It doesn’t always maintain the consistency that makes a truly great album, but it makes you feel good and puts a smile on your face. Just as the cover promised.

Whilst this is an album that will draw comparisons to the band that made her name, it is a fine, if long overdue, solo effort.

Girlpool’s debut may not be without fault, but that is ultimately what makes it such a charming little record.

On How Big How Blue How Beautiful, Welch refines a successful formula in a way that plays to her strengths without it being too familiar.

The music is consistently either thrilling, evocative or moving.

It may not be the most ambitious of albums and Snoop Dogg possibly spends more time singing than actually rapping, but the end result will ensure that he remains as relevant as ever.

Pledge is also somewhat uninspired, as MES sets his sights on crowdsourcing and the band scampers around aimlessly. These moments aside, Sub-Lingual Tablet is this incarnation of The Fall’s most impressive addition to the band’s canon.

Multi-Love is more than just a brilliantly designed sonic facade--its excoriation of modern psycho-sexual mores is impossible to resist, so too its musical detail and understanding.

Overall, this is arguably the most consistent album Flowers has ever been involved with.

Saturns Pattern may lack an apostrophe but there’s nothing missing from his musical grammar. He’s still in his prime as a musician.

It all adds up to an emotionally gruelling record that’s patently not intended for passive listening. But it’s an album that’s worth steeling oneself for.

This is very much an album that feels necessary right now--one that packs a political punch without being didactic or evangelical--and offers positive thinking, including a clarion call of co-operative and community responses to global issues.

Sol Invictus is not a bad return, but it’s not the greatest thing Faith No More has ever done.

In revealing some of their insecurities, Hot Chip have reminded both themselves and us of their importance and relevance, and have made a record of both sense and sensibility.

Entanglement is an album that needs to be considered alongside genre heavyweights like The Blue Notebooks by Max Richter or Englabörn by Jóhann Jóhannsson. It’s a timely reminder of how high modern classical music can reach.

Whilst it’s a brave attempt to explore new lands outside their comfort zone, it’s one that isn’t quite as rewarding and rich as Patrick Watson would have hoped.

Both qualities [her immense talent and charisma] are on ample display on Hairless Toys.

There are some fine moments here, but all too often Dumb Flesh seems like a diluted version of Fuck Buttons.

They’ve never really risen to heights that maybe they should have scaled but with so many infectious pop melodies lurking under the fuzz, it’s just as remarkable that they remain on the periphery of their genre.

You can’t help but feel that given better production this could well have been the album of the year that some over-enthusiastic sorts claim. One of the surprises of the year, however? Definitely.

It does sound very different from their previous two albums. Unfortunately, in doing so, they’ve produced the most crushingly average album of the year so far.

Judging by Rose Windows’ now final album, the shame is that differences, whatever they were, could not be overcome because a growing, developing collection of musicians was just beginning to dent the consciousness of a much larger audience. Instead of eagerly anticipating their next move, we are therefore left to cling to their last hurrah.

Part of the difficulty with this is, simply, that--taken as a body of work (album) rather than a collection of individual tracks--interest can start to wane. This isn’t helped, either, by the chiefly indistinguishable lyrics: that character-and light/shade-drenched vocal might be enormously listenable, but for most of the time we aren’t able to make out what it is articulating.

Danger In The Club exudes an appealing spontaneity but frustratingly the songwriting still seems a bit haphazard, with the lyrics in particular remaining underwhelming.

Heyoon is an often confusing collection that depicts a mad mind, but one that at times offers enough intrigue to warrant attention.

It gets on with the job in hand, never short changing the listener, and in the process providing a valuable insight into one of pop music’s great creative minds in the process.

Peter Broderick has clearly been in some dark places since we last heard from him, but here he is back on track--and for that we are abundantly grateful.

With Other Lives, there’s always something interesting and exciting going on in their songs.