Ultimately, Time’s liquidity, while mesmerising to some, will be a distance myth to others.

Different Gear, Still Speeding could be a good album if they just scaled things down a bit.

Given that these songs mostly clock in under two minutes, that should be enough to carry the flat arrangements and melodies, but it's not.

The real inexcusable thing about The Blueprint 3 is how boring and sterile it all sounds.

There's much promise for an act like Gauntlet Hair to floor its contemporaries with time, but as it stands, their grimy, sewage system is in dire need of maintenance.

Dinowalrus is at the surface, speaking the language spoken years ago by the voices on those dusty LPs they hold near and dear but that’s part of the problem.

Candela has some shining moments but, overall, is an album that teases the palette instead of really satisfying.

While this leap into the big leagues proves that he’s still very much a rare talent, it unfortunately seems that genuine inspiration is even rarer.

There seems to be an innate knack for melody on display here that produces several moments of pop joy.

Love 2 is not only the latest chapter in Air’s space-rock adventure, it’s a sequel that triumphs its predecessor.

In Cold Blood follows and is excellent, with code-like vocals and a brass-funk cascade drenching a menacing chorus. Hit Me Like That Snare is alt-J flexing their nerdiness, and Deadcrush is great. The final three tracks of the record are painfully boring and terminally so.

Anyone expecting some sort of lost treasure in this collection will be let down.

For a collection of songs that are supposed to be carrying the weight of an imminent apocalypse on their shoulders, there are very few moments to be found on Top 10 Hits that seem to be affected by this burden.

There are some appealing songs here that deserves to be on a Spotify playlist or in a chill lounge environment. However, they struggle to stand out next to subpar material over the course of a full-length record. There are lots of alluring instrumental pieces that show potential, but Kllo treats them as decorative rather than core aspects.

Digging into Robert Pollard is an invigorating bit of fun, and it's what's made the man a success. By all accounts, Space City Kicks is more of exactly that.

Despite the wealth of glowing beats and rhymes, AIM would have benefitted from some unpredictability. Arulpragasam's sound is distinctive, but because she never establishes any kind of progression of ideas or strategically unites her songs around a theme, the album remains repetitive instead of cohesive.

The potential is there for this to be very good, but the fact that it’s so comprehensively safeguarded limits it hugely.

Conrad’s strategic intentions get the best of him, swerving between unmemorable mid-tempo cuts and stodgy piano playing with the occasional flashes of unfulfilled brilliance.

It is ridiculous. It is overblown, it's pompous, it's aggressive and it's absurdly ambitious. But, here's the rub: it's actually pretty damn good. It rocks, often pretty hard.

Battle Born, doesn't quite reach those heights [of their debut, Hot Fuss], but it comes close.

Despite being nothing original, Crimes of Passion comes off a good rehashing of the genre, making you rethink what Jesus and The Mary Chain's Just Like Honey really meant.

Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you'd wish to be.

Violet Cries is the kind of album that will find a niche audience who will it defend fiercely. Broader appeal is unlikely for songs that seem so blurred around the edges and on the point of evaporating.

While enjoyable and familiar, this set of songs reflects a band who knows what music they don't want to be making but haven't--at least, not yet--determined what it is they want to be defined by instead.

[The music] is not exactly bad, but has about as much creativity and passion behind it as a spreadsheet.

Boats has made something beautiful and invigorating at moments, while puzzling and slightly alienating at others.

As an album, it's probably the dullest anticipation of the year.

It’s more of an unconscious escape hatch that Lynch has constructed with intangible aural elements--a fantasy place that he allows us to walk around in for a while until we are forced back into the realm of the painfully awake.

In the Cool of the Day is far from perfect, though. Moore's smooth vocal delivery suits the more minimal productions well, but it can become cloying when the backing track is too upbeat, such as on the irritating Up Above My Head.

In conclusion, solid record, but it simply does not hit home hard enough.

It’s not Pixies as you’d like to remember them, but for the first time in years it sounds as if they’re actually enjoying themselves.

Their name alone relieves the listener of the expectation that anything they do will make much sense, but for those willing to suspend their notions about things such as song structure, St. Helens can be an entertaining, if befuddling, experience.

It's new, fresh, and energetic, all of which are not entirely surprising from an obviously skilled group, but it's in the execution that everything comes into clarity.

Just download the good stuff or buy the album and don’t expect much from Rivers because he never really gave you more than a few minutes of cheap thrills in the first place, which is plenty to thank him for.

Most of the songs on In A Warzone are full of energy, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the slimmed down punk rock that the album delivers with gusto. However, there is definitely a point where they start to sound very similar.

