There are some fine songs on Natural History, which deserve better than being presented as if they were museum exhibits.

Yet, something's missing. An emotional engagement, perhaps, because they sometimes seem positively embarrassed to play from the heart.

Despite their attempts to court the teenagers across the land, it's questionable whether this music has enough quality, variety and ingenuity to truly compete with others who have emerged from the talent hotbed of south Wales, let alone the rest of the world.

This Stockton-on-Tees septet's stoic, gritty, blue-collar sound, somewhere between rock, soul and folk, between those old stalwarts "rebel rock" and "dad rock."

Despite the contemporary co-writes, in an age where Take That work with Stuart Price and Nicola Roberts embraces Diplo's electro cool, this album comes across as a selection of competent B sides surrounding the fantastic Starlight.

Stone packs all the power you expect, but her control misfires enough for some of these tracks to never quite click as they might.

It's dumb for sure, but knowingly so, and its incessantly upbeat vibes do provide something of a lift.

Robbins' first foray into music is a misstep compared to his successful acting career.

She sings prettily enough, but lacks the punch that the very best artists in this very crowded market possess.

Etiolation and enervation were always key to chillwave/glo-fi's appeal, but this is just too pallid, too washed-out.

That Panic of Girls gives way from innovation to imitation is regrettable--but in an era in which bands are content to simply wheel out their back catalogue in return for a fat pay check, it's admirable that Blondie are still here and still looking forward, even if only fleetingly.

In the end, it's a matter of taste. If you can handle a lot of wacky in your pop music, there's a lovely album here waiting for you. If not, Corinne Bailey Rae is over there.

Player Piano is a musical jacket potato: satisfying but never amazing.

Martin is just too instinctively amiable to muster the passionate furies that animate the best of his genre, and too quick to deflate whatever momentum he does gather with a joke.

As it stands, Green has moved forward--or at least sideways--with each of his three City and Colour albums. But all in all, it's difficult to call Little Hell anything much more than nice.

With the exception of the always inventive playing of guitarist Wes Borland, here Limp Bizkit sound like a band whose time has passed. Given that this is a group that boorishly exemplified the empty materialism and crass self-centredness that lurked at nu-metal's core, this is surely no bad thing.

Whatever your take on the chillwave phenomenon--that brand of overexposed, Polaroid pop mining childhood memories kick-started (arguably) by Animal Collective's influential album Merriweather Post Pavilion--it's a conversation that's happened, and Equatorial Ultravox does little to further the debate.

If you can be persuaded to root around for long enough you might occasionally bump into the odd moment that made Thee Oh Sees' brilliant Help album of 2009, or 2010's lopsided Warm Slime, so enjoyable – slapdash songwriting, slovenly hooks and prurient flights of fancy.

There is plenty on Golden Xplosion to suggest that Neset is well-equipped to be massive in the future, provided he can build on the strengths of this album and avoid repeating its worst excesses.

That it's the track here [Ice cream] that most closely resembles Battles with Braxton in the fold is evidence enough that this band is missing a vital organ. Sadly, it would appear to be the heart.

It's a super-confident debut breadth-wise, but a misfire in terms of depth--it stretches too far and ends up light on substance and personality.

Tennis may have sailed a great distance to bring about the inspiration for Cape Dory, but a similarly epic voyage of composition would have yielded far better results here. As it stands, it's remarkably unremarkable.

The production--by chart-grabbing Fraser T Smith (James Morrison, Taio Cruz, Cee-Lo)--can only bring so much depth or variety to unadventurous songs which are bellowed and wailed with all the subtlety of Florence Welch giving birth to a rhino.

Twin Atlantic no longer stand out enough from the host of similar power-pop and emo acts that have flooded the airwaves in recent years, and Free is depressingly characterised by unimaginative, one-paced hollers like The Ghost of Eddie and Time For You to Stand Up.

Marley fanatics will surely welcome the appearance of this release, but the fact of the matter is that it pales in comparison to the other live material already available; for a truly representative artefact, stick to Live!, Babylon by Bus, or Live at the Roxy.

Eventually, their self-indulgence completely loses the listener. No matter how hard one might try to love this album--and one can try very hard--there's only disappointment at what could have been.

The band struggles to dredge up any sort of sparkle, no matter how finely-forged the hook.

It opens the door to tantalising, exciting possibilities, but it's also fragmented, distracted and indulgent.