If shiny, overstated hooks and operatic melodies are your thing, stick on the Twigs’ latest LP right away and you’ll have a ruddy glorious time. But for many, Songs For The General Public will be an overwhelming, even frustrating listen. The brothers wear their huge list of influences so prominently on their sleeves that it’s hard to put your finger on who they really are – and what they’re trying to say.

A mostly harmless exercise in selling records.

How We Operate remains a very episodic album, containing a handful of great moments but no truly great songs.

A guilty pleasure for some perhaps, yet one well worth indulging.

Most of the songs are well constructed and do not outstay their welcome, though a few do not make the grade.

Disjointed, imperfect, tender and raw, at the final reckoning it sits as a fitting epitaph.

It never really breaks free, but The Absence is, in its best bits, an album of real beauty and elegance, and should cause hearts to grow fond of her.

His dedication certainly pays off, Friends & Family grabs ears almost immediately--but as his tropes wear down, it can't help but feel a little hollow.

Still, for all its buzz and energy, Women's Studies does feel frantic and maybe even a little cluttered, as if Murderbot has felt compelled to insert a passing reference to every genre of music he has ever appreciated.

[A] rich (at times too rich) ambitious record that hints at gimlet-eyed determination rather than wispy pushover.

Cabic and Monaghan deliver an album of relaxed, low-definition loveliness, and it's hard to begrudge them that.

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.

This album works best at moments like this, sweet and soothing – not exactly ambient, but soft and comforting like a nest of scatter cushions.

The music here definitely works best when this spirit of interaction is at the forefront, with potentially disparate musical ideas serving to complement and enhance each other.

Ultimately, Blue Film is a decent, enjoyable album that hints at Hemerlein’s undoubted talent whilst never pulling up too many trees.

It may be enigmatic, uneven and flawed in places but at the same time it proves that he is still a single-minded sonic adventurer worth persevering with.

She has not made Smile to impress critics, but rather as an emotional catharsis, and in some tracks this catharsis does sparkle. But it would be great if, in her next creative venture, she focused less on just her smile, as wonderful as it is, and more on the complex emotions that make up the main draw of Smile.

For all the development in their sound, this new Peggy Sue is less lovable than before, the whimsy and the wit, the colour and the life a little buried, and whatever their final lyrics say, a touch too troubled now.

There is also a notably darker, murkier imperative at the heart of Original Colours and the results are sometimes a little introverted.

A perfectly paced album, but despite the elegant sequencing, there are definitely tracks you’ll come back to far more than others.

The songs and melodies may be brighter, but there is a nagging sense throughout that something special has been lost somewhere in the process.

As a whole, Dreams is a bleak affair, Diamond sounding often forlorn and beaten, most notably on a morose, slowed down reimagining of his own 1966 tune, I'm A Believer, which became The Monkees' biggest success.

It’s a solid, if slightly understated, album from one of the many underrated names in underground music. But a lack of variety and a lack of texture that lets this release down.

Where RMX works, it is outstanding, but it is let down by too much flabby excess that for all its artfulness, weighs the album down like a millstone round the neck.

A largely entertaining but occasionally baffling listen, Enter The Slasher House sadly falls just short of Animal Collective’s best work and Panda Bear’s stunning solo projects.

Whilst there are occasional high points, it’s best to cherry-pick the highlights from Didn’t It Rain and leave the rest.

What it fundamentally lacks is the underlying rhythmic sensibility that adds an extra dimension to Fuck Buttons and gives them the scope to develop a track from simple beginnings to a euphoric, cacophonous conclusion. By stripping this ingredient away, Power is left with something that's often beautiful but also strangely static.

This is then a collision of musical styles that is totally appropriate and which reflects well on both parties.