Once upon a time it seemed like Grammatics had too many ideas, they couldn’t quite decide who they wanted to be. In the end, they just decided to be themselves, and the result frequently approaches bona fide genius.

For all its glum pronouncements of murder, mortality and loss, it’s an ecstatic listen, ponderous party music.

There are plenty of songs here you won’t want to listen to more than once, but plenty that’ll also lodge in your skull like fragments of glass from a smashed Coke bottle.

Peppered with hip-hop connections (E-40, Ghostface Killah, Freeway), equally informed by raw Chicago house and the riff-worshipping of Jesse’s previous (DFA 1979), and finally free of the omnipresent vocoder, it’s near-essential stuff.

This gallopingly demented album comes off like a battle between two gargantuan, city-pulverising, sci-fi beasts engaged in an epic ruckus.

So, while their Beach Boys on mescaline tricks won't rewrite the rulebook, for reckless frivolity they'll do just fine.

It is a one-trick album and they spunk away their best song, the incantatory ‘Shame On The Soul’, right at the start, but the aforementioned trick is, at least, an affecting, and very occasionally gorgeous, one.

In simple terms, then, the third Razorlight album is utter, utter cobblers.

There are flickers of funky light on the lush old school soul of ‘Ground Zero’ and the Motown-esque ‘Other Side Of Town’, but for the most part it’s all depressingly castrated.

The key word is ‘almost’, because what could have been mawkish and naive is instead deliciously raw, an album for when all else fails.

Much like the title of his debut, Indiana’s curious ringmaster Stith is a contradiction in terms. Don’t be put off--he’s a contradiction worth losing yourself to.

Perkins clearly has stories to tell of difficult journeys travelled, but unfortunately it comes across as yet another Yank putting out the roadside campfire with dribble from his harmonica.

If you've got patience it's a quiet joy; if not, it'll drive you nuts.

File under: ‘shoulda put a donk on it’.

Just when you thought Chi-town loner Owen Ashworth couldn’t trump his previous four efforts in terms of schmindie obscurity, he goes and wheels out a bunch of twee reinterpretations of oldies and rarities.

Even at best, though, something rings false about Better Than Heavy. It never sounds like a self-funded album made by angry people.

It has the pomp and arrogance of their best work, enough new sounds and interesting new avenues to satisfy the musos and, at its core, is a very good collection of very good songs played very well. A little more silliness would go a long way, though.

TSOOL have made a double album that isn’t a burden, but rather something which is genuinely fun to get lost inside and attempt to unravel.

It’s clear this ‘Falkirk miserablist’ has finally found contentment.

This patchy album shows these sharp-suited Londoners on safe indie territory, but caught in several minds.

Yes, there are jokes and doo-woppy moments of light-heartedness, but this is a soupy, stoned, distressed-sounding album at odds with the Lips’ image as the world’s premier party band.

It’s still a lot like getting hammered in the skull for an hour, but Wrath allows enough range between the power-chug of ‘Grace’ and the forbidding rumblings of ‘Reclamation’ to lift them a long way out of the pits of hell.

Like all covers albums, the temptation to dig out the originals is not far away, but there’s enough electricity pulsing around these versions to not only justify a charitable contribution but also make it a worthy addition to your record collection.

The advance buzz about Luke Temple’s first record as Here We Go Magic suggested the Brooklyn-based songwriter could be about to do a Grizzly Bear, but his latest project is a far more introspective beast.

It all just cries out for a little more oomph.

The former Sylvia Young alumnis’ latest solo offering is a mixed bag of soulfully gritty D’Angelo-influenced vocals and Busta Rhymes-esque rants.

His trademark woozy laments and waltzing rhythms are present, but buried beneath layers of tumbling horns they seem much richer, with the charming languor of his voice twisting the mariachi saunter into something dark. Strangely, it’s the synth-pop gems of second EP Holland that seem the most foreign.

Enter deal-breaking title-track ‘Hold Time’, which is (and let’s not understate things here) a career-defining ballad even on its own, masterfully striking “You were beyond comprehension tonight/But I understood...”