Imitations lacks the visceral punch that Lanegan delivers at his best: it doesn't demand that the listener descend with it in the way that, say, Bubblegum manages to. That's not to say, though, that it's a failure; it's more the case that its emotional palette is a relatively comfortable one.

BBF is a rare example of an album that invites both arty introspection and head nodding. Much like Blunt himself, BBF is not always easy to love. But that makes the eventual rewards even more satisfying.

It is by no means perfect, and at points misjudged, but for the first time since the early 2000s we have a record that runs the gamut of what makes Franz Ferdinand great: it is an album full of character, craft and flair all at once.

The Flower Lane is far from a failed endeavour, but something special has been lost in the graduation from bedroom to studio.

Put simply, this is one of the most exciting live albums to be released in many, many years.

Free Reign is an album finds Clinic pushing themselves in directions that wouldn't have been considered years ago and it's to their credit that they possess both the will and imagination to do so.

With relative ease, What The World Needs Now... can be placed aside the likes of the 80s influenced 2012 release This Is PiL. The second half of the album is the most interesting musically; it displays a set of songs built around cluttered instruments, rhythms and animalistic noises, but cluttered only to the conditioned ears of the modern listener.

It rewards multiple studious listens in order to piece together Vainio's deceptively rich vocabulary, but could equally serve as the soundtrack to an expressionist horror film. As such, it's a hard album to pin down, but trying to do so is an experience in and of itself.

While they’re [Genuine American Girl and You And All Of Your Friends] two of the album's best songs, they, like the previous ten tracks, suffer from not just overproduction and out-of-date musical aesthetics, but also a half-hearted attempt to assert something pure about the rock of yore.

It stands on its own two feet and crucially employs a refinement of ideas that proves that space is indeed deep.

As ever with compilations of almost-lost treasures such as this, it is the certain out of time quality that is its greatest attribute.

While the album itself falls short. The ambition is admirable, but what makes the songs commendable is their refusal to thrive. They are deeply melancholic. There's a focus on Rothman's drug addiction itself rather than the desire to resolve it, a resignation to dying rather than a desire to learn how to live.

Compassion is such an easy listen. The melodies are so cheerful, so simple and memorable, they require absolutely no effort to enjoy.

In more ways than one Hound is the kind of album one sees described as an artist’s masterpiece, but with an already extensive discography covering everything from blues to beats to his name, it’s quite likely Slim’s best is yet to come.

The Get Up Sequences Part One has its moments of unrestrained incandescence, it is true. However, a tremendous melancholy comes gusting through too. ... And it confirms that, for those who wish to splice up their life, The Go! Team are still masters of cut ‘n paste heartache.

After The Disco is an exceptionally successful record filled with the type of uplifting melody we've come to expect from the pair, as well as more direct, clearer lyrics and an overall sharper edge.

Here is a group that doesn't seem to know where it fits; it can't decide whether it wants to rack itself freak-folk, or avant-noise, or post-rock, or even neo-classical. But it also understands that, actually, you don't have to choose.

Although not strikingly different from earlier work, I Am All Your Own appears more terrestrial and less transcendental. This being a refreshing new granting-of-access to his style.

It's a piece of surrealism and absolutely beautiful to listen to.

There is nothing new here, nothing especially innovative either. It’s just an album that consistently hits its target in a magnetic, mesmerizing way, and one that if you let it will swallow you whole.

There is still a lightness of touch to Who Do You Love; however dense the writing gets, no matter how ludicrous and far-reaching in scope, it has enough of a knowing sense of its own bombast to prevent it from becoming po-faced.

Sic Alps, a taut and absorbing listen, appears to have a mission to take conventional beauty and make it something more interesting by fraying its corners and smearing it with a little dirt. There is nothing Sic Alps could have done to create a better, more delicious sweet and sour record.

Phoenix gets the motions nearly right on Bankrupt, but that crucial snap simply isn’t there.

Convenanza regularly dips into a bag of tried and tested moves that are little more than default settings: dubby basslines, plenty of space, echoes, jazzy trumpets that sound like deflating balloons and so on.

The constant zipping and zapping of its final five tracks almost cause the album to become bottom heavy, but thankfully the just-right 'So Cold' and the lovely 'Don't You Love Me' keep it from going completely overboard.

Together with Duke Garwood, on Black Pudding he's created something rich and delicious.

Solitude and/or headphones are the key to The Predicting Machine, another unflashily fine opus from a fellow who's almost cursed, in terms of the praise he gets, by being too reliable.

It's not that the depth isn't there, it's just that the experience is multidimensional enough to bring forth a flatness; a sense of unity which discards dimensions.