As a whole, Let Yourself Be Seen flows more like a meandering DJ set.

A tighter and more compact project would have elevated some of the album’s more enlightening moments, but, when taken as a whole, ‘Modern Dread’ ultimately disappoints.

This collection encouraged them to follow their instincts and embrace the melodies, choruses and beats that arrived the fastest. The result is brilliant, bruising dance music right from the gut.

The result is a consistently uplifting set that feels like Minogue’s best album since 2010’s ‘Aphrodite’.

They deliver a record of impressive contrasts; one that allows them to show off exactly why they’re beloved in their native Scotland, and soon beyond.

‘Convocations’ is a mature work, but its length and intricate creation makes it difficult to get under its skin, the record’s wonderful honesty hidden behind layers that you wish could be peeled back.

By the time the end credits roll, Snow’s fulfilled his aim of providing some much-needed escapism and light; he’s also succeeded in instilling confidence in the listener that they, too, can be the star of their own story.

While The Lathums may crib from their working class heroes, they don’t solely rely on them.

It’s a lot to take in, but the compact and well-executed transitions make sense of the chaos.

‘Ready For The High’ barely sits still for a verse at a time, ducking between buzz-rock, falsetto funk and bits that seem written for the first dance at the marriage of MGMT and Jungle. The rest of the album further delivers: confident funk pop (‘Wildfire’, ‘Worry’) and inventive future disco (‘This Car Drives All By Itself’, ‘People Don’t Change People, Time Does’) are staples, but the palette is wide here, the brushstrokes bold.

Propelled by a glossy indie sound hell-bent on dragging the band up festival bills, opener ‘Hometown’ expresses this best. ... The problem is, such weighty ambition is left off this album, which too often finds them content on taking the easy road.

[‘Gold Rush Kid’ is] a fun and curious ditty, yet the songwriting frustratingly positions Ezra as someone who got lucky, rather than an ambitious auteur ready to set his own fate after years of hardship. Elsewhere, though, this theme comes secondary to descriptions of a crisis induced by losing control, with bright, almost homespun production tasked with keeping our narrator grounded.

‘About Last Night…’ leaves you with your ears ringing, hooks stuck in your head and a healthy dose of dancefloor catharsis that’ll make you feel lighter – much like the jacket you forgot to collect from the cloakroom.

‘Suckerpunch’ is a bold sonic adventure that thrives on excess. Throughout the record’s constantly shifting 13 tracks, Moriondo proves that she’s an artist that can do it all, all while having an absolute ball.

Though the romantic elements of ‘Discount De Kooning (Last Man Standing)’ are nice enough, it fails to penetrate in any meaningful way. As the record meanders on, tracks such as ‘The Dreamer’ and ‘Anonymous In Los Feliz’ fail to leave a lasting impression. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. It might not offer anything new, but it doesn’t necessarily need to.

What they have done, though, is find their voice again, and, for the first time in over 20 years, The Libertines feel like a band with a viable future.

King Night is sick. Not just in the sense that it's outstandingly good but in the fact that it seems extremely unwell.

It's a bit like The Slits at Notting Hill Carnival. Add in lush single "Why Have We To Wait" (a cover of a track by '60s pop group The Pussycats) and it's pretty perfect.

This album is a subtly, sweetly wonderful thing--proof that, sometimes, sonic actions speak louder than words.

There’s a lot to like about Turn Blue, but it’s a cruel irony that the heaviest hand in Dan Auerbach’s warts-and-all confessional sometimes seems to belong to his producer.

This is one house of horrors that’s worth the ride.

Jack Penate has made a record that’s light on its feet, has glamour bordering on sex appeal and that doesn’t make you wish a fatwa upon its author.

Denser than any of their three albums, New Misery blends catchy solos, beefy drums and thick synth parts indebted to Spiritualized and OMD with Cullen’s voice--which remains evocative of some dreamy American high school utopia.

On the evidence of this impressive and winningly authentic second album, Cara is increasingly unforgettable.

The album’s beachy vibes feel suited to a festival field’s carefree disposition. You just wish there was a little more to these songs.

The beats and lyrics get better with each listen.

The record leans at times too heavily on its basic formula of pizzicato electric guitar and seedy, somnambulant basslines. Still, as a slice of squalid glamour with a beating heart under its rusted exterior, Coastal Grooves deserves your attention.

More A-grade angst from one of our cleverest songwriters.

‘Optimist’ is an accomplished first album that really shines and, given Finneas’ track record so far, we wouldn’t have expected anything less.

It's cinematic, dramatic, and has vocals so indistinct that Tamaryn (the singer whose band this is) could just be coo-ing "turn up the smoke machine" over and over again.

Someone needs to tell Wainwright there's a huge difference between 'epic' and 'over-egged'.

