It works, up to a point, but means the whole smooth and romantic-sounding affair, though not quite boring, lacks that special spark.

It’s been a long wait, but Wye Oak are beginning to blossom.

This madcap might raise the occasional laugh, but inside he’s crying, and for all your voyeuristic unease, you won’t be able to look away.

The album had to happen, and for a band that are now ostensibly a touring entity, the measure of its songs is whether you’d want to hear them being played at, say, Field Day this summer. Slipped between their classics, they’ll do just fine.

Albarn pulls you close and whispers the codes of his life into your ear. Switch settings to ‘decipher’.

It’s a graceful evolution and one that rocks just as hard as the squalling fury of The Distillers ever did.

Although 'I Run' and 'At Once' are the sort of soaring tunes they always did so well, on the whole there's no compelling answer to that initial question: why?

There’s the occasional peak, like ‘Clown’ or ‘Destroy Me’, but Candy For The Clowns feels more like an act of stubbornness than defiance.

Mac knows better than to let his bellyaching get in the way of everyone else's good time--instead, he’s simply dialled down the quirk and written his best record yet.

eedly bass, tumultuous drums and big, dirty guitars careen beneath Casey's deadpan delivery, building riotously enjoyable labyrinthine passages that lead to nowhere, though Protomartyr make the journey feel essential.

The results are standard indie on top of a few croaky far-off bleeps, but the vibe is brilliantly consistent: dubby, cracked, and less dense than the surface of Saturn (very un-dense).

Psychological trauma aside, there’s a warmth to Weiss’ soft, sighing vocals and Daniel Falvey’s rippling guitar textures that lifts Loom to the heavens.

A slick offering, Rented World is let down by a tendency to veer towards the formulaic, evidenced by closing track, ‘When You Died’, an altogether too tepid acoustic tear-jerker.

Bereft of blues bombast, electronic trickery or bothersome concepts, when E's not coming on like Red House Painters he's getting seriously classical.

It’s not quite the equal of its predecessor--last year’s breakneck, flute-powered ‘Floating Coffin’--but is a gem nonetheless: nine tracks of noise-spiked Nuggets-y psych-punk, each one hitting with the crisp concision of a long-lost jukebox classic.

It seems Paradinas' real talents lie behind the scenes.

There’s nothing game-changing about The New Classic, just recycled hustlin’ tropes and an ugly, nasal double-time flow overcompensating for mediocre wordplay.

While Food may be more home-cooked comforts than Blumenthal experimentation, at its best it’s a fulfilling portion.

This is the sound of progress.

With the help of former Coral man Bill Ryder-Jones, Liverpool's We Are Catchers (aka Peter Jackson) has captured the melancholy essence of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's solo album 'Pacific Ocean Blue' and distilled it in the murky Mersey to produce this confident debut.

It’s no radical reinvention, sure, but the singer captures these songs in their most up-close-and-personal state, with instrumentation stripped back to nearly zero.

For all its high-mindedness, it’s garage-rock primalism is just as easily enjoyed with your brain switched off. Perhaps that’s the point.

There aren’t quite enough classic songs here to render their voice vital, but as long as boring bands exist, this kind of piss and vinegar will always be welcome.

Lo-fi electronica ('Getaway Ride') and ambient pop ('Dominic') create the spine of a charmingly off-kilter record, while 'I Love Our World' is essentially a field recording.

There’s a rare moment of foreboding on the briefly gloomy ‘Feather Man’, but the likes of ‘Shining’ and the Avi Buffalo-style ‘Only The Lonely’ are representative of an optimistic and sprightly record.

It suits them just fine.

A brutal and beauteous slither from the grave.

He's turned in an electronic album that’s full of character without resorting to robot costumes or Pharrell bloody Williams.