night Work makes no apologies; Stuart Price creates a sound that is fierce and muscular.

Unsurprisingly, the most thrilling moments are the most genre-schizo.

After years of chopping and changing, Bombay Bicycle Club have finally found an iteration worth sticking with.

While the clipped melodies and eerie tinklings are gently brushing your feet with a feather duster, Margaret Fiedler is fiercely proclaiming, "Something's gotta give/And it sure as hell ain't me" ('T Street') like a mightily pissed-off Edith Piaf.

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.