Where debut EP Summertime! and the über-hyped eponymous first album's songs had an oddly melancholic joyfulness that captured a number of imaginations back in early 2010, here there's a quiet switch to an oddly uplifting melancholy. On the best songs, that is – too many just sound gloomy and dull.

The Saga Continues is lacklustre. At times it ventures into sellout territory. It’s not a terrible album (maybe I’ll add a few tracks to my ‘Chill’ playlist) but it never breaks new ground and it never touches the magic of 36 Chambers. Instead, it settles in a slightly anaemic midpoint between nostalgia and commercial compromise.

The Big Dream is vaguely interesting, but not very interesting.

Pixies have played it straight and stayed in their lane, their once vital weirdness cast into the laundry basket like a vampire costume post Halloween. Head Carrier is 80% classic Pixies. But it turns out the missing 20% is as fundamental as oxygen is to air.

By compartmentalising Emika as it does, DVA leaves a nagging sense that she's still selling herself a little short.

They've always been a subtle unit, resisting obvious moments of catharsis in favour of subtle dynamics, but here they manage the trick that Khanate mastered so effectively and create a tension that derives as much from the fear of silence as it does from the threat of noise.

Honey, when it works at least, is the sound of piecing together the night before: a love letter to not making it home, to the Tequila salt still stuck to your hand, to hands brushing under the cover of the smoke machine. Unfortunately, half of the time, it says precisely nothing and if that unquestionable potential is to be realised, Kathleen Brien has to make a choice.

It sounds ominously worth, but on listening the level of fun is obvious too. Layer upon layer, spoken word singing weaves around carefully crafted atmospheric drum patterns and rudimentary grooves, sounding unpremeditated--spontaneously surreal.

Grinderman 2 RMX provides an enjoyable enough distraction but ultimately this is a collection of material that would have worked better as an EP rather than an album.

Yuck aren't actually terrible, but their second album--and first since the departure of frontman Daniel Blumberg--is just eminently forgettable.

A musical punch-up from start to finish, Goldblade choose their targets well as one blow is delivered after another. You might want to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.

So, this is not an incredible album. But in the context TLC’s legacy- as a goodbye tour to end one of the biggest girl groups of our time--there is still something touching here.

One of the first things that jumps out at the listener, and it's something which persists throughout, is the disconnectedness between Smith and Elena Poulou in the control room, arsing about with daft voices and keyboard squiggles respectively, and the big lads at the back.

The demand for our awe at an accomplished--yet unfinished--triumph is confusing. The feeling each song inspires is indeed that of a religious service, one in which the endless standing up and sitting down leaves one a little exasperated. And fatigued.

On the whole, though, these songs are at their best when grounded in low region trickery: rumbles, clipping sounds, droplets, shudders, judders and all manner of absorbed low freak-uency eeriness, as exhilaratingly creepy as anything offered up by trip-hop's most skilled practitioners.

On its own merits, it's a decent enough record with some interesting tracks on it, even if they sometimes sound like nicely turned B-sides rather than top drawer material.

This excellent record on Manchester's Bird label isn't some generic late adopter's attempt to take on the Moon Wiring Club, rather a genuinely unhinged, unique and deliciously weird pop album.

No amount of street cred can make up for this mostly middling, only intermittently marvellous record.

Dead doesn't so much kill Spectres' songs with these remixes as reanimate them and turn them loose on their creators, and the world.

It is a peculiar little record, but it hangs together very well, and makes a reasonable case for his ability to wring something worthy out of whatever art form he chooses to tackle.

Lynchian undercoat aside...it's basically just a good old massive pop album, which can be a scary thing in its own right: the air of soulless, monolithic power and the unseen presence of shadowy string-pullers etc.

Ersatz GB still trumps most records released this year as, one suspects, The Fall always will.

While we often expect clarity of thought from our favourite lyricists, Wolf's admission that he doesn't hold all the answers makes these songs all the more relatable and poignant.

There's strange stuff here even by the none-stranger Black Dice's standards. But again it's more purposeful and propulsive than that appearing on their previous albums.

Chances are that after the initial thrill has gone, you'll be reaching for Indie Cindy less frequently than Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, more than Trompe Le Monde and about the same as Bossanova and that's not a bad return to the fray by any measure.

Almost to a man (there's the odd fail, but they're near misses not massive stinkers) the remix team delivers, transforming the borrowed materials into something not better, but of equal merit.

All too often Paralytic Stalks feels like an attempt to assume the role of indie-pop's Steve Vai by competitively crushing structural formats underfoot until there's nothing left but dusty granules.

Good intentions, interesting sounds, and a handful of great songs; compromised by an inflexible house style. It makes listening to the album from start to finish an experience that is occasionally rewarding – especially with a decent set of headphones – but ultimately, well … trying.