So while it’s worth checking out, DVA lacks any real core.

All in all, it delivers the chuckles and a few guffaws, even if they are hitting up against the law of diminishing returns.

Much of the album’s electro-lite flavoring does provide some hummable moments, but as the cringingly tricked out Mexican Fender and stomping chants of La Mancha Screwjob suggest, they’re most likely to suffer a slow and gradual death at your local Forever 21.

Colonia has an awful lot of ideas, but doesn’t really know what to do with them and the majority of tracks end up sounding messy and--like the rest of us following Christmas--carrying a little too much extra weight.

It's a nicely balanced record: It's not as if the 'old' Asobi Seksu has disappeared and been replaced with a slightly more cheerful android version of the band--but there's a definite shift here.

It's easy to criticise Talk That Talk but it's actually a fun and enjoyable record.

The bottom line here is that this is a boring album, plain and simple.

They manage to satisfy the listening needs of die-hard Fleet Foxes fans, but fail to truly carve out their own unique musical identity. This isn't to say Poor Moon doesn't offer up some great moments-they really do-just not ones that stick with you long after the record is over.

They’re playing the blues, man, and obviously, nobody does that anymore. And really, even on a good half of From the Fires, the fast-tracked major label signees don’t even try to really emulate their esteemed deities’ dangerous sexuality and, instead, bafflingly resort to half-assed emotional platitudes.

This album’s got plodding drum work, tasteless guitar work, and some of Paulson’s worst lyrics ever, but it’s also an interesting album.

Instead of the dynamic sound Mayer is capable of, he has instead continued along the same nicely-paved road he has ridden his whole studio career, a path that has always elicited the same reaction from this writer – a shrug.

ye doesn’t reward repeat listens. It gives its limited treasures upfront and it’s an album with precious little beneath the surface.

They embrace what they do best: creating music that balances this personal and political darkness with joy. In their strongest outing since All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the four-piece writes both sweeping anthems as well as some of the most effortless songs of their career.

If it were not for Katy's distinctive voice--which she gloriously wields with an Aguilera-like ferocity during the last forty seconds or so of each track--Honey would not survive its own sweetness. At certain moments, however, the energies between Katy and the producers mesh just right, resulting in alchemic varieties of urban pop that glow brighter after each listen.

Despite some missteps (sadly, a few egregious ones), Some Loud Thunder is successful in displaying the group’s breadth of talent and ideas.

The lone connective thread found in Gardens & Villa is that of its dedication to build a vigorous gamut of synths. As it turns out, once that defining element is out of the mold, you're left with skeletal compositional biases that amount to very little.

Those in search of classic Barlow would do far better to dig out their battered old copies of Bakesale.

Even if the album's sonic template doesn't stray too far from his 2011 breakthrough debut LP Within You Without You, Greene chooses to keep the mood so light that it's practically inert.

In their insistence on trying to mix quirky, quiet electronica with beer-swilling pop, without the two informing each other, Athlete too often fall into a formulaic and predictable model.

It’s their most consistent outing since their debut, but it’s never much better than average. BRMC is a decent rock band, and if all we expect from them is fuzzed out garage jams they don’t disappoint.

Much of it is quieter, cinematic, and, of course, better than Our Love to Admire. Thank God. Sometimes we are impressed by not being miserably disappointed again.

In the love affair of listeners to this EP, an overly ambitious singer-songwriter who seems to be far more into growing artistically then creating genuine songs will force fans and detractors alike into the arms of another.

From referencing Harold Shipman in a song title to taking a moral high ground to the view of secluding yourself with drugs, Songs for Our Mothers presents an insignificant manifesto.

I'm With You is the sound of a band that continues to coast off past achievements.

Bloom’s vocal debut with Glow & Behold is solid without ever being magnificent, staying within its means and applying a decoration to a sound that is cleaner and melodically stronger than its predecessor.

Robinson certainly bolsters There Is A Way's meaty riffs and hooks; those guitars sound a bit more Kerrang than NME on this second album. The band's songwriting too is more restrained and conventional, but always high octane – they scream overwhelmingly through the whole album without really letting you pause for breath.

An LP with a long gestation period but a short attention span that revels in 1960s pop music and is as fun as it is jangling.

Wild Belle’s debut is a respectable exercise of ethereal pop.

For all the interesting noises that the band have come up with in the studio, the production really doesn't do them any favours, cramming them into a fairly narrow space and stripping them almost entirely of any sense of atmosphere.

Fresh with a 4th record label (Leeds-based Hatch Records), this latest coming is a dynamic, complete, and assured record, and an exhibition of how grunge music should sound in 2014.

