A techno electro smart-ass punky rap thing that'll detonate in your living room.

The signature wordplay and musical ingenuity are as strong as ever here... but they're rolling with a far harder edge than you remember.

[The live disc is] arguably far more interesting and focused and energized than the studio effort.

The songs are pretty, the guitars are mellow, all complimentary and measured; dull, in other words.

It's slinky, suave chill-out music, gently exotic, best listened to lounging on throws amongst cushions.

This hack-job (bish-bash-boshed out by uberproducer Stephen Street) takes all the bland, tawdry, white-bread bits from the past two Suede albums, butters them up with a smear of Bon Jovi balladeering, chews them into gloop with nicotine-stained, plastic dentures and... well, ends up flushing a once-great career straight down the in-at-number-16-out-the-next-week toilet.

Much of 'Trust' dallies down the dark end of the street, where graceful Velvet Undergroundisms lounge around sharing tabs with gentle folk implosions.

Only problem is, though, Ladytron still sound too self-consciously detached and robotic for us to view this as a great leap forward.

If this was the work of a new artist it's debatable whether it would even have seen the light of day, and it's certainly unlikely we'd've felt the need to even comment on it.

The overall mood (so spot-on is the title that the whole thing feels like a big chilled-out dance doughnut with stardust for sugar, heh heh) saves it, along with the occasional staggering moment of beauty.

'The King Of Nothing Hill' manages to effortlessly stir a Trans Atlantic cauldron of retro flavours, sleazy soul, avant-garde darkness, soundtrack cool, breaks, head nodding jazz sophistication and electronica sus.

Most of this album, basically, doesn't work.

this is pretty much all good stuff. So why does it feel like there's something missing? Haven's problem is their chosen genre - epic, ball busting indie, guitars that jangle, then jangle harder, vocals that ride melody like diseases might pterodactyls.

'Songs For The Deaf' is a triumph, a record forged with fire and sweat in the pits of Valhalla... It is the very essence of Rock.

Fierce and noble and fragile and genuinely moving, 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' is a lovely furnace of searing goodness made by some wonderful contradictory bastards.

It's painstakingly layered and often lush, but sometimes scrubby and miserably sparse.

The lyrics, insincere as they are, grate somewhat, but the spastic grove cannot be denied they're a bit like a pervy, conservative Devo, with more earwax.

Interpol prove themselves to be men on a mission to take us back to a time when long faces and even longer overcoats were de rigeur for alpha males the musical world over.

'The Magnificent' largely sidelines Jeff's considerable turntablist skills preferring to showcase the talents of his A Touch Of Jazz production company.

Far too often, 'Wiretap Scars' feels limp, lifeless, bereft of dynamics.

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

OK, so it tails off towards the end, and there's something rather dishonest about a band so young releasing a track like '1969', but even then it's quite endearing to see them trying to build such an immediate mythology around themselves.

Anyone else tries this, it'll be like being force-fed Sunny Delight by a battalion of pastel-pashmina'd Pokemon on My Little Ponies. In the hands of The Flaming Lips, with their stellar inventiveness and inquisitive sweetness, it's just utterly noble.

'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.

That the band that churned out some of the best records ever made in a phenomenal two-year creative splurge should be reduced to anything as pubby as this is nothing short of tragic.

There's little here that you won't have heard countless times before but as a pretension-free house album, 'Muzikizum' is an accomplished, pumping affair.

There is just enough balance between the tune, and the unexpected jazz chords, ear-splitting squeals, and lovely harmonic noises to make it forever listenable.

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.