$o$ sounds like the most half-baked efforts of Hadouken!, LMFAO and Eugene Hutz.

Where the intervening years have tempered that haste, this fifth album offers compensation in the form of their sharpest, most precise set to date.

Even on tracks where celestial melody and light shatter the swirling fug of riffs – making Barn Owl sound more like a whacked-out Dead Meadow – the mood within is h-e-a-v-y like a bewitching series of black metal incantations

Shame it's slightly spoiled by the morbid fixations of those same lyrics--which are the only shit thing about this LP, really.

Moral of the story: don't listen to this while operating heavy machinery or people will die.

This album is a tribute to enduring a profoundly underwhelming pop star existence. The banality could be forgiven if it included even one decent hook but alas, no.

The actual music on Blurry Blue Mountain, however, is warm and enveloping.

Remembering, reinventing and emerging with a record as joyful as it is tear-stained, Twin Shadow has crafted something that's understatedly, subtly, almost perfect.

One hopes that with the confidence this record brings, she'll take a more permanent seat at hip-hop's high table. Because when she's at her best, she's the bestest there is.

Whenever Mr Rager sets off on his next adventure we're ready, musical machetes in hand, to follow him into the undergrowth…

It's all flawless in a string-laden soul way, but too clean an effort from a man who, in the past, has been so much more exciting by letting the grit remain.

It's the best thing he's done since his game-changing debut, and heartening evidence to suggest the self-professed Louis Vuitton don is in a good place right now.

This is the album they were born to make. It gives us all the things that punk has never been able to provide: romance, sex, the adventure of the open road and sheer nihilism-banishing energy.

On the evidence of this stunning piece of music, we'd all do well to give a bit more of ourselves over to the machine.

That cat-in-a-swing-coat yowl will still be a divider for many, but it's a snag of human individuality in a smooth, if mixed pack.

After all these years, he's still got it.

That voice, when she exploits the grit of that Barbadian burr to the max, is more unique and richly textured than ever, and that and her crack production team are all the personality.

They may be a one trick pony, but these 2008 recordings show that Stereolab are good at what they do.

For the most part The Constant boils down to a thin chart gruel, too lumpenly pitched between the Carling Academies and the cattle-grid nightclubs to leave a mark.

To be completely honest, it's no revelation – at times the music feels incomplete, like a lonesome Portner is missing his bros – but it's played out beautifully, sunny in disposition and just a little wild around the edge.

It's just that it all feels so pointless and half-arsed that it's impossible to muster more than an apathetic shrug in judgement.

Despite overwhelming evidence to support the notion that he should quit vocal duties forever, he continues to labor under the delusion that his cochlea-shredding falsetto sounds like anything other than Prince with his scrotum in a vice.

Cardiology is monstrously offensive – the latest shit-streak by music's laziest sons.

Just odd enough to escape period-piece pastiche, their deft weaving of different eras and styles makes them akin to a UK version of White Denim, and promises more exciting things from the future.

More worryingly, there's a nagging sense that he's decided to dress it up in grandiose, emotive sentiments simply to camouflage a lack of real emotional investment.

Ultimately, Darkstar's maturation from dubstep's next big things into modern pop classicists continues to intrigue.

We worry on your {Marnie's] behalf about carpal tunnel syndrome, in fact. Until then, permit us to bug out to the controlled chaos.

You feel the need for something other than Bryan's croon, and it isn't there.