Go Tell Fire to the Mountain and WU LYF by extension soar on how excitingly singular they are; I want nothing more than to love this, just this, forever.

If you've heard the albums it's drawing its material from, you've already got all of those secrets figured out. Ultimately, that renders this album as a novelty of sorts, a release that should only have a footnote in the story of her career rather than its own chapter.

For all of her posturing and ruminations on life, love and other such considerations, you may well ask yourself whether she is merely playing a part and recycling old themes or if she has the experience she so eloquently sings about.

Arch Enemy seem content with resting on their laurels, and while that may please the kind of fans who are upset that In Flames haven't be repackaging Whoracle for the past ten years, it ultimately lacks substance.

Listening to the joyous simplicity inherent in the album's mood, you get the feeling that love, for all its pitfalls, really is the simplest thing in the world to feel; you need only to be inside your house, the city without, the falcons overhead, the days stretching off into the future, and listen.

Where its cool and dynamic at first, by the time the albums over you get the sense that there was too much, too quickly, and something was certainly lost. While it may break away from the hardcore realm, giving these songs more room to grow and expand would have greatly increased the replayability of Parting the Sea beyond the first listen or two.

Until Gibbard can harness this newfound happiness with the kind of lyrical flair his fans are used to, Death Cab remain in danger of being, well, just another indie band.

There is a sweet strand of diversity, subtle or otherwise, permeating the record and points towards the coming together of comfort and talent.

England Keep My Bones finally gets the combination right and stands right alongside Love, Ire and Song as one of Frank Turner's best works.

Much like the average modern-day Playmate, Dirty Work is essentially a manufacturer's dummy: air-brushed; soulless; custom-built to exacting specifications; aesthetically-pleasing but ultimately empty and devoid of any real distinctive character. At the risk of butchering a metaphor, All Time Low are New Found Glory with grotesque, misaligned implants.

Creating such a tightly-knit record is a simple style a myriad of singer-songwriters have lived by, and in that sense Diaper Island feels just as uncompromising, if in a different way, as the equally miserable Blood on the Tracks.

A distinct spirit? Always. Forging new ground? Only in the minds of marketing execs.

These songs all sound like Gaga, but they're more abrasive, less focused, and that's not a good thing.

Like Radiohead and Panda Bear before Bon Iver this year, it's not a problem that Vernon hasn't created music in the same style of the last successful album: the problem is that he isn't able to make that creative jump to a new aesthetic, or direction, successfully at all.

For better or for worse, Torches is a product of the here and now, and who can be mad at Foster the People for seizing it for all its worth? Get it while it lasts, boys.

Sennett's overwhelming perfectionism, his pursuit for the ideal pop song, is just as likely to submerge him in soft rock cliches and painfully obtuse lyricism as it is likely to lead him to an aces country-rock tune that sounds like the best song Fleetwood Mac never made.

Kane may have been better served to load up on his under-rated guitar nous, which too fleetingly beguiles on this ultimately promising solo offering.

I Am Very Far is certainly a more enthralling listen than The Stand Ins was; though it may lack some of the emotional impact of Down the River of Golden Dreams, or especially Black Sheep Boy, the album remains a welcomed addition into the work of a band who commands great quality-control.

Augustana sound bored and weather-beaten to death on their self-titled, and if this is how the true Augustana sounds, then it's fair to say that they're far and away past their prime and could consider calling it quits.

Those songs are products of an ambition that hasn't quite been tamed, but on the majority of Goblin, Tyler genuinely uses his creative freedom to create the fantastic.

The experimentation found on Life Fantastic, for the most part, works rather well within the gypsy circus that is Man Man but even at its best it makes one wonder what it could have sounded like without the meds.

Remember what I said about this band being capable of a classic? Well 'Simple Math' is their first. Just a shame about Simple Math.

It's an album you appreciate not because you have to, but because you want to.

It's not often that a songwriter comes along that not only gives his listeners a chance to view the inner workings of his soul, but is also able to express his own situation so clearly and in a way that resounds so personally to everyone in earshot.

In the glutton of pretty records, With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields presents itself as a merely a needle in the haystack; the likelihood is that it will be lost in the mix, not good enough to be remember, but also not bad enough to be singled-out.

So once more, the Dodos feel fresh, a little bit more thoughtful, and every bit as happy to get us tangled up in ourselves. Of course there's color to No Color. It's just this time there's black and white and grey as well- colors they've never used before.

One where the sum of its parts are greater than the whole. Only including ten tracks, This Modern Glitch is as inconsistent as ever, and could actually be hindered by having less bullets to spray around the target.

So it comes as no surprise that the harmonic progression does not cadence as the listener might expect; the ear wants one more chord, but Pecknold and his backup singers simply end. There's nothing more to say.