On Abomination there’s a more cohesive sense of vulnerability even contemplation that the attention-seeking initial EP songs clamoured for so brazenly.

Overall though, this still feels like a missed opportunity; a more inspired roll call of contributors could have pushed Song Reader into essential listening territory. As it is, fans might well get more out of playing these songs than listening to them. Then again, that was always the point.

Deep In The Iris feels like something of a sidestep for the band, a digression that toys with candour while still being dominated by a carefully calculated instrumental palette. Overall, their song structures are more concise than they’ve ever been, and they demonstrate an increasing willingness to draw from popular paradigms.

YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING is by far the band’s most straightforward record. This isn’t to say however they have lost what makes them one of the most progressive bands around; sonic textures still overlay collages of obscure samples, whilst the method of individual members writing separate streams of consciousness verses before coming together to record still creates enviable levels of lyrical surrealism.

The Murder Capital’s first record is a despairingly indulgent listen, but a powerful beginning from a band that promise to bring the passion of emotion to a genre.

Pale Horses stands as a testament that it will be a good while before brothers Weiss and co. are long gone.

Super is a grower--a brave rejection of pipe and slippers, embracing the mythical dance floor with admirably vacuous experimentation, even if it mines the mid-nineties, when dance music grew least interesting.

I quit shows that HAIM will always make good music, and while this record doesn’t radically shift the formula, it reinforces their strengths: thoughtful songwriting, tight production, and seamless cohesion as a trio.

If The Baby is the audacious younger sibling, then Scout is the more modest elder. ... It is indie rock that is at one moment huge and soaring, the next breathtakingly intimate. Delivering remarkably visceral songs, she is opening the window into a clear view of what will surely be a great and long-lasting career.

Promising and full of potential, the boys have delivered and exceeded expectations, it’s safe to say that their intoxicating indie rock cuts are here to stay.

In the end, few of the songs here approach the heights promised by his debut. But Scott, still just twenty-two, deserves the time and the encouragement to develop what is very clearly a unique voice.

On this Deluxe Edition, remixes fill out the majority of the extra material.... Yet in a way, it points to the downside of the album, and the fact that sometimes the Compass Point All Stars can steer away from Jones’ dynamic connection between an audience and herself.

The album is full of high-energy, highly-infectious dance numbers--in a way that demands frequently radio play, big-budget festival spots, distasteful Kesha collaborations, and another five year break between this and album #3.

Lookout Low is brought to a mellow ending with slow rock song “Sunken II”. The album as a whole has to be Twin Peaks’ most diverse, musically explorative and mature album yet, leaving fans with curiosity and excitement about where the band will go from here.

If Half-Light feels a touch scattershot, it’s likely because it’s the result of years of his creative energy being pent-up on the road with the band when he’d have much rather been at home in the studio, and it doesn’t dilute the emotional resonance of his best lyrics here, which are a world away from the coy collegiate that Koenig presents as.

The simple moments are offset by grander, more exciting ones.

Dove is an album of texture--there is nothing as immediate as “Feed The Tree” or any of Star’s off-kilter, head-rush singles and there is nothing as hooky and bright as King’s “Superconnected”--there are layers and copious amounts of digging involved here.

It's all a bit too safe. Nothing feels unexpected. Nothing feels like a step forward. Everything Else Has Gone Wrong is lodged sonically somewhere between the sound of the last two albums, but lacking the freshness both possessed at the time.

Even though everything that Ultimate Painting have to offer has been heard before, the richness of their chosen source material- so utterly packed with hooks- puts them onto a winner.

Uniform Distortion may be the most straightforward sounding a set of Jim James songs has ever released, but they’ve somehow absorbed the distortion of today’s world and turned it into something we can all make sense of, and in which we can seek some solace.

It retains a surprising amount of individuality for an album almost certainly destined for the top of the charts. And, though it might well feel a little samey in it's early stages, the final half more than makes up for it.

Remember The Humans only hints at past glories, but it's a welcome reminder of why Broken Social Scene endeared themselves to us in the first place.

Ed Harcourt too seems to be dealing with a few demons of his own on Back Into The Woods, but this collection of world-weary songs also beats with a poetic heart of longing.

Short though this may be, it’s nothing if not meticulous.

This third full-length is enjoyable as a standalone too, but probably more so with the added context.

If you like your summer pop to keep you on your toes then this is definitely for you. Otherwise this is an impressively ambitious if somewhat misguided debut from a band well worth keeping tabs on.

With how much groundwork they’ve already laid, Friko can afford to conduct themselves more lightly this time, but there are promises from their introduction that we’re still waiting for.

Doused in the kind of mysticism that drenched the original psych scene, oblique lyrics about being the sun and a cascading approach to influences, Levitation still manages to retain a lot of the expansive wonder that so much modern psych has neglected.