So yadda yadda yadda, a best of isn't as worthwhile as a group's actual albums, what a shocker.

He's effectively run aground in the middle of the alt-rap landscape.

At most, half the songs on this album are capable of successfully fusing Finn’s compelling narratives with rather less than impressive instrumentation for an effect that’s worth some merit. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t ‘hold’ for the remainder.

Struggles to offer the same level of excitement that previous Jaxx albums provided.

This is an essential purchase for any Rancid fan.

Inevitably, it’s a mixed bunch of tracks taken out of context without the pictures to go with the sounds.

All the essential elements of greatness are here in some small form or other, but Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s time is not now.

It is a great record, at times. But when the elements don’t quite chime it suffers.

A little too homogenous to warrant many a repeat listen.

Overall, Wake Up The Nation isn't a bad record, but it can be a bovine test of endurance, at least if one is to devour all sixteen tracks in one sitting. Had the quality control officers had the guts to stand up to its creator in chief, this could have been an endearing re-affirmation.

It's a well recorded, well played effort, and it nestles into genre expectation very nicely. But weirdly, with one extremely notable exception, the songs are predictable and average.

Its great moments really are great, and shouldn’t be underestimated. However, when an album is bookended between two potential song of the year contenders with little to grasp in between, it’s difficult to really get too invested in this record.

You know those radio jingles in which they stick a bunch of current tunes into a big-beat mess? This has the same effect – a whizzbang confectionary, serving more to advertise the band’s back catalogue than to be any kind of durable document.

Gargoyle is missing the emotive, musical draw that makes Langegan the tear-jerking, blues-poet that he really is.

Wounded Rhymes is an album that has not escaped unscathed from its wounds.

It is, ultimately, an unimaginative album from a promising band. Better records may lie ahead for them, but for now they will struggle to reach far beyond their existing fanbase.

So slick is the production and so smooth is the transition from one moment to the next that Andorra suffers from an apparent reluctance to take us by the scruff of the neck and rattle us out of our mental Laconia.

Not once does Overpowered really drag its feet, but it never truly impacts with the might one could possibly expect from an artist with such a fine pedigree.

As a whole the record is coherent, but contrast, juxtaposition and the element of surprise are the missing pieces of the puzzle.

Shadows in the Night is an extremely well-made covers album that feels divorced from Dylan’s day-job.

In many places, this record sounds and feels like a migraine captured on tape, and that is not a pleasant experience, nor is it meant to be. Unlike the more luscious, shoegaze influence that's pervaded Black Metal in recent years, this feels like an absolute rejection of that, being as difficult and painful to experience as possible.

It’s just a little too saggy round the middle.

Familiars, then, is unsurprisingly, immensely moving.... But Familiars lacks any real musical inventiveness.

Yes the songs are catchier and slightly better executed, and the music evokes a by gone era but remains grounded in the modern world so it’s not a pastiche, but it all sounds, well, too safe.

The sensitive sections are fine but tritely Musak at times. The power-soul sections feel a bit, sorry but, Jools Holland-y. There's nothing concrete that you can pinpoint that makes it feel false or weak per se.

Because of its unusual structure, Holy Ghost rarely manages to play to all of its strengths at once. It’s a bold choice, both interesting and admirable in its way, but it’s hard to get past the fact that it undoubtedly lifts towards its conclusion--building towards an energy it never properly inhabits.

A little more clarity wouldn't have gone amiss here and there, but there's enough on offer to bring curious listeners back for repeated spins, which is just as well, as More Faithful is definitely a grower.

An album which starts feeling a bit dense and chewy halfway through.