Is this the best we can do? Desperate-to-be-authentic, carbohydrate-stodgy white blues, played by an elderly man pretending to be a tramp? Really, you deserve better.

Friendly Fires songs are all manufactured to a similar formula but there’s a whole lab shelf lined with addictive variants.

Like their last, Only By The Night is front-loaded with world-beaters but then gradually ebbs back to more interchangeable moments. More than ever its strengths, when it succeeds, later become its weaknesses. It tries a mite too hard.

Dear Science cuts through genres like a laser through a music encyclopaedia, making strange connections, but always with pop clarity as the ultimate aim. As ever, Sitek’s production shines.

Almost in defiance of poor sales and cult following, CWK and their charming second album embody everything you hoped music might be.

The big question: is it any good? Well, in places.

Ladyhawke’s louche synthetic pop is brazenly Bananarama, ridiculously ‘Rio’, and wonderfully Waterman, but the lack of posing – her sheer scruffiness – makes it the first credible ’80s pop record since ABC’s ‘The Lexicon Of Love’

And Then Boom is the moment the ironic ’80s electro revival finally manages to jump the shark.

If soft-hearted London folkies Noah And The Whale aren’t quite as deft with savoury rice, they’ve got the knack of balancing heart-melting, pupil-dilating ditties with words of chill bleakness down pat.

This beatific bpmfest amps expectation giddily high for the Boston five-piece’s debut proper, and really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Not only does it banish the memory of "St Anger" but it’s easily their best work in 17 years.

See, in All Or Nothing, The Subways haven’t just made a great record – they’ve vindicated everyone who still believes in the power and the glory of three chords and distortion pedals.

This is pure Tricky; sometimes at his near-best, sometimes coasting, but always unique.

It’s a sleeping giant of a dancefloor creeper that will be everyone’s favourite new electro album in approximately six months’ time.

While an ambitious selection of productions have reinvigorated his approach, as the album rolls on, the same solo call-and-response hooks, and methodical, self-effacing verses show that, vocally, he’s content sticking to familiar, functional turf.

At best, his words are boring, silly or totally forgettable.

This album is probably the most solid foundation this quartet have had in 15 years, and it would be a disaster if it wasn’t a springboard for several more.

It’s one of the oddest beauties of the year so far.

They needed to up their innovating significantly but haven’t, leaving All Hope Is Gone above-average.

Their sound is timeworn and instantly familiar: the “set me free” chorus of ‘Streetwalker’ is pure Springsteen, while the honky-tonk of ‘Trashcan’ is classic Stones, made more remarkable by the sandpaper snarl of their frontman.

Is it an improbably good second album? Looks like it.

Simple but sensational.

They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.

The Uglysuit, whose country-prog-post-rock-indie-orchestral ramblings recall, variously, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Elbow, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket and the soundtrack for every emotionally self-indulgent US drama ever made. Yet, hearing the warm country musings of ‘Chicago’ or the aching two-note piano motif of 'And We Became Sunshine’, it’s hard not to settle into the seduction.

This is clever, girl-led guitar pop.

It’s not the definitive work the self-titling might suggest but it’s sure as hell worthy of the name.

It’s Waller’s voice--one that proved too powerful an entity for his former band, Vincent Vincent And The Villains--that stops The Rumble Strips from being mere Dexys copyists.