[Zoo will piss you off if you think] their Fugaziish formative albums are sacrosanct and that any deviation voids them in the eyes of The Living Christ Our Lord Henry Rollins. Two, you hate loud noises.

Their LP betrays nothing other than attention to detail, enviable knowledge of their musical history and the ability to chisel hunks of belligerent punk that could revitalise the genre.

Combining moments of instrumental grandeur with sections so stripped-back they verge on silence, Watson delivers the perfect summer evening soundtrack.

Don’t Forget is just possible to enjoy. But only in mod-eration, of course.

It's the freakier corners here that shine bright like neon.

Ultimately, though, such moments [eight-minute behemoth 'Rolling Out' and 'Free Action''s endless harping on a major seventh chord] of purgatory only make tracks like the sweetly-countrified title track and the blissful 'Trails' sound more like some kind of heaven.

'Here Come The Bombs' is a sublime first solo effort.

Their kings of the beach crown may have slipped a little nowadays, but Wavves still offer plenty of no-frills fun.

There's absolutely no attempt to innovate, but it's not a huge problem when the tunes are as sweetly and simply put together as this. [Jan 2013, p.62]

The scale [on The 2nd Law] is such that you have to stand back in a kind of addled awe. Much in the same way that you might regard a 75ft-high luminous pink pissing flamingo water feature; you have to admire the size of the ambition and the craftsmanship, even if it's not something you'd necessarily want at your own house.

Ester is very much an individualist work.

When it works, it’s brilliant.... But at times Caramel feels undercooked.

It may be a skip away from the processes they know best but, in 'In Time To Voices', Blood Red Shoes find fresh invention.

There are moments of weightlessness and beauty here.

It's largely uninspired and generic dance music, all industrialised dystopia and insouciant dehumanisation, making U&I an often prosaic return.

While Dry The River stick resolutely--and somewhat predictably--to their 'start quiet, build to a stomping ending' mantra throughout, Shallow Bed is an uplifting debut.

At his best, Oberhofer packs emotional punches in the maniacal vocals of 'I Could Go', underscored by proggy synths, billowing flutes and a chorus that stomps around like a giant drunk toddler. Somehow, Oberhofer's melodrama makes getting dumped sound fun. If only he could keep it up over a whole album...

This is just the latest in a series of EPs from the Philadelphian, though some may quibble it’s light on original material.

Magic free and generally shapeless, TEEN have some real growing up to do.

An album of wonderful surrealism.

Occasionally it's beautiful--the acoustic breakdown in 'Thoughts' is unexpectedly sublime--and often beguiling.

Whatever their reference points, Friends always end up sounding like Friends: now but new wavey, cool but catchy, spare but packed with odd sonic squiggles.

Mostly, though, the music on Sistrionix is plain bad.

Occasional cringe-inducing lyrics aside, 'Dry Land Is Not A Myth' gets everything bang on.

For now it’s still deliciously entertaining.

Menace Beach may have their sonic ingredients already established, but the result is even better than the sum of their parts.

The band's fifth full-length is a sluggish drone of guitars so muddy they sound like they were recorded in a bog married to pseudo-spiritual waffling from singer Dave Heumann.

Surrounding himself with talent that far surpasses his own doesn't hide the weakness of many of these tracks.