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.

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

This is warm, sleepy music that buzzes like a fridge. Best heard lying down.

Potential cover performers take note: this is how you do it.

For all the strange twists and turns, the rich layers and dark beauty to be found, nothing here grabs you and sets up home in your heart like 'Veckatimest' did.

Rarely has reliability been this funky.

Although Leven recites a fair number of hippie clichés (“Make some peace, everyone” implores ‘Seasoned Sun’), it’s her inventive use of an arsenal of rich, vintage synths that rescues Season Sun from cloying sweetness.

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

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.

Not likely to appeal to your common or garden new raver, but perfect with a nice cup of tea.

Blige’s enthusiasm is most powerful on Follow.