And The Wave Has Two Sides may be severely front-loaded, but it sees ON AN ON offer up a handful of songs that appear to be a genuine attempt to take a stride towards some sort of commercial success. Currently however, the misses outnumber the hits.

Whether or not Joan of Arc are intentionally pulling back from some of the density of He’s Got the Whole, a bit too much space leaves stretches of 1984 less than solid in the process.

The LP is constructed, played and sung with acute skill, but all done without a hint of pizzazz, little colour, vibrancy or peculiarities--it's all a lackadaisical tumble of synth and guitar.

Love Frequency isn’t a terrible album, but at times it does feel terribly unimaginative.

It at least proves that Trail of Dead are by no means a spent creative force, but they’re going to have to try harder to recapture the genuinely visceral energy of their classic records if they’re ever going to reach beyond their own fanbase again.

It’s playful, dark, and produced well enough to settle the most pedantic of audiophiles. It’s clear, however, that putting meaning to Matmos’ sounds here only rehashes tired ideas of neotribalism and criticisms of late-capitalism.

Something Shines is a continuation of that frustration: so many wonderful moments let down by times where it sounds like Laetitia Sadier just isn’t completely focused, meaning it’s a record that’s okay, but one that could have been great.

It takes the form of a vanity project rather than a perceptive communication between artist and listener.

It’s hard to judge if the album has simply missed its mark or, as I suspect, he appears to have lost the enthusiasm and imagination with which he approached his first, vastly superior effort.

Her world beats obvious veneer while her crack at electronica too half-baked to portray as much more than Pro Tools tinkering, even with her ballyhooed use of Clams Casino behind the board.

This feels somehow lower-key (less in-your-face) than the other two, and it feels much more cohesive as a result. ... The main problem with Doom Days: the more you put into it, the less you get out.

The album’s been in gestation for two years, and yet with a few exceptions the ten songs here sound like offcuts. It’s not that Fuse is actually that bad – but it feels like a futile exercise, a series of turns down paths which don’t go anywhere.

Because the Internet, like Camp before it, fails to bring the sparkle that Glover has displayed in his comedy writing to his music; where his debut was crude, cartoonish and silly, this effort is faux-reflective, misguided and ultimately collapses under the weight of a concept that’s almost impossible to make sense of.

While it’s likely to be the most enthusiastic record you hear all year, Yes, It’s True is probably the band’s weakest album yet.

It’s personal--perhaps too much so--in that it can be inaccessible and/or devoid of meaning outside of the immediacy of her heart. But then it doesn’t feel like a self-indulgent collection; there’s a sincerity to her endeavours that endear you to the album despite it’s abundance of misgivings.

As this band is essentially a bunch of like-minded friends getting together, they clearly don’t have any worries about how this record is going to be received. Perhaps they’re resting on the laurels of legendary past projects, but this record neither breaks new ground nor successfully exploits the flow of an old formula.

He’s still figuring out the transition out of his remix artist phase, but enough works on his debut to show that there’s hope for the future.

It would be easier if this album were bad, which it isn’t: it’s a competent, often fairly enjoyable set of performances. But as neither good Springsteen nor good popular soul, it’s likely to fade out of most listeners’ memories long before the final track drifts off into nothingness.

The renewed cohesion and collaboration may have saved the band during this album’s recording process, airing grievances and settling put-off tensions, but the resulting homogeny of their sound lacks real bite and feels muddied.

Although it's great to hear the forever prodigy in a better headspace, more mature and precise with his words and emotions, it was the youthful messiness echoed in past efforts that made King Krule far more intriguing than what listeners will experience under the lingering gloom of Space Heavy.

The Unsemble is an album that sounds like it was phoned in from a bunch of guys who clearly think they just have to turn up to the studio and the magic will flow instantly from the fingers of these master craftsmen.

Sadly, what should have been a triumphant return ends up being as forgettable as the time of year of its release. It’s a middling album birthed in a middling, gloomy time of year without much joy to offer. Not even a proper chuckle.

As great as the album’s opening four songs might be, they hardly break new ground for the Felices.

For an album which so clearly sells itself as a capital C concept Album, the narrative is indecipherable; each track dropping a handful of new character names, and the final song seems to give up on it completely. Tillman is a fantastic songwriter, and so some of the new material is gold regardless.

This record utilizes straightforward folk-rock with understated string and brass accompaniments, mostly stripped of the whimsical music box quirks of yesteryear.

Make no mistake, this is difficult to listen to. You will not be rewarded for multiple listens. It is what it is. It’s not enough, by a mile. West has clearly made this for himself first, and indulgence is deeply ingrained into the concept.

Ultimately, their third record doesn't show MSTRKRFT to be master craftsmen.

Dense, uneasy psychedelia dominates, and although this isn’t a product of wilfully inaccessible experimentation, neither does it contain much in the way of instant melodies and conventional song structures.