Yeah Right’s dual interests in songwriting and guitar explorations end up being its greatest strength.

All in all, Two-Way Mirror is a good but flawed album, with plenty of things to excite, but a few things that can disappoint.

All things considered, this EP seems to be breeding ground for experimentation and possibly be what's to come from a second LP.

If you can forgive Barnes' very unfortunate excursions into hip-hop and overlook what is hopefully the last few Georgie Fruit guest spots, you'll be amazed at the range of sounds that the band manages to successfully explore here.

New Epoch, Goth-Trad has adopted a patience, openness and attention to detail that feels indebted to the more intricacy-focused realms of bass music and techno, but retains the sweaty, oxidized exhalations of muscled jungle rhythms.

As much as Mice Parade’s previous releases seemed to be insular statements, Candela is simply stretched too thin, with too little of Pierce himself in the music.

Side B is not a total miss though, nor even a miss at all. Once Mathers stumbles through this opening salvo and the awkward bits of “Tone Deaf”, the album settles into a comfortable space, and even becomes enjoyable.

An ambitious concept, but not fully executed, Top Ten Hits Of The End Of The World is stuck somewhere in-between.

It does sound a lot like oOoOO and under scrutiny with A-B comparisons, Our Loving Is Hurting Us is pretty starkly more of the same.

The album as a whole isn't flawless, yet by sounding utterly enchanting during its climax it leaves a listener feeling genuinely touched. From a such legendary band, you could ask for nothing more.

It's when I keep in mind the idea of Pull It Together being an album for her daughter that I enjoy the album most, as it's in this light that it sounds at its most charming and likeable.

The music on This Is Another Life isn’t the kind that boasts colour, or even deep and dark hues, but rather is full of big strokes of dull greys.

Off the Record, despite a few promising tracks, never provides a strong enough reason for listeners to do anything but go back and admire what he accomplished with Kraftwerk.

Neither cold enough to make a disquieting impression nor warm enough to connect with the listener the way the artist’s own A Strangely Isolated Place or, hell, Amber did.

Let us hope this isn't a flash-in-the-pan success and that subsequent releases are just as good.

This is one of those albums to throw on and leave on while you accomplish something: it won't demand too much of your attention, but none of it will bore you.

As it stands, Beak & Claw gets an A for effort but considerably lower marks for execution.

So while it displays a more mature and focused sound for The Drums, the album eventually crumbles beneath the weight of its influential stilts.

Despite a couple speed bumps, Dross Glop is as solid of a collaborative remix album as you're going to find.

In The Cool Of The Day sounds like an intimate affair, like Moore has called up his friends and invited them over to the studio upon finding the Steinway piano.

Although this may be a relative disappointment it should not be looked at as the start of a decline, but merely a curiosity in the collection.

These six instrumentals are pleasant if not pretty in the usual way an Andrew Bird instrumental track might be.

Where at their best, Gardens & Villa may recall the harmonies of Local Natives and the hazy qualities of The Walkmen, they are clearly not (yet) at the level of either of those bands.

He has this impeccable talent when it comes to picking the right sounds to liquidize his voice, even if that tends to muddy what he’s actually singing. It’s a shame that this time around Greene wants to distance himself from his two best records and early EPs, but Purple Noon is nonetheless an improvement over Mister Mellow because it brings most of what we enjoyed about his early work back – even if it’s not as heavily emphasized.

It’s surprisingly how unaffecting and mediocre most of it is.

All in all, the album is an above average collection for a band well past their expected use-by date; and with new blood injected into them, a world tour booked, and promises that they'll continue writing on tour, they don't seem to be stopping any time soon. This could be the beginning for a highly successful era of the band.

The Mother Stone is a stroke of real promise. With its harrowing peaks of dramatized catharsis and musical excursions that recall rock greats – yet look deep into a dark and obscure abyss – Jones’ record keeps audiences at the edges of their seats. If he can be reeled in to gather his thoughts more concisely, the sky is the limit.

Thematic speculation aside Green has managed, more simply to write a compelling collection of guitar pop songs.

If they stick to the melodic folk at the core of their best songs, that fateful open-mic night could be the beginning of something really great.

What this results in is an album that is just as frequently successful as it is frustrating.

Sure, they may borderline on gimmick at times, but Born To Die has its own sound, and that is more than we can say about a lot of music that is presently being released.

Mumps takes a little while to sink in in a different way to previous albums.

Though Mr. Impossible is their most accessible work to date, it's still unmistakably Black Dice.

Though freer than the critically acclaimed Ungodly Hour, it is also less focused. Her performance rises to greater heights, but her music doesn’t always rise with her. Still, it is a work laden with potential.

Blessed with an old-fashioned FM radio charm, Here is a worthy follow-up.

Barnes has definitely taken a step in right direction.

The electronic approach doesn’t work for every song, and a little more humanity and ambience would have been charming, but the appeal of the whole grows as nuances reveal themselves with repeated listens.

With this mixed bag he's likely cemented his reputation as a MC that was blessed with a sack of classic beats for his debut, now just a rapper like the rest of 'em.

It just runs over half an hour, but time slips away when you’re inside it, wandering about.

Consistently being an upbeat adult isn't exactly an easy thing to do and at least here the band show that they can mature without having to completely forget who they once were.

Ripe for radio play it may never see, Spine Hits is a neutral but enjoyable record for the impending days of sun and so-what.

All Of Us, Together isn't an attempt to disown his early work and roots. Jamison just made the record he felt like making, and that's why it so easily matches his best material.

There are good ideas scattered about on the record, but when you have to pass through several minutes of cacophonous effects and layers of sound, it can get a little exhausting.

The version the band have made is still a solid, if not rather good, Kaiser Chiefs album. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

Ritual is an enthralling album, highlighting a band flexing their musical muscles, trying to grow and add new sounds to their existing palette.

The album's top heavy, and its finest moments come when T.I.'s able to look past himself, whether it be to attack the legal or education system. The rest is frustratingly mixed.

Much like their genre, Clock Opera's music is nothing new, but has charming roots.

Absolutely perfect, sun-soaked pop.

Raekwon returns with material to please both generations of his fans.

There's a great EP's worth of material hiding within Replicants, and I wish it had stayed that way.

Guaranteed both to amuse and to confuse, Ten$ion is a masterpiece of kitsch: an intently provocative, tongue-in-cheek rave-rap record, by a cryptic performance art group.

The levels of electronics that come in and out subtly, but skilfully, on the album's best songs are an indication of how much time Jason Drake has put into them. It's just a shame that this shines light more intensely on the songs where he didn't.

Who knows whether the notoriously megalomaniacal Jackson would approve of this album-people on both sides of that argument have valid points-but as a start-to-finish collection of songs it's more enjoyable and less filler-stuffed than anything he's released since Bad, a minor miracle given the circumstances.

There is no common thread, no thematic continuity and no real obvious reason behind any decision-making. It's an EP that is bound to raise the age-old philosophical question, "What is an EP for?"