Dancer Equired trounces for thirty minutes in the same formulaic way as before: one-note exuberance, monotone instrumentation, and washed out pop hooks. Granted, it features some of their strongest songs to date, but it's not enough to salvage the exhaustive, pouring reverberation.

The occasional highlight isn't enough to make up for the cloth-eared versions of timeless songs found elsewhere on the record, or to cover up for the fact that See My Friends is a mostly soulless, and an entirely pointless album.

As it is, we have a definite return to consistency, if not form, and a Paul Simon as simultaneously hermetic and engaged as only he can be.

Whether you will enjoy this ultimately depends on whether you're more of a rocker or a dancer - indeed, some people much preferred the mellower sound of their last record - but there's little denying that this album misses a lot of the urgency and sheer emotional energy of the band's first two LPs.

In Love With Oblivion may only display grey intonations on first impression, but multiple spins begin to unfurl its ghoulish sense of atmosphere.

The record stands as the most shocking thing the Odd Future collective has put out to date: a R&B record with crossover potential without sacrificing soul that creates a complete picture of its author, warts and all.

On A Mission is the sound of the dancefloor being brought to the pop charts.

While still featuring the repetition and reverb that embodies much of Lennox's work, Tomboy is more divisible, and more accessible for a downloaded generation, or listeners looking to simply dabble their toes.

By stripping things back a little, Low have turned in their most confident, consistent record to date (admittedly this might have something to do with the fact that, running to only ten tracks, C'mon is also their shortest), and even, in places, sound like they're actually enjoying themselves.

Many of the songs here are too over-burdened by the minutiae of lives half lived to be transcendent, perpetually on the verge of something greater, yet too often falling just short of it. However, as with life, there are enough small moments of insight and beauty to make it worthwhile.

What resulted is ultimately an album of destructive beauty. Elegance married with sonic destruction!

Port Entropy finds Tokumaru-san at his most confident, but without the apprehensiveness apparent in the past albums, the tracks seem two-dimensional.

It's the type of song the Foo Fighters wrote knowing their nineties fans would relish. Still, this is as far removed from the Alternative Nation as you can get.

They work best when under the restraints of a three-minute pop song, resolute to achieving guitar resonance in a compact framework.

Callahan continues to be a nature's poet, painting his imagery with the most carefully detailed observations of the everyday.

Noah And The Whale would have done better to focus on the more organic sound they became quite good at than become just another forgettable crossover act.

F.A.M.E. is a vile, despicable album that doesn't deserve to be supported in any way, shape or form. Its very existence is a frightening indictment of our times, in terms of our attitudes to music, women and the cult of celebrity.

Femme Fatale equips Britney with material which is strong enough to enable the original all-American Pop Princess to hold her own in such an overcrowded context.

Blood Pressures is a compelling forty minutes, and by the time we reach the closer, Pots and Pans, with a slider and twelve bar riffs to accompany its sultry, resonant admissions, you can barely imagine them any other way.

It is that sense of self that prevails over the pop sheen of Rolling Papers and makes it worth more than a passing listen.

Several Shades of Why is plaintive and embryonic to the point of breaking down barriers, musically and personally. It's as if the meat has been torn off the bone leaving us with the carcass. And as carcasses go, this one is mighty pretty.

In all this album won't be world changing. The Vaccines are not "the saviours of British rock and roll" but What Did You... doesn't need to be. Instead it's inviting and well observed more than anything, a triumph typified by Post Break-Up Sex--a sublime sketch of that insensitively cute idiom, all guilt-ridden and relatable.

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.

Overall the band carries off a convincing sense of menace and rocks hard at the same time. It may not be what fans of the original Faust would expect but it's satisfying in a different way, while still maintaining the arch sensibility that made them legendary if not exactly famous.

While a fairly brisk listen, the album does start to drag in its second half. Not that the later songs are particularly weak, but the only thing that really marks them out from those in the first is that they're a bit quieter.

As a bite-sized musical excursion, the stylish electro house of Ditto's solo debut is likely to leave many disco doyens wanting more.

While it may not attain the dizzy heights of I'm New Here, Smith's deftness ensures that We're New Here is far more than just a vanity project

At its worst, Go-Go Boots comes off sounding like Lynyrd Skynyrd. At its best, it stands as a testament to the unparalleled songwriting of Cooley and Hood and as a reminder of just how special this band can be.