All the components are there, Joey Santiago’s guitar work is still impressive, Lovering’s drumming is still vigorous, but the problem is Black Francis himself. The compelling songwriting that completed Pixies is no longer there.

At their best, when not wandering along in a gilded fog--much of This Is All Yours is akin to meandering in a pretty, if tiring, gloam.

Between the dated indie dance and the ballads and the auto-crooned, electronic pop, there are promising, soulful, twinkling instances of intelligent sampling and singing and interesting instrumental interludes.

La Di Da Di however limits the potential for “free-thinking” with a series of stagnant, self-conscious ideas and motifs. Unfortunately, Battles have not mastered the art of repetition on La Di Da Di.

Haze and her production team have creative ideas and the means to realise them on record. They simply distract themselves trying to turn a rapper into a pop star.

An album clearly made by a mercurial talent, but who still sounds at his best quietly knocking out unassuming dancefloor gold.

Disposable lyrics and an overly polished sound doesn’t necessarily mean that this is a bad album, though--it’s not, although it is likely to get lost in the midst of this year’s more thought-provoking and risk-taking albums.

To put not too fine a point on it, Vicissitude is bland.

Alias is by no means a bad album--on the contrary, it highlights the maturity and progression of four highly talented and much loved British musicians--but it’s just not that fun.

It falls into a very similar trap to the band’s last album, which started with a track that sounded promisingly fresh (“The Singer Addresses His Audience”) before immediately lapsing into Decemberists-by-numbers (“Cavalry Captain”).

If you're looking for choice picks that suit your current standing (single / taken / stuck in lockdown lusting) then you'll find what you need - a relatable nature is served up on a silver platter - but a greater understanding of anything other than the above shall not be found.

It’s an aimless, winding record that occasionally stumbles upon greatness, but with the amount of mediocrity, you can’t help feel that the high points are mere accidents.

Jessica Rabbit is the work of a band in stasis, but also one who sound desperate to pull themselves out of it.

The Monsanto Years is another inessential and underpowered Neil Young album to file alongside the likes of 2003's ecological garage rock opera Greendale: good ideas and inspiring ideals grounded by half-baked presentation and paucity of substantial songcraft.

While their sound might indicate that the Icky Blossoms walk the streets at night in search of fresh blood, the overall affect is quite a bit less dramatic.

Sean Carey could really do with pushing himself further than he does at any point on this laurel-resting stopgap release.

We get the usual fan service on discs two and three of this new version. The second CD is a largely charmless collection of odds and ends.

It doesn’t as a whole compete with its first offerings.

Despite strong results in the past, this time these elements have ultimately combined to make a sort of erratic psychedelic porridge; boring in more than a few places, and a bit much for anyone other than the genre's keenest fans.

Too much of Stay Together sounds like it could be an ill-conceived Ricky Wilson solo record.

Constantly waiting for that ever-impending explosion of mind-expanding neo-psychedelic glory, Comfort dissipates feeling hackneyed and burdened by lacklustre platitudes despite the rare flicker of hesitant brilliance.

The key problem with Sing Into My Mouth, though, is that this willingness to go against the grain of the cosy sonic identity that the pair have carved out for themselves is all too rare, and inevitably, more often than not the covers sound uninspiring in that form at best and plain wrong at worst.

Emmanuel and Malay spend so much time creating a sense of space that most of the music is consumed by the vacuum; floating with nowhere to resonate.

Tonally, it falls somewhere between the shoegazey aggression of I Will Be and Only in Dreams’ hazy hooks, but it’s lacking the former’s force of character and the latter’s infectious melodies.

All in all, Imaginary Man is a bit like an early afternoon festival set: a perfectly pleasant, though ultimately forgettable, prelude to something better best enjoyed while lubricating for the headliners with beer.

It’s nice to hear the pair experimenting with their sound and trying to do something new, but it’s unfortunate that the quality of the song writing has seemed to suffer as a result.

While it satisfies the need to move around and proclomate, the end result of V proves hapless as well as frustrating to see because the Bronx have an immeasurable amount of talent--it’s just too bad that this far in, they haven’t managed to harness it entirely and create something more monumental.

New Moon is at times quite captivating and as rowdy as you need it to be, but its weaker moments consistently outshine its brighter ones, leaving the listener with an album half-full of both indelible sonic fury and equally forgettable missteps.