Somewhere beneath the unconvincing sheen of these songs there’s a great band trying to break out. Maybe next time.

[The] constant sense of melodrama robs the record of its potency, the impact of that pounding sonic template diminished through its constancy. The sense of doom is familiar, the sound of the band’s new record even more so.

It's all rather one-paced and sags badly after tenth track 'Lick Up Ya Foot' but, by crikey, the likes of 'Big Tings Redone' and 'Dutty Rut' provide the perfect soundtrack for out-on-the-stoop sunshine boozing.

This patchy album shows these sharp-suited Londoners on safe indie territory, but caught in several minds.

Although it can be overblown, Sean’s passion is unreserved here, the record peppered with Instagram-worthy captions that urge listeners to take inspiration from their surroundings while keeping friends and family close.

Sound Mirror’s mix of jazz rhythms and psychedelic funk cuts a distinctive, if unfashionable, path.

Instead of an album hurtling 100mph in one of those directions, Fragrant World feels like the work of a band with stabilisers on.

While it doesn’t reach the impossibly high standards of their back catalogue, there’s enough promise to suggest there are good times ahead.

This is easily KOL’s most promising, liberated record for over a decade but still surprisingly restrained in places. Can they have fun? Yes it appears, in places, but they could have had a whole lot more.

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.

While the low-key arrangements and melancholic song choices may make Tinsel And Lights an EastEnders special of a Christmas album, if you're planning on a microwaved turkey dinner for one this year, there's probably no better soundtrack.

This is a nine-song collection of modest ambition, but ‘Buoys’ undoubtedly succeeds on its own terms, that consistently understated sonic template interspersed with surprising moments – the bassy thud of electronic drums that interrupts ‘Crescendo’, the hip-hop style piano riff that marches through ‘Master’ – that makes it a rewarding repeat listen.

Miike Snow’s debut is a curious affair: clad in icy, inscrutable packaging a la Sigur Ros with american singer Andrew Wyatt carefully enunciating every overwrought word, it’s also jam-packed with the kind of dazzling pop tricks you might expect from three chaps whose day job is churning out radio hits for the likes of and Jordin Sparks.

Lacking as it does the songwriting spark of Ariel Pink, the record lacks cohesion.

Time Team is intergalactic, ambient, Rustie-ish drug music set to snare kicks and sturdy hip-hop beats that at its best is deliciously mind-bending.

Please Mr Eitzel, get to the bar and pour yourself another drink. [1 Oct 2005, p.45]

He dissects his 20-something malaise with a dry and eloquent wit like a K-Mart Morrissey. [6 May 2006, p.33]

If ‘Holy Fvck’ is a funeral for Lovato’s pop music, it also marks a new beginning, with an artist reborn. As the musician explores this ferocious sonic world and celebrating her musical roots, it’s the start of a bold new era.

By its fourth track ‘Loser’, the album’s first single, his insecurities are so hammered down to the listener – “I’m a tragedy / tryna figure my whole life out” – that it begins gets in the way of his arrangements, which so far are imaginative and varied compared to the stylistic tedium of ‘The Slow Rush’.

A decidedly strange record with flashes of beauty and brilliance, then. How utterly Yoko.

While Hercules and Neon Neon took their dance nostalgia and turned it into something smart and new, Sam Sparro too often sounds like it's come straight out of an electro-funk generator--perfect reference points intact, but not developed or built upon or made unique.

The Irish duo are joined by an unnamed vocalist on a couple of tracks, but the instrumentals are the best work here.

Despite the fluid interplay of the four MCs and J5's evolving musicality, 'Quality Control' lacks the singalong pop immediacy of 'Jurassic 5'.... Quality then. But it's not the old-skool classic we'd hoped for.

It's an impressive attempt to drag folk music out of the hayloft and onto the dancefloor and it marks the emergence of a smart, sincere and talented new pop star.

Bahdeni Nami isn’t a bad record, exactly, but it’s not quite the best place to crack into Souleyman’s catalogue (which, if you believe estimates, stretches to a mindboggling 500 recordings).

As a whole, though, the album’s overall feel is still deadeningly generic.

It remains to be seen whether Do Nothing can use the solid foundations of ‘Snake Sideways’ as a launching pad to ascend to the giddy heights of their initial promise.

The production (by Wheezy, ATLJacob and others) laid a solid foundation for Baby to make a few hits, but the record is nothing to write home about.