Not as poppy as either Moon Safari or Talkie Walkie, not as out there as 10,000khz Legend, Pocket Symphony instead boasts songs that deserve more attention than previous numbers without performing the prog histrionics often found on their more experimental works.

Ultimately The Weight's on the Wheels works on the whole. Its finest moments are excellent examples of the wry electro-pop that TRF are certainly proficient at; at its worst, however, the album lacks any evidence of an evolution in sound or style, suffering from mediocrity rather than being distinctly poor.

There are times in which The Ark Work sounds aimless in spite of its slight technical achievements, yielding a sensory overload of strobing compositions channeled with unrestrained imagination.

While lyrically ponderous and sometimes grim, (“Am I a waste of life?/I ask the night”), Hubba Bubba satisfies an impulse pleasantly.

This record is half as clever as it thinks it is, and utterly inessential.

Very rarely, this album finds a moment of excitement. And when they do, you have to savor them, because you aren’t going to get another one for a while.

It’s a confident, fantastic and ultimately very rewarding record that should be met with an open mind.

The band seems to have decided musical chops and precision production are more important than ideas, turning Time to Die into a startlingly streamlined affair that passes without leaving much of a mark.

Aside from a few crunching riffs and a smattering of neat melodies, there’s very little to recommend within Drones.

More quickly than you'd expect, Busdriver's quirks become endearing; his cartoonish vocal stretches to reach those high notes become normalised and you begin to appreciate how much heart he puts into his singing.

While all of the songs on the Ghost are good, the EP's identity crises will keep pulling listeners out of the experience.

Mostly everything is contrived and cliché, lifted from a stock collection of guitar rock and electro rock of the past ten years.

This album does its best to give certain fans exactly what they want in sexually-driven club grinders while offering up real, honest-to-goodness substance. It isn't always a perfect situation, and parts of the album border on forgettable, but when they get it right, everything's groovy.

The first two tracks (two of the three singles from the album) are irritatingly underwhelming, and only Carrion (the third of the aforementioned singles) conveys any of the urgency and compactness required to really grab a listeners' attention.

Vices & Virtues bucks that somewhat healthy trend in entirely the wrong manner, and represents exactly the kind of the uninspired drudgery of Americana indie rock that has emerged in the wake of the likes of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.

It quickly veers into a curious stream of whim with their most alienating, and unfortunately, their most characterless yet--they deliver an onslaught of acrimonious synths in the post-apocalyptic, jazz-tinged Mystery Disease, while Cool Song No. 2 shamelessly takes a page out of the Can playbook with its grimy, overcompressed effects.

This is an album of average to good songs, with only a few highlights.

The girls are solid musicians, and they’ve structured their little songs well enough. The record is pretty short too, clocking in at 24 minutes, which is good, because I was bored already at the 15 minute mark.

Some people might Matt & Kim's music is without substance, totally incapable of being a sustainable addition to the sonic landscape. I submit that their saccharine hooks, covered in a coating of post-adolescent confusion, is just the opposite.

There are two great tracks here, three solid ones, and five complete duds.

To be fair, if it weren't for Lynch's lacklustre vocals and lyrics there might be a fairly solid collection of atmospheric retro rock 'n' roll here, but as it seems to be coming at the expense of his film career that's still not quite good enough.

It all sounds very immaturely polished.

It's not up there with their very best, but it's actually not that far off.

Save for a few tracks, you get exactly what you'd expect from a band like Dead Confederate: middle of the road alternative rock music with seemingly little depth and a whole lot of cliches.

For many reasons it is confused, self-absorbed, remarkably gauche. It is so often an intentionally uncomfortable thing to listen to... [yet] intriguing.

There is a laudably uncompromising quality to the album which I admire. But by the time I get to album finale Brunswick Sludge I find myself getting a little bored with it all. There's only so much wacky noise experimentation I can take in one go.

Frontman Max Bloom’s voice isn’t even that dissimilar from that of the man he replaced in 2013, but he’s lacking something that Blumberg clearly had in his arsenal to sharpen his band’s sound.

Shadow's production is wantonly flashy, but it can't mask his lack of flair.

Too Much Information sounds more like a collection of tracks from different moments in their career than a fully cohesive whole but perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing.

I'll admit, the songs on Babel wouldn't be so painful if it weren't for the god-awful "deep" lyricism of Marcus Mumford.

While not everything here is awful, the good is often streaked throughout each song like marbled fat in a rubber steak.

It doesn’t leave much to the imagination; in fact, it states quite clear that there’s not much substance behind their muscular, other times grounded, modern rock template.