A record that features some of the band’s most vital and impressive tracks in years.

Overall, MGMT's refusal to co-operate with the listener jars with the crisp and professional production – which, despite Sonic Boom's involvement, is more Van Dyke Parks than Spacemen 3 and leaves Congratulations sitting somewhere in the middle, not complex enough for the prats, but too obscure for the jerks.

Produced by the band, with help from Pink and former member of Test Icicles Sam Mehran, its follow-up is cleaner and more conventional. But there’s a tease of their old sound before the murk lifts completely.

It’s all deranged enough to convince us that Sleigh Bells are still menacing outliers, but on a deep cover mission to infiltrate the mainstream, horns still poking out of their ’80s mullet wigs.

Taking Mangum’s recorded-on-cardboard lo-fi folk epics as their ground zero, TRAA turn in the best alt.debut of the year.

It has the pomp and arrogance of their best work, enough new sounds and interesting new avenues to satisfy the musos and, at its core, is a very good collection of very good songs played very well. A little more silliness would go a long way, though.

Hs 16th (16th!) studio album, sees him eschew such stylings and instead go for broke on telling tales and flashing his soul

You feel the need for something other than Bryan's croon, and it isn't there.

Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor has his production paws all over San Franciscan quartet The Morning Benders’ second full-length effort, and while Big Echo has more than pastiche to offer, a great deal of it still sounds a bit too familiar.

Tighter than anything they've recorded previously, it’s a great return and a slick change of direction.

It's certainly a messy record, made by half of a broken legend.

While I Want To Grow Up doesn’t exactly break new ground, it compensates by being affecting, relatable and having occasional gnarly solos.

Sounds as hideously vital... as [Slayer] have at any time during their 23 year career. [26 Aug 2006, p.41]

Home Again provides a sumptuously soft place for tired ears to rest.

It all adds up to a deeply deranged and intermittently great listen, and serves as a decent stopgap 'til the band's next album proper.

Its high points are so charming you're willing to forgive the occasional low one.

There's no deely-bopping 'Wow And Flutter' on here. [4 Mar 2006, p.29]

I Disagree is her most accomplished record, full of daring theatre and snarling forward motion. While all our favourite rock bands are going pop, Poppy is unapologetically embracing her desire to go heavy. It might be inspired by the bands she grew up listening to, but there’s not a moment on ‘I Disagree’ that feels like a throwback.

Today, in a world rooted in an entirely different stratum of rock, they're as lively as the corpses that archaeologists hook out of peat bogs: perfectly preserved, but not great for dancing or conversation.

It works for the red-raw confessional 'Family Portrait', but everything else is so bad Natalie Imbruglia would be proud.

Starsailor have produced a debut album of real emotional depth.

Will shock conservative punk purists everywhere. [11 Sep 2004, p.57]

Like it or not, the songs penned for Britney by Swedish producer Max Martin, the man behind the even more successful Backstreet Boys, get into your brain like ketamine.

This is the sound of the US underground realising that its message is easier to swallow if it has a smile on its face. [9 Oct 2004, p.56]

Certainly confirms him as one of hip-hop's most gifted wordsmiths. [8 Jan 2005, p.45]

Mesmerisingly beautiful. [2 Apr 2005, p.50]

Smoke And Mirrors [is] a dense, torrid quicksand of clattering shoegaze chaos at the heart of this six-track stopgap between Brooklyn duo Widowspeak’s celebrated second album ‘Almanac’ and their soon-come third.

Though inspired by the endless waiting felt during the moving statues phenomenon in ‘80s Ireland, where religious statues reportedly moved spontaneously, there’s no anticipation for a holy punk apparition here. Everything we could have expected with ‘Time Bends and Break the Bower’ has been delivered.

Far from a total reinvention, but all adds up to a confident, rewarding and subtly adventurous new chapter for Interpol.

Itâ??s in its latter stages that Viva... truly goes stratospheric: on the magnificent orchestral pop title track, where Martin imagines himself as a deposed French king reduced to sweeping the streets; on the bruised â??Yesâ??, like Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode lost in a desert duststorm; on the Satanic blues hymnal of single â??Violet Hillâ??.

Not since Bon Iver’s "For Emma, Forever Ago" has there been such an accomplished album of torch songs.

In the same spirit as Broken Social Scene's baroque pop, his first album stitches together the psychedelic, lo-fi montages and creates something unworldly and unique.

I Know Myself (Montreal)’ revitalises the album version with warped acoustic guitar and brass, and Tanner adds foreboding guitar noise to a narcotic ‘Green Eyes (Music Blues)’. But the rich piano on ‘Love (Montreal)’ is best, crowning an EP that expands on the wealth of ideas McMahon put into Love.

It’s bolder than before, and easily their best-executed album yet.

Breathy, sophisticated and existentially troubled. [