Despite its frustratingly monadic nature Howl does hold attention.

Mercurial Bay is bland and overpolished and probably insecure and definitely destined to make mincemeat of fickle hearts all over the web. It is good and shiny like an overviewed but freshly refiltered Instagram photo of a Hollywood sunset.

For all the razzle-dazzle of its surprise release, I’m struck by hard it is to draw a lasting overall impression from the record. It adds little to the reinvention established by Folklore and doesn’t deepen her work within this sound in particularly convincing terms. I want to credit her at least for keeping up an industrious streak, but this alone would seem patronising.

Unlike past efforts, however, Ti Amo is jarring for how glossy and smooth everything sounds.

It may be palatable and generally inoffensive on a whole, but Ghost on Ghost really goes down best when viewed as a supplement to other better, more transcendent material already out there.

It’s too harsh to suggest that the band are coasting, since there are once more fragments of ideas, concepts and melodies which arouse.

The Last Will and Testament is slickly produced, conceptually sound and stronger in its first half. Unfortunately, it lacks an overall aesthetic that would see this record reach the accolades of Blackwater Park, Watershed or even Heritage while dabbling in those clear elements.

All in all, Forever Howlong feels like a missed opportunity. There are enough good bits to show that the band are as capable as ever of crafting a spellbinding moment, but there’s a frustrating lack of direction or commitment that prevents these moments from ever coalescing.

Apart from a precious few exceptions, none of the gathered musicians seem able nor willing to push each other into new musical territory that could yield fresh revelations about their union.

The inherent problems which bog Welcome Home down largely stem from superficial writing. This is nothing new for the band, but for a record centring itself around Vinnie, the lyrics feel like they’re skirting around the topic in a humdrum manner in favour of really getting into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Even at 45 minutes, Education, Education, Education & War feels too long, because the Chiefs are 100% committed to impose their sarcastic views till the last second.

Baptize is as much a trip through modern day Atreyu cliché as it highlights the best of the group’s more...aged cuts.

It is without a plan and without much of an aim, save for vague touchstones in ‘80s pop and new wave, a path tread much more smoothly by Casablancas’ prior solo work.

This moment of fuzzed-out, fucked-up pop music with questionably scant odes to rap music is not designed for posterity. To his credit, Post gets that, and is content to make overlong albums where every song can be a single. Not every song on beerbongs and bentleys can be a single, but there’s enough of them hiding in there to make it one of 2018’s more rewarding releases.

It is the last two tracks of EP2 that bring a little disappointment.

Gravebloom is a fun album. Honest. But it’s also a rehash, plain and simple. Nothing done across its eleven tracks hasn’t been done on previous Acacia Strain records.

At its worst, Younger Now is inoffensively bland, wasted Dolly Parton talent aside. Songs like "Love Someone" are dead on arrival with their lifeless energy and forgettable hooks.

Unfortunately, Wolf fails in the very same manner as Goblin, albeit with slightly more class.

Ringo remains Ringo, for better and worse. And in keeping with the hangdog Ringo persona this isn’t even the best country-adjacent album by a Beatle. It’s an album for Ringo Starr, and if we can’t give it any sort of adulation, we can at least respect its intentions, and those of the artists who made it.

From Zero is a tale of two halves. The first half feels like pandering to what people miss from Linkin Park. .... However, by the time “Overflow” rolls around, a switch flips. Though it’s more of a Shinoda track, it sets the stage for a strong second half, with its dark and captivating atmosphere and simplistic instrumentation that makes it a powerful standout. From this point on, From Zero maintains momentum.

Is 4 Lovers isn’t a bad album, it just lacks that much-needed energy and purpose. A lot of the songs here feel like they’re going through the motions.

At its best, the album embodies the curiosity of revisiting audio or video recordings, scanning for oddities which could possibly be the etchings of spirits crossing the veil between worlds. At its worst, Gallarais fools you into thinking its divination has lasting credibility.

Supercharged is a surprisingly decent, albeit flawed record. There are elements of greatness at the heart of it, but the problems soon arise when The Offspring attempt to veer away from their wheelhouse of driving riffs and infectious hooks.

The Future Bites traverses a strange course ripe with rewarding avenues and detours of failed attempts alike. It’s nothing if not fascinating, and will perhaps be more rewarding to those with a high tolerance for unorthodox marriage of various elements influenced by Prince, 1980s pop, modern electronic music, and alternative rock.

In trying for everything, they’ve highlighted the disjointedness of the end product, turning a fully-fledged transformation into an erratic collection of middling-to-great Belle & Sebastian songs.

Kantos isn’t all bad, but it is his worst album yet. It’s somehow both too cluttered and more conventional at the same time, and the lyrics, while pretty most of the time, don’t hit as hard as they did on this record’s predecessor.

Off With Her Head is a solid album, well-produced and with occasional moments of brilliance, but ultimately it’s the singer’s blandest effort to date, its best moments offering little more than a bittersweet reminder of what it could have been.

As far as simplistic and generic post-rock goes it’s fantastically inoffensive. Yet with the face of the genre ever changing, God is an Astronaut and their sixth are slowly becoming a relic of the past.