We Are The Night feels bloated and ornate amongst the elegant functionalism of post-millennial club music.

Perhaps the less successful tracks here might have been novel and fresh 15 years ago, but interest in library music and analogue synths was piqued long ago and some of Love 2 sounds like one example of many these days.

They've turned into Morcheeba. A blunt appraisal, yes, but them's the facts.

Evil Urges isn't a bad album by any stretch of the imagination but it still manages to fall well short of expectations when applying the benchmark set by this fine band.

There's precious little of the extravagant muso twiddling and indulgent nonsense that has waylaid the band sometimes in the past.

Crucially, it seems their ability to write a magisterially moving song such as "NYC" or "Obstacle No 1", both from their debut, seems to have abandoned them. In fairness, sonically speaking, this is their best effort yet.

The Black And White Album feels less like a fresh start than the end of something.

By third song, "Faded Beauty Queens", the recipe is already stalling, and the harmonies begin to sound flimsy.

Ethical incontinence notwithstanding, Xzibit is an undeniably charismatic vocalist, with a gift for pure, jolting, testosterone-packed aggression that leads to some rather magnificent moments.

Neither wholly satisfying nor wholly great.

While it's certainly refreshing to hear Oberst refrain from swaddling his emotionally-driven conceits in rock statesman's clothing, much of Conor Oberst seems too comfortably by-the-book to really leap off the page.

Perhaps with a bit more effort converting the jams into actual songs this would have been a worthy jump off as opposed to the album's incandescent highlight. Your forecast then, occasional flashes of brilliance but largely dreary.

This is bound to be praised to the hilt as the Next Big Thing, but rock outfit At The Drive In have only one thing going in their favour - the absence of competition. It's so close to being something beautiful, something to cling on to in these aurally barren times, but it's just so not quite.

It's a mixed bag certainly and while nothing else here scales the heights of the single that's made his name thus far, there are plenty of moments of pop confection steered with a degree of sophistication to suggest he's more than a one trick pony.

Appallingly tasteful.

Large parts of this album sound as if designed specifically to be played to fields full of semi-comatose revellers.

It's blatant commercial product, something for everyone.

They've got one song, basically. It's a fairly good song, comprising driving, rama-lama rhythms and pitch-dark lyrical content; but repeated 10 times in fairly mild variations, it inevitably loses its appeal.

“Anniemal” is a textbook pop album – with all the passion that entails (i.e. none).

Sometimes it's almost too much "classic Springsteen"; too many songs seem like retreads.

Probably makes more sense in a theatre than on your CD player.

A fractional disappointment after 'Emergency Rations', perhaps. But still, Def Jux's reputation as the most consistent hip-hop label in the world circa now remains unsullied.

Perhaps it's no surprise that eighth album Let England Shake is the first for which Harvey does not appear on the sleeve.

Sadly for such weighty themes of trust, betrayal, loneliness, living out of a suitcase and long distance relationships, the lack of true darkness amongst the sweetness and light is a little frustrating.

Attempting such an ambitious concept in an age of diminished attention spans should no doubt be applauded, but overstretching itself in a stab at immortality, "Stadium Arcadium" marks a step backwards from 2002's "By The Way".

There are moments where the mini-pops Joy Division approach hits paydirt, notably on the relentless, single-minded surge of the single, 'Bigger Than Us'. But mostly the trio are at their best when they wriggle free from the colossal shadows they're hiding under.

Their dedication to refined, pretty songs means there's a very narrow scope here that didn't afflict Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest" and which makes proceedings here sound a little wan and wishy-washy after a while.

It's good clean fun, entertaining and inoffensive.