Too often, ¡Tré! falls back on a formula--fast, box-ticking choruses fashioned from chords you can count on the fingers of one hand--that Green Day have pretty much stretched to breaking point.

For five songs, it's the best album ever, rattling along on post-punk guitar flourishes and Cale's auto-tuned vocal. After that it descends into an enjoyable weirdathon.

The downside is it's a couple of tracks too long--'Just In Case' being a slow jam too far--but a confident strut of a debut nonetheless.

Over 13 tracks, though, Kreay's 'thing' wears waaay thin.

What's extraordinary about Otherworldly--its expressive saxophone blare, heavy afro-funk workouts, hepcat proto-rapping and unyielding positive vibes--is that it feels like these dudes haven't aged a damn day.

On Field Music Play they bring their brand of clever and excellent to other people's pop songs.

Definitely a beautiful album but its hopelessness is never-ending, like a friend telling you their relationship troubles for hours and hours.

For the most part it lacks either the experimentation of James Blake or the pop sensibilities of SBTRKT.

It showcases Solange's experimentation at its best, but is only a prelude to a full album in 2013.

Bits of it rule.

Epic guitars, crashing drums and intense keys--it's a dramatic record that will shake your bones.

Winehouse's live performances were (sometimes brutal) indicators of how far she'd gone into her own personal darkness for inspiration. It's perhaps predictable that it's the earliest material here that makes for the less harrowing listen.

Their taste in remixers still tends to the indie-friendly, but their imposing guitar squalls are repeatedly processed into a wildly different beast.

As much as the album is warm, wistful and pleasant, every song is a variation on the others, using similar chords and the same key, although final track 'Long Journey' packs more of a punch.

Unapologetic makes a compelling case for Rihanna knowing what she's doing. This most compelling of pop phenomena still has something new to offer.

It's Beirut/Bon Iver/PJ Harvey brilliant, taking Damon Albarn's 'Dr Dee' to sublime extremes.

Disappointingly, given his previous sterling output, this is a pretty boneless pastiche of the genre.

Intriguing, but unsatisfying.

This is a rock album for those whose idea of rock heroism is Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, or maybe Muse if they're feeling a bit crazy. If that's you, you'll bloody love it. Everyone else will have to hope Example's evolution is just the beginning.

Why are you half-arseing your way through such a thick slurry of clod-hopping ska-by-numbers? Or wallowing in pits of cliché?

Not a bad album, but a divisive one for sure.

If these pals enjoy bugging out to clusters of dizzying breakbeats and/or swooning, sad house chords, so much the better.

This album feels more like a deserved victory lap than a forward step or a new instalment, but apart from his sole vocal on 'Feel So Close', the victor seems oddly absent.

Confusing, in a fun way.

[A] brilliant album.

The detail of individual tracks is almost irrelevant, as the album drifts from sunrise strings to rise-and-fall synths to piano notes as delicate as foals taking their first steps. But it creates an undeniably compelling whole.

Being doomed seldom sounded so beautiful.

For all their fitful moments of greatness, these albums remain too cluttered with filler to measure up against the best of the band's stuff, though ¡Dos! is a tentative step in the right direction.