There’s still plenty of bits on Beat Pyramid you’ll find exhilarating. But the rest of the time, you’ll find yourself wishing These New Puritans would ascend above its well-established reference points.

There are fewer moments of reckless genre experiments on Touchdown than there were on past Brakes efforts, and when there are, they feel purposeful, like the band had some alt-country (or quick punk song) quota to fill.

By the time the country twang of “Ain’t No Easy Way” hits with a massive drum-and-harmonica stomp, thoughts of Howl being a “Hey, let’s try this” album vanish, and the music becomes the entrancing jaunt of a band not necessarily finding itself, per se, but at least writing the best songs of its career.

Love Travels at Illegal Speeds is by far Coxon's best solo album, and if his sensibilities remain where they're at now, it's conceivable that he'll never be able to top it.

So while High Places have neatly avoided getting stuck in a rut on Original Colors, daring to reinvent themselves into a more motion-friendly group, fans of their first couple of albums should still find the overall mood sufficiently low-key to provide easy access.

An abundance of hook-laden choruses, New Order analog-boogie and Stone Roses-cool could not be more frustratingly baked into this crumbly crust.

At its best, Kingdom Come is about possibility. At its worst, it pales in comparison to past albums.

What remains is a band conflicted about how to stretch and how far to stray from a winning formula, between living up to expectations and confounding them.

Repentance can be taken as prime party music, but if you dig deeper, it's much more rewarding.

Careworn and authentic, the prismatic scatter of songs on Volume One, filtered through the sepia tinge of Deschanel and Ward’s nostalgia, sound more like out-of-time gems than the loving recreations they are.

While still mostly a success, Zoo marks the first time where Ceremony do not seem 100% sure of their own identity.

Red Gone Wild serves its purpose, reminding us that Redman can still be a lyrical beast at times.

Ponytail fans will surely enjoy this relatively formed incarnation of the band's energy.

While Start And Complete happens to have been recorded in just one day, lo and behold, it turns out to be album of relatively straightforward songs, staying largely within the musical and lyrical conventions of the pop/rock universe.

By this point, it's within their rights to utilize pieces of their past in building a new present for themselves, as long as they don't half-ass it and start turning out inferior remakes of their old tunes. That's not what's going on here, and if anything, No Line is ultimately a more visceral and memorable effort than either of the band's other two 21st century offerings.

It's a member of a rock band that plays tightly controlled music stretching his compositional abilities to new instruments and more subtle arrangements. They're not all successes.

It is uncompromising, brutally honest... and adroit at melding many genres together without losing sight of the fact it is first a hip-hop record.

Although it's a top-heavy record, Waterloo to Anywhere gets stronger with each listen; the melodies come through and the energy that at first seems restrained starts to break free.

Nothing new.

Tindersticks fans will find very familiar, likable material on Leaving Songs.

On Loose in the Air, the Double has attenuated the noise and cranked up the once-obscured songs. This may be bad news for the purists, but it’s a blessing for everyone waiting for a great record from this Brooklyn band.

Black Mountain seems to have perpetrated some legitimate time travel, creating a record that could have sprung from an era of muscle cars, muscle tees, and moustaches.

Given the strength of the album’s beginning, the latter half lags quite a bit, but the occasional highlight arises.

Not necessarily a mix for ages, but a mix that's pretty easy to come back to, be it road-trips, background music, or a personal headphones-odyssey.

Songs for Singles sees the Miami band continuing to experiment with upbeat, accessible metal songs, and while not fully pop yet, the addition of a more advanced rhythm section helps offset their perpetual need to drone their guitars out. The album inches the band further to reaching a goal of good pop metal that, while seemingly impossible in 2010, is a fight worth fighting.

No More Stories… finishes Mew’s transition into the swirling, arena-rock monsters they’ve threatened to become all along, with reliably decent results, but it fails to top the blissful heights of "Glass Handed Kits" or the pop-theory class of "Frengers."

Inter-Be was good, but this record proves the band can make a sound uniquely theirs. In doing so, they've also made something far more lasting.

Finn's best songs are the ones when he's fully in the present, in tune with every emotion and every detail his protagonists might experience during a particular moment.