Let's Stay Friends arrives as a startling cannon-shot message of brain-thawing intent.

It's as idiosyncratic and tinged with goofiness as one might expect for a band with members called Panda Bear and Geologist.

Despite its five or six great tracks, Graduation feels more and more like the work of a follower, not a leader.

Unsurprisingly, the most thrilling moments are the most genre-schizo.

The trademark tempo jiggery remains and it's all threaded together with airy production that underlines rather than overwhelms.

The unlikely, ghoulish inspiration of a dead Dutch pop star has forced Pixies' frontman Frank Black into making his finest album since the demise of his influential '90s alt.rockers.

Alas, it's unlikely that the applause will stretch to actually wanting to listen as the looping metallic effects, heart-attack drums and seemingly played-backwards female vocals confuse more than impress.

It's honest, intense, funny, furious, and on 'Letter 2 Dizzee'--an olive branch to his estranged protege--tear-jerkingly poignant.

Kasher wrote this as the soundtrack to his screenplay, but on this evidence it could debut on The Hallmark Channel.

American flower-punks Black Lips are purists when it comes to scuzz, and Good Bad, Not Evil is a perfect tapestry of sordid pleasure.

Songs schizophrenically jump from A to X, from great to merely good, with scant warning or point.

Harris has distilled all of the synth-popping, amp-busting sounds of electroclash and disco-punk into a complete set of proper pop uppers.

At points it gets too much, but Heavy Trash's steel-toed pillaging of the past still makes them a punk-rock Time Team.

You could accuse Liars of abandoning all of their high-art concepts and otherworldly thoughts so they could secure their place on a tour of America's enormodomes with Interpol. Well, you could if this album wasn't so perfect.

Fact is, though, the best metropolitan records are part gutter reality, part romantic fantasy, and so it goes with Panic Prevention.

MIA innovates club music, art music and pop music at every turn.

Their fourth album is a staggering masterclass in indie-pop songwriting that will make your brain melt and send firecrackers around your heart.

Sadly, it's an isolated gem ['Dejalo'] that can't lift Under The Blacklight out of its dull AOR mire.

The fourth album from Caribou is the sound of the summer we're only just getting round to enjoying.

The urge to dislike Josh Ritter is somewhat overwhelming. But, like a diseased puppy with an adorable smile, it's just impossible to take him out back with Pa's shotgun because he still has an ear for a good tune--even if it is one of Dylan's.

Yes, it's solid rock but what they might lack in glamour (no back up dancers here, dude), they make up for in sheer sincerity.

The five new tracks added for the UK release, especially the Suicide throb of ‘Run Around’, suggest the real thrills are to come on their debut proper, but for now, this is an exciting enough introduction to a new force of darkness. Buy two, and give one to a hippy.

When you constantly remind the world how great you were, it rather detracts from the good stuff you're still capable of.

A wobbly start, but luckily The Coral are just finding their sea legs.

The rest of it though, is soulful and intelligent where 'intelligent' is not exclusive to 'good beats and rhymes.' Which is what it's all about.

Korn's eighth is actually an interesting listen; as diverse as the witless art of nu-metal gets. That doesn't mean it's good. It merely leaves us with a numbing dilemma: we want to hate it, but we can't.

Things do sometimes get laboured and one-dimensional. But, there's a wry Glaswegian humour here, which ensures there are plenty of smiles to go with those dance moves.

It's solid enough, but given the imagination they once possessed, it sounds like UNKLE are trying too hard.