Gloss Drop is powered by a tireless, ingenious sense of play. Admittedly, it is sometimes the sort of playfulness displayed by quantum physicists and pure mathematicians. But hey, get the numbers right and everything else just slots into place.

Individually the tracks have a removed piquancy, but an hour's solid exposure leaves you yearning for a crackle, some fuzz, or any human intervention.

Four years on, his fifth album just feels stodgily generic.

It's a fine album, but signposts a possible future rather than taking us there directly.

Attention Please is the first to feature just guitarist Wata on vocals. Her breathlessly beautiful singing style calls to mind classic Stereolab on the title track and one of My Bloody Valentine's more sublime moments on 'Hope'.

Musically it's the cream of nostalgic pop, and the lyrics exhibit a wafty elan; but in purely conceptual terms, Cults is too busy flying on clouds of giddy adolescent wonder to plunder the depths of its pretensions with conviction.

The Saturday Night Live trio pick up where they left off with 2009's Incredibad.

They've set themselves up nicely here, already nipping on the heels of fellow slacker extraordinaires Surfer Blood and Yuck.

This could have been a vanity effort to prove their worth, but instead they prove that not only does crisis work--so does collaboration.

It's all solid stuff, but if Murderbot wants to be an ambassador for the genre, then perhaps he should try tackling less divisive subjects, such as politics or war.

This album was their biggest and best opportunity to change that perception, but no matter how many freight-loads it ends up selling by, it hasn't succeeded.

If your relationship with Sonic Youth chiefly consists of boozily chucking yourself around to their sprinkling of indie-disco floorfillers, you may be surprised to know that Thurston Moore can 'do tender', let alone do it very well.

On 'Brilliant! Tragic!' all the usual themes crop up – loving Axl Rose, feeling sexy, the Republic of Sealand – but there's something strangely self-conscious about it all, like the way that Argos is trying to drum up, Big Brother-style, ever-stranger ideas, but without quite believing in them.

This, their third album, continues the Atlantans' slow but upward career trajectory to date, almost akin to an American Elbow in that they're grandiose, utterly lovely, but unlikely to sell any records for at least another couple of releases down the line.

Luckily Planningtorock, alias Janine Rostron, has delivered 'W', a masterpiece of art-pop experimentalism that gleefully expands on her debut.

One Thousand Pictures is pop in a tar-pit--black and sticky, but wonderfully pure at heart.

On a scale of Speech Debelle to Klaxons, they're more towards the Gomez end of the list. Definitely loveable. Largely inessential.

Problem is, there's a dearth of ideas here that means the whole shebang clings to cloying, torturously repetitive pastiche rather than doing anything particularly innovative.

Micachu brings all her talent for earache soundz to bear on 'Violina/Bread Before Bed', while 'Shapeshift', the collaboration with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard, might just be the best electro-hop banger since Roots Manuva's 'Witness (1 Hope)'. Which is weird, 'cos the UK rap don also turns up for a spot of Cameron-bashing on 'Capsize'. Tasty.

Noise music has been content to let its harsh aesthetics do the talking alone for too long; with Laced, Whitehurst has challenged that paradigm.

Her second, now with indie Bella Union, is a precious mix of childlike insouciance and adolescent anxiety.

Her vocals now sound stately, and the impression is of a grande dame breathing new life into work made as an ingenue.

Because rather than an exercise in hype, what Born This Way really is an exercise in the pushing of everything to its ultimate degree. And for all the black, white and silver, it passes that test with flying colours.

A little shade among the sugary rays might not go astray, but maybe that's just the goth in me talking.

Big, bounteous of hook and packed with more senseless beauty than an acre of rainforest, Pala offers the sort of agreeable nonsense every good summer needs as its soundtrack.

It's all strung together with punk-drunk pace and some properly good melodies. This is the real deal.

It's an album that leaves you in no doubt that Odd Future's leader is a rare talent.

The astonishing thing is that on any other record, the two above low points [Snaps and Invincible] would be stand-out tracks. With Tinie, only the best will do.