Someone should put Blink 182 out of their misery.

A lean, aggressive and thoroughly relevant album.... If you really need to spend any money on an album where a multi-millionaire relentlessly tells you how remorselessly shit life is; make it this one.

It's all hugely ridiculous, of course, but executed with a surprising amount of passion.

The warmth of her debut is still there but now overlaid with something fearsome, forceful and almost overbearing at times.

As smooth and comforting as an afternoon on an old leather sofa that fits you like your own skin.

'Baby 81' sees a band lose focus from what made them tick in the first place.

'Trading...' may be better than we had any right to expect, but the fact remains that there's nothing here that would've catapulted him to public consciousness were it not for his astuteness and the Donnie Darko connection.

It's like a thicker, dirtier Good Charlotte.

Totally inessential, utterly inoffensive, yet truly beguiling, 'Son Of Evil Reindeer' remains a charmingly radiant record.

An ultra sleek and, it has to be said, generally impressive, 80s-inspired party record.

This is a record that brattily demands total attention, and as such, will either be lauded as a bold journey, or derided as pretentious indulgence.

The band have colonised the rich turf at the intersection of meticulously structured mope-rock and free-flowing three-chord pop, where moments of resignation cosy up alongside twinkling hopes for the future like Winehouse to the sauce.

Lord knows what's going to happen when they abandon their commercial concessions entirely (as we suspect this buys them the opportunity to do. Good), but this is stunning enough in its own right.

A wondrous re-emergence.

This is a record of outrageous range and unprecedented panache.

If there’s a problem with ‘This Is For Real’ and you’ll have to really look, it’s the fact that it’s a tad too shiny. Not much, but, at times, it’s lost a bit of that dirtiness that made the Grease so appealing.

What need for artless posturing and sloganeering when you have music so powerful, so ugly, so revolting, so incredible?

There are too few ideas here to really make 'Keep On Your Mean Side' worth our devotion.

If The Delays had succeeded in making the latter five-sixths of their debut as wondrous as the first portion, they could be credited with fair miracles.

'By The Way' is pretty much 'Californication' part two with a deeper exploration of the nu melodic Peppers, a classic LA record that somehow combines the melodic rush of the Beach Boys and Mamas and Papas and hints at the dark underbelly of the city of angels just like Love did way back in the late sixties.

Nothing earth shattering, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Sophomore album 'The Only Thing I Ever Wanted' is the work of a band with a keening melodic sense, akin to the development apparent in the prime works of, say, Idlewild or the Delgados, and, impressively, it does this without losing any of the idiosyncratic DIY charms that characterised its makers in the first place.

Think Pavement with a shake of Grandaddy and a little dash of something else low-key and lackadaisical and that's Quasi.

More often than not displays a penchant for melody and tension which would shame many of the new millennium's pop pups.

The problem is, whilst the debut had more hooks than a fishing rod sandwich, this just doo-wop-yawn, the sort of nursery rhymes kids never remember.

While this album is hardly a sellout or a mellowing down, its shifting in direction, its differing textures make it far better than 'Iowa'.

You really won't find a more interesting, intelligent or wonderful dream of an album as 'Sensuous' all year.

This is classic timeless pop.