While the second release may not live up to the first, it’s hard not to hope for a third.

The intensity may curtail towards the end, but the band more than make up for it with an album that has a core of bulldozer guitar lines and assaulting drums, all of which carry with them the promise of the best house party you’ve ever been to.

I Go Missing In My Sleep is certainly short on instant reward, paying out higher dividends with repeated and closer listens. While there are portions where the rewards don’t feel like they justify the effort, Wilsen has thrust their own marker in the sand with this debut and given themselves a wealth of directions in which to pivot toward for the future.

It is not all perfect. Here and there, Mould switches onto autopilot and ends up filling up dead space in songs with half-arsed, Foo Fighters-ish powerchord passages, and the less said about the awful AOR dud “Let the Beauty Be” the better, But these moments are few and far between, with the bulk of the album consisting of straightforward, accomplished rock songs with enough muscle to anchor their poppy choruses and prevent them from floating off into Green Day territory.

It’s densely packed but never oppressive and yet also feels uninquisitive enough not to delve too deeply or for too long.

Here we have him boldly stating his desires, aligning himself with our baser nature. Whether this is a sign of a lack of subtlety or a brave forward step is, of course, up for debate but that clash of the brutal and the human, the savage and the sensual is certainly compelling.

This is a lovely, lovely piece of work from a band that are still to produce a dud.

Poster Girl excels in its creativity, riffing on familiar pop music tropes to make fun and surprising tracks.

Consistently intriguing and occasionally glorious, Not Real feels like a genuine step forward.

Going it alone might not have been the most obvious next step for Pierce, however he has managed to maintain a catchy and consistent sound that justifies that decision.

Her earnestness makes for both difficult and comforting listening, as she vocalises some fairly morbid tales while offering comradeship through the strife.

A successful experiment, a great record in its own right, and (hopefully) a great primer for a subtly evolved next effort.

If you want audio gastronomy, go elsewhere. If, however, you just want some good ol’ dirty pop, pull up a chair and get stuck in.

This album is diverse, thoughtful and – most importantly – rewarding. It’s not the strongest work of Fucked Up’s career - but it may very well be the most thrilling.

Fratti’s arrangements tiptoe around Orcutt’s jagged idiosyncrasies, creating a melodically rich, soothing yet robustly physical sound that often resembles chamber music that happens to have a healthy lining of dirt under its nails, and which manages to sound simultaneously unvarnished in its uncluttered directness and nuanced in its alluring detail.

Instead of striving towards a perceived notion of happiness, Soft Landing is simply the crescendoing finale of a journey towards contentment.

Taking place in a world that requires you to understand the minutiae and dichotomy of love – where heroes and villains coexist – without this prerequisite knowledge, by the end of the flickering film, it may feel like a one-trick pony. However, if you've felt the cold light of day on you after your own divine tussle with Cupid, then this album will gently offer aid.

Whereas many of Lost & Found’s tracks felt stripped to their bare bones, most of the tracks here feel built from the ground up.

This is a stepping stone towards a new direction, and although it’s stunning in places, it’s not a triumphant renaissance.

An album that makes no apologies about its struggles, but it’s one of many moments that confirms Cara’s journey is as authentic as it is unpredictable.

Sincerely, Future Pollution continues to raise the band’s crooked bar.

Ironically it improves with age, so pop it on little and often--most tracks are around 90 seconds anyway--and let it grow on you.

The Nextwave Sessions is five tracks from a band who’ve etched their mark on the UK music scene, stretching their sound whilst still occasionally snapping back to what made them so appealing eight years ago.

Again, this is no ordinary breakup record; it's a turbulent reflection full of complexity pointing toward hope – that farewells don't have to end in goodbye but could evolve into something deeper and more meaningful.

Drawing on powerpop, new wave and girl group harmonies, this record is full of engaging tunes, doe-eyed dedications and wry witticisms.

It shows that Deerhunter are every bit capable of making a fully inclusive, autobiographical, all-american, classic rock album and that would be a journey worth watching--from outcast weirdos to national treasures.

The only issue for this record is that thereafter it meanders far too much and those lyrics that you loved at the beginning you begin resenting at the end as it almost becomes a caricature of itself. ... That doesn’t stop it being something great to chew on. Uppers is a great place to start and should rubber stamp TV Priest as one of, if not your favorite new act.

the New York duo have shown that they indeed own that genre because well, it’s their own genre. Thankfully, the same feelings are still mustered with new offering Magnifique--and then some.