The Wombats have aimed low, and in its own special way, This Modern Glitch is a triumph for mediocrity.

Those three seconds of stuttering electronica simply take their reputation for leftfield experimentalism too far. Thankfully, such wilful pretension buggers off, and the rest is a more quality-controlled set.

They could turn even the hardest kids at school into pissy wrecks with the elegant dread-heart blues of this, their fourth album.

Texans Explosions In The Sky have not only stuck faithfully to their roots, they've made the defining album of their career.

It's warm, out-there pop that was worth all the care and attention that has been invested in it.

It could have been so easy for an album that's strung out on the tension between artist as paid-up perma-kid and responsible grown-up to be self-indulgent and, worse still, boring. Instead it's cathartic.

Everything about this album boils down to escape.

It has taken Brooklyn's Vivian Girls three albums to expand their musicality beyond the (unquestionably ace, but repetitive) garage racket that characterised their last two.

A Thousand Heys reeks of wrong-side-of-the-pond, washed-out lo-fi revival as much as the vocals.

Occasionally devastating, often outstanding.

On A Mission is hands-down pop debut of the year, marking the arrival of a completely credible, fresh-faced, mischievous talent to draw the proverbial moustaches on pop's gallery of gurning grotesques.

Wild Divine ain't 'Kid A', but it's hardly musical stagnation.

Mica's choppin' and screwin' attempt at repackaging its intelligence and emotion makes it something fresh that you can feel. Drink up.

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

This time with their best songs since "Tell Me When" in 1995. In more ways than one, timeless.

Synth-heavy disco and boogie, sleek Italo and plenty of New Order course equally through their veins; the duo spin a heavily thumbed vinyl library into something largely fresh, and even coax '70s smoove-rocker Michael McDonald into guesting at the end.

Hazy, dark, The Cure-ish dreampop with a Lynchian vibe.

Nine Types...will make those who over-contextualise TVOTR finally quit their chin-stroking and live a little.

Crystal Stilts, like The Cure or The Jesus And Mary Chain before them, understand that the beauty is in the balance.

Sounding as vital as they ever have seven LPs down the track, there's life in them yet.

Sounds like his band are having too much fun.

Only on 'Caretaker' and 'Not Wing Clippers' does their third eye briefly blink; for much of the rest of this debut, the outlook's grey.

The eerie, mist-shrouded 'Running On Fumes' is the standout track, but really, Diamond Mine should be taken as a whole, at night, in the dark, with some Scotch and a blanket.

It traverses a spacious, synth-dusted soundworld many future-dreampop miles from their girl-group and grit beginnings; the ambition will be a sonic shock to those who wanted the band to stay the 'working-class heroes' they wryly joke about being. It shouldn't, really.

[They] not only resemble hoity-toity Fields Of The Nephilim lookalikes but are just as godawful to listen to.

What disappoints, though, is how numbingly comfortable he is within these nostalgic boundaries.

If Sidewalks is husband-and-wife duo Matt and Kim's vision of a perfect night on the tiles, then partying with them must be hellish.

It's business as usual on the whole.