This album is an acquired taste that may struggle to win a larger audience. If you’re a Grumbling Fur fan, though, you might just like this effort more than any of his other solo collections.

These aren’t bad song ideas per se, but the record as a whole becomes cloying through an overload of syrupy chords and Common stuck on motivational speaker mode.

Their creative fires are clearly burning again, even though it feels like this album had to be exorcised for them to fully ignite in the future.

Justin Vernon has succumbed to his most inane impulses – and released a selection of unseasoned, lightly scented pleasantries that neither hit or miss. They just are.

It probably won’t lead to any sort of career revival, but you get the impression that Lloyd Cole’s perfectly happy just following his path and seeing where it leads at this stage.

As far as compilations and rarities sets go, this is no cynical cash-in, but neither is it absolutely essential, even for fans of the band. There’s a lot of cool material here that is definitely worth exploring, but nothing that will demand a second listen for anyone other than the most hardcore of fans.

Mostly this is just a bit Bastille by numbers. If you’re looking for a photocopy of their previous albums, faded and off-colour, Doom Days will satisfy.

Most of these tracks would probably count as mid-tempo throbbers, and this aesthetic cloys a bit by the end of the record. In the same interview he also joked that this release exists because he “owes the label an album”, and this is evident in the filler that pads out an EP’s worth of good tracks.

Whilst Psychedelic Porn Crumpets remain an attractive proposition, this outing would perhaps suggest that they’re starting to cool off a little after the hot, toasting stage they enjoyed with their first two releases.

Northampton’s Child has a brilliant trap-style beat which comes with one of Slowthai’s better performances, as if being more autobiographical implicitly encouraged him to find his own voice. But these moments are too few and far between to save a record that reveals the whirlwind of hype around Slowthai to be not much more than invisible garments on an arrogant emperor.

As ever with Diamandis, there’s some decent pop music here, but it seems like we’re still waiting for her to produce that genuine killer album, Diamonds or no Diamonds.

Free Spirit is a patchy album from an artist who is perfectly capable of delivering nifty falsetto lines and smooth come-ons, but who is also far too predisposed to sloppy downtempo numbers.

This is an absolute delight for a fan, but hard to recommend for anyone else. Of the entire back catalogue, Side Effects seems like the slightest of their albums, but at least its hottest moments go some way to countering how underdone the whole thing seems.

The State Between Us has some brilliant moments, but those moments are too stretched out: many of the tracks could have been half their length and been equally effective, and some could have been cut altogether for not holding together as pieces of music. However, even at its lowest ebbs it retains some intrigue from its novelty, and the sheer ambition of the album is not to be faulted.

Gathered is very much an album that needs time and attention to allow its strengths be isolated and to surface. Long term Gelb fans will appreciate his continued work rate, the extension of musical themes and hints at his past but overall it may be too slight and unprepossessing for the casual, passing listener.

Despite some excellent high points, Tasmania appears jumbled as a whole and there are too many tracks that just don’t hit the bullseye for it to be upheld as the best Pond have recorded.

Nothing really jumps out, and Ian Brown’s seventh album still feels weirdly unrewarding, the artist playing a contented father rather than raging at the current state of the world. That is fair enough of course, but for an artist as established and inspirational as Ian Brown has been over the decades, we surely deserve waves rather than ripples.

This feels like something that Harcourt did for his own satisfaction, and as a little treat for his fans. There’s nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t leave a lot for the rest of us to dig into.

Divorced from the context of the North Korea shows the purpose of these songs seems a little unclear, even factoring in the wordplay of “How do you solve a problem like Korea”, so the final few tracks are crucial to the album.

There’s obviously still an audience for Muse, given by the size of the venues they still sell out, and this will definitely please the die-hards, but most of Simulation Theory simply fizzles out without leaving much of an impression.

A pretty decent record if by no means a great one. Shiny And So Bright, Vol 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun. neither offers the chance to dent Corgan’s ego or inflate it in any significant way.

No Tourists is a change of heart, but it proves Howlett’s instincts right with its lack of inspiration. Making this record probably did bore them, just as it bores this reviewer to listen to most of it, and while there are signs of life in places it’s mostly, to quote Jeremy, so futile.

If by representing these protest songs Ono intended to convey how little has changed since she first recorded them in the spirit of social activism then she has succeeded, but Warzone also highlights how the conversation has evolved.

Though Natural Rebel has its moments, it all feels a bit staid and stale: not so much rock’n’roll rebellion as conventional cliché, both musical and lyrical.

While Art Of Doubt doesn’t quite touch their previous high points, there’s still more than enough to keep many a Metric fan happy.

Elephants On Acid is far from perfect, and at points its short tracks sound like sketches that could have been fleshed out more. But it is a worthy addition to their discography, and shows development of their signature sound.

It’s About Time has joyous, feel-good highlights and low points that could have been worse.

Clocking in at a nifty 38 minutes, Obey is a solid release, though it trails off near the end with tracks that are clearly less inspired than the others. In these sections the minimalism is stretched too far and the arrangements are too loose, but the album has great moments elsewhere.