If Skinner is coasting on production duties, then Harvey is overcompensating on the vocals.

It’s all nicely polished, but there’s nothing underneath.

Now they’re safely out of what passes for fashion, their retroisms sound more loving than offensive.

The beat pulses seductively on ‘Staring At The Moon’. ‘Flags & Crosses’ sounds like a nasty Bee Gees. But then it all goes a bit wrong.

Hardcourage steps on from the broken UK garage rhythms that typify much of FaltyDL’s earlier work and into the sort of soulful, pleasurable house grooves occupied by the likes of Four Tet and Jamie xx.

All boxes ticked for hip retromaniacs, but certainly not “the next millennium”.

While it’s not quite all gold--over two CDs the listener’s resistance to slap bass and super-smooth vocals may be tested--the standard as a whole is incredibly high.

A few more like ‘College’ and ‘Figured It Out’, with their emotional weight and memorable choruses, and they’d be onto something.

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.

There are no real bangers here, but for once that’s not a disappointment cushioned by wafty ballads. Instead the low-key, moody production throws the spotlight on the words and the images brought to play by Beyonce as serious album artist, encompassing bulimia, post-natal depression, the fears and insecurities of marriage and motherhood, and lots and lots of sex.

The Fall: quantity and quality.

At its best it’s like sifting through a treasure trove of half-remembered gems, the chief reference points all coming from the colourful side of the ’60s.

Any attempt at bombast is pinned down by singer Liam Palmer’s weary baritone and wry poetry. Intriguingly glum.

Dougall relies too much on overly simplistic lyrics, and it gets a bit annoying.... But this is a minor flaw in what is otherwise a strong second album from a band in the ascendancy.

It’s smartly done but strangely rootless, roaming far and wide but without a place to call home.

You Were Right pretty much fulfills all the criteria for being a successful radio rock record, apart from the one about having a chorus you can actually remember 12 hours after hearing it.

Welch displays little dancefloor nous. Conversely, these cheerful jumbles of loops and kickdrums aren’t the kind of ambience you can sink into.

Bejar has a wondrous lyrical facility that it’d be a shame for him to forsake--but he’s also possessed of a beguiling, breezy touch that acts as a musical lingua franca here.

Some isolated moments make you want to vom a bit--Groove Armada trombone on ‘Many Rivers’--but ‘Love Inc’ neatly reworks a snatch of Lil Louis’ house classic ‘Club Lonely’ into insistent Balearica, and you can’t argue with that.

An enjoyably kaleidoscopic experience, Better Ghosts pays good homage to its influences but doesn’t strive to do much beyond that.

In between, it’s a wade through thick sonic sludge, but the oncoming doom of ‘Endless Drops’ is bleakly tuneful and ‘He Looks Good In Space’ is soothing.

Good Graces may not be reinventing the wheel, but it leans out of the hammock to give it a good spin.

While it’s stronger than the messy ‘Born This Way’, Artpop feels little more culture-quaking than a good collection of fun, silly, well-crafted pop songs.

Jamaica Plain is inessential stuff.

It’s wrought with haunting, high-stakes emotions, but the strength of Scott’s voice means it never feels melodramatic or plainly vulnerable.

As ever, Wareham’s work sounds like the model of stateliness and simplicity, but look beneath the surface, and you’ll find a deep, rewarding roil of complex emotional currents.

Temple’s unassuming sound can often hide how experimental he is. Not so on the lysergic electronics of ‘Sue’, which swirl like watercolour dreams.

While the Nicolas Jaar, Liars and Lindstrøm remixes add synthetic space to ‘Sleeping Ute’, ‘A Simple Answer’ and a Daft-ly disco ‘Gun-Shy’ respectively, it’s the fragile new tracks ‘Smothering Green’ (a muted, modernist Cole Porter clatter), ‘Taken Down’ (falsetto Fleet Foxes) and the two versions of ‘Everyone I Know’ (one churchy, one space-jazz meltdown renamed ‘Will Calls (Marfa Demo)’) that are the real treasures here.