It’s as simple as songwriting can get; as striking as songwriting can get.

No affectation, no pandering to fashion, just good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. How refreshing.

Reveals Sam Beam to be a songwriter of exquisite talent and enviable inspiration.

Quite simply, this is the most invigorating album released in recent times and definitely one for the collection.

‘Secret Wars’ is an engaging 40 minutes; a haphazard, likely to spontaneously combust at any moment 40 minutes to be sure, but that was the ethic that spawned rock ‘n’ roll in the first place and in these hands there’s plenty of life in it yet.

If invention and imagination are the criteria to judge, this is a future classic.

This is what you get when you give an overactive imagination the space to expand; it’s indescribably perfect.

Never happily slotting into any template demanded back in their home town, MM are nearer to some wondrous mish-mash of Pavement and Beck; closer in harmony to The Flaming Lips.

There’s no shortage of pogo anthems, reflective quiet and headspinning ideology, and never a dull moment.

Nothing less than a whole new world will do, and Adem has created just that.

It will take at least ten listens before you hear everything that’s going on, and ten more to understand it, yet this is far from impenetrable; it boasts a melody line that any pop princess would sell her plastic soul for, and prompts the idea that Knopf and his cohorts have been hanging around a crossroads doing just the same.

A taste for the exotic and a winning way with a winnowing hook leavens the most ear-shredding aural barrage, short-circuiting a connection between central nervous system and booty.

[His] most spellbinding LP to date.

It sounds like he’s cherry-picked his record collection in an attempt to allow the listener a glimpse into his restless mind.

The key is - unlike the tongue-in-cheek cock-rock of The Darkness and the running joke of Electric Six - Scissor Sisters are reverential to the sounds of the 70’s.

This is deep, rich, slightly unnerving and very very beautiful music. [combined review of both discs]

‘Tasty’, though haunted by more than a few sops to the slick-soul zeitgeist, is an impressive return.

It’s ridiculously eclectic, yet uniformly affecting; a winter warmer that moves with a mysterious grace.

This is a rock ‘n’ roll album in the same way that ‘Fun House’ was a rock ‘n’ roll album.

‘No You C’Mon’ is more schizophrenic but equally satisfying, ranging from dinner jazz to bursts of discordant piano boogie.

Disco, punk and pop, all in one bag.

From the start, she's made an ideal record for people who already like her.

The names Pitchshifter, Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein are often bandied about in this company, but here’s a tip: Skinny Puppy have rendered them once again irrelevant.

Young pretenders beware: this old dog isn’t so much learning new tricks as inventing them.

Like an air-bushed Slint re-emerging with Stereolab as their chief influence, Blonde Redhead engulf their guitars beneath so many keyboard tinkerings.

His mumbled burr recalls that half-awake state where reality melts, a strain of Southern Gothic best listened to at 3am with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and all the lights on.

What does surprise is the way the results combine Clannad with Cocteau Twins.

It’s not so much that Electrelane’s signature film score sound has been replaced, more added to and built upon; becoming the veiled framework to a new - almost celebratory - level of contentment.