The title track, Cruel World, is a brilliantly deceptive slice of sunshine. .... Elsewhere, the album is quieter and less sure footed.

The duo commit to a kind of 90s-coded insouciance: lethargic vocals draped over a club-ready chassis and an occasionally unconvincing refusal to try too hard. For a band sold as the city’s next great party-starters, a lot of 'Ö' feels oddly undercooked.

It sounds uniformly excellent – often radiantly sunny – but for an album concerned with wheel-spinning, it spends a lot of time doing exactly that.

Blunt colloquialisms can detract from philosophical musings, and sunny chords sometimes overshadow introspective lyrics.

There isn’t much depth to the lyrics. This album is about feel. ... For once this is a Ladytron album to listen to in the sunshine.

cannibal world’s breakbeats, a not unfamiliar sound for Nothing, brings them into the lineage of the bands – TAGABOW, forever ☆ – doing this well (better, even) now. However, the record cocoons into the kind of soft strummed ballads that a young Neil Halstead would write about pain and heartbreak in a Welsh cottage.

The album sways more into the meandering rather than the conclusive – perhaps an observation on the unpredictability of life itself, but nevertheless leaving things feeling somewhat stunted.

Dorji remains a superb judge of when to introduce melody into the haze, but for a lot of its runtime you can’t help but wish for more.

It sometimes roars to life, while other tracks present a flat wall of noise. Gina Was emerges as the album’s most musically complete moment, showing what they can do when it all comes together.

On their underrated Stumpwork though, they found surprising ways to provide setting, but their and Cate Le Bon’s production choices here are mostly safe. The album’s second side starts meaner, muddying the palette nicely, while the shuffling, pretty I Need You’s electronic elements are a breath of fresh air.

The record is at its best when it retains the sense of adventure that has defined their earlier work.

For newcomers, it may feel too uniform to stand out. But for longtime fans, Not For Lack of Trying offers cosy autumnal listening and a continued exploration of dodie’s style.

Most of the songs have the intensity of an opener, diluting their power and impeccable production; by the end, the drops and tonal shifts don’t hit as surprises.

Carpenter is at both her best and her worst when she leans into humour, which is threaded throughout the record. It’s a continuation of what’s made her so memorable in the past: the campy innuendo of Bed Chem’s 'come right on me… I mean camaraderie' or her viral 'have you ever tried this one?' sex position-asides on tour. Here, that same instinct bubbles up everywhere; sometimes brilliantly, sometimes too much.

Despite tracks expressing feelings of complicated relationship, the Royel Otis signature feel-good indie sound remains beautifully uncomplicated.

Guitar is undoubtedly a pleasant listen and a fine addition to the DeMarco canon, if unlikely to go down as a classic.

Ultimately, Flux is an elegant yet frustrating album: meticulously shaped, impeccably polished yet feeling distinctly like the product of conceptual indifference at best.

It’s strange then that in its opening stages it feels so lifeless. .... Then there’s the one-two of immaculate singles Girlie-Pop! and S.M.O., and it’s like the record has put its finger in a plug socket.

It was just a few years ago where her calling card was that distinctive wailing falsetto, one that could crash into a ragged growl in a moment's notice. It's noticeably absent on a record being held from anonymity by a single safeguard.

It ["Black Orpheus"] is powerful, but in truth, it's the one track that doesn't feel unfinished, as Barnes' voice finally rises above the overwhelming mix that he's buried under throughout the album.

Moments of rock brilliance are scarce. Your Take On, with dissonant 60s-esque guitars and talk-singing, is a jolt from whisper-soft vocals surrounding 2022’s Inner World Peace. Later tracks see development sacrificed for quantity. Despite treading familiar territory, Different Talking’s soothing melodies are tailor-made to accompany life's quiet corners.

While some tracks like Panpsych and Eternal Return remain lost at sea – the latter's lurching tempo is a bit of an auditory mess – KGLW's experimentation with brass, strings, and woodwind definitely hits more than it misses. Drawing together calamity and fortune in a novel way, 15 years in, Phantom Island shows a band still having fun making music together.

Her voice remains gorgeous, but tracks like Banit and Elnadaha never lift beyond a plod; never seizing in the way you know her work can.

Overall, Black Hole Superette contains a number of fun and novel songs delivered with a remarkably detailed writing style. What really lets the project down is a lack of variety across an overly long tracklist.

Even in Arcadia offers a window into the band’s psyche, while keeping audiences at arm’s length while inviting them to lose themselves in its emotional depths.

Things start promisingly on opener Special, with the equally rip-roaring Fantasy shortly after. The problems emerge in the album's latter half, starting from the latest single Tonight, which feels sadly very safe and leads to songs that wouldn't feel out of place on an early 2000s generic pop-punk album.

Bunky Becky Birthday Boy is a return to the immediacy that made Sleigh Bells’ name – but you wonder whether they had to sacrifice quite so much of the nuance of their last couple of albums in the process.

It's to Dacus's credit that Forever is a Feeling still feels grounded in the same raw emotions and subtle details that have rightly made her a star. That said, there is a certain amount of playing it safe.