There’s a buoyant urgency to proceedings, the kind of detail in the lyrics that let you know here is a person telling you stories of the world as they see them in a way that is fiercely meant.

The band took all the wrong lessons from the success of their last album, and doubled down on the syrup. Turns out too much sugar really can make you sick.

Dry and lacklustre instrumentation does nothing to compensate for an unshakable one-dimensionality.

Blast Off Through The Wicker doesn’t always reach stratospheric heights, but some of its psychedelic freak-outs suggest that Art Feynman is still on an intriguing musical course.

Felt feels slightly repetitive and overlong, but is an interesting and worthwhile effort from a band whose sound continues to mature and improve.

A record made up of excellent songs, with a few great ones chucked in to raise the bar.

Still On My Mind is Dido’s most engaging album to date. It’s her first time trying a style of music that connects multiple genres as well as retaining her original sound and she’s delivered a masterful creation in one take.

Unlike He’s Got the Whole...--and indeed much of the Joan of Arc discography--it’s a stylistically cohesive effort too, primarily consisting of Ausikaitis delivering lilting, honeyed to the point of saccharine vocals over undulating, ambient backdrops.

While The Age of the Understatement's exuberant candescence came from just a few very obvious influences tossed together (and was then pigeonholed as a Scott Walker tribute by the music media), this record ranges wider and finds new pockets of surprise while paradoxically seeming less out-of-the-blue.

Overall, the band have carefully crafted another winning record with just a few tweaks to their regular formula. Maybe not one to win over new fans, but a solid addition to a sparkling oeuvre.

In•ter a•li•a instead sounds vapid and empty, like it's blowing hot air around the room; the band sound like a parody of themselves.

What Hold on to Your Heart really is though, is a lesson in the art of the chorus. Rarely have so many fist-pumping, singalong hooks been squeezed into 40 minutes of music.

Sonic debauchery laced with moments of introspection, The Dare’s debut is worth the hype.

While it may be far slimmer than Ratchet musically, Revelations fills that gap with earnest, heartfelt emotion.

On the whole it finds the sweet spot between chaos and structure, silliness and depth, and it’s a banger.

Ride’s legacy is set in stone, but, in the end, most of This Is Not a Safe Place is not as wildly contentious in its desire to be different. After a strong start, more of that risk would have been welcome.

Deap Lips works best when Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd are in the background, as messy closer There Is Know Right There Is Know Wrong proves, but the fact that they know when to keep themselves there suggests they’ve learned lessons from With a Little Help from My Fwends. An intriguing diversion.

The presence of Jeremy Gara on drums peppers the record with a likeable melodrama that’ll seem familiar to fans of Funeral or Neon Bible, although this particular record requires much closer listening to fully appreciate its charms.

Yeasayer constantly threaten to come out with a startling album; alas, Amen and Goodbye isn’t it.

Everything from funk-inflected bass to smoky brass and even New Jack Swing is represented here. Despite this, sometimes the clash of sounds can feel slightly diluted by some slightly hazy production, including on The Warning, where Robyn’s emotionally-wrought vocals and the melancholy orchestration are dulled by the washed-out beats. Yet, even in these moments, there’s an air of self-assuredness.

In all, after 18 very long years, Damage and Joy is a near-faultless return to form, even if some of these 'new' songs are actually over a decade old.

Parton’s eclectic tastes remain the beating heart of The Go! Team, but in producing a record genuinely representative of the band’s boisterous live shows, he sounds more revitalised than ever.

Curiously what you have here is an album composed by someone with an obvious love of the big band sound, blatantly wearing its influences on its sleeve but heartfelt as all hell.

By its closing tracks though, the relative lack of shade to balance the bubblegum-coloured light can become a bit cloying, the endearing charm of the sugary nature fading slightly. Nevertheless, Laading and Fitzpatrick have still delivered a debut that suggests they’ll be continuing to craft impossibly catchy off-kilter pop for years to come.

Heavy Like a Headache feels like the natural next step and successor to Infancy and Happy Days! Expanding on both to enhance their playfully experimental and yet confident, brooding sound, it strengthens their status as one of Scotland’s most exciting bands.

The problem is that, elsewhere, the album rarely transcends its position as a soundtrack and, after watching the vivid--at times stunning--film it accompanies, listening to Mister Mellow solo feels decidedly less colourful.

The songs are solid enough, particularly Candlelight (a dead ringer for The Sonics) and Follow Me Home, which has the swagger and punch of Van Morrison's Them. If that whole milieu is to your taste, definitely worth seeking out.

It tries to cover too much ground on its pilgrimage to novelty and ends up lost on its way. Journeys have a spirit and a narrative, and this has nothing of the sort.