A decidedly strange record with flashes of beauty and brilliance, then. How utterly Yoko.

While the low-key arrangements and melancholic song choices may make Tinsel And Lights an EastEnders special of a Christmas album, if you're planning on a microwaved turkey dinner for one this year, there's probably no better soundtrack.

In the main Dean Wareham is too dreary, too frequently.

What's most promising is that GVSB's often melodic noise now, thanks to emo, exists less in weird isolation than it did, and the band seem to be headed dangerously close to getting what they deserve. If this means they must intermittently sound like Feeder, so be it.

The Best of Luck Club is not quite as immediate as the bruising garage-rock intensity of her debut, but this is instead a world-building release.

Beyond the familiar name drops and signposts, there are flashes of a band in control of their destiny, and willing to try something new.

While her commitment to reviving the golden age of hip-hop by harking back to the likes of Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown is admirable, it looks like we’ll have to wait for Milli’s next release for that consistent collection of sure-fire hits we know she’s capable of delivering.

This rag-tag collection, dating from between 1999 and 2010, sets out his stall as an outsider savant in an Ariel Pink vein.

No Way Down’s panpipes and ‘Windmill Wedding’s' outro menagerie racket are so gap-year utopian they make you want to ram joss sticks up Air France’s noses. Mighty peculiar.

His many personas have made for an oddly characterless record.

For all its prettiness, though, Passerby is a record that boasts about as much excitement as a gentle breeze, and its rewards are too few and far between.

A 30-track nonsense-o-paedia of speed-metal twatabouts. [9 Apr 2005, p.58]

It's no classic, but there are reassuringly unhealthy signs of life.

The Auto-Tune and teenage love stuff don't entirely ruin a surprisingly weighty return.

Britain’s foremost whiteboy funkateer has learned enough since his 2005 major label debut ‘Multiply’ for ‘Compass’ to pull off a neat trick. With his heart as his guide, Lidell gives us a tour of soul through his geographically-removed ears.

Inevitably it’s also an adventure in need of an edit.

While it’s far from a dramatic reinvention, there’s enough on display here to ensure that long-time fans will be more than happy, with a consistent array of the arena-ready riffs and post-rock choruses that cemented their name in the first place. This time, however, we’re given a welcome glimpse into the darkness that seemingly exists within.

Gray’s newfound penchant for ’80s pop doesn’t come with a notion of irony – he’s fully embracing even the era’s most ostentatious elements. But despite his own sincerity, there are moments that drift closer towards a caricature of the era than a true homage to the decade’s most innovative pop.

At the moment, her music is best consumed in blog-sized chunks, not as a stodgy 48-minute album.

'Algiers', their seventh album, is far less surface-level appealing, but the sad twang of a pedal steel and Joey Burns' rich lyrical imagery draw you in, and depth and craftsmanship is slowly revealed.

For all that his songs brim with melodic invention, in the end style trumps content.

Her pipes can still be transportational, but mostly they deliver nice, docile music to stroke cats to.

‘The Whale Song’ may offer a solitary crumb for old skool Micers to nibble, but unfortunately this EP will not offer much else.

There are moments of brilliance on both records. ... Thematically, ‘Everything Sucks’ and ‘Everything is Beautiful’ fail to deliver anything new.

The record as a whole is full of wan acoustic guitar tunes in desperate need of that mysterious quality of oomph.

You just can’t shake the feeling that the whole thing is just far too safe. You can’t blame team Adele for following a formula that has so far resulted in 30 million album sales--but here’s to a little more innovation on ‘29’.

It's the sound of a band once introspective but alive, now lost, depressed and completely unavailable.

Heroux may yet have an album in him that doesn't basically sound like his favourite '80s music stapled together, but this ain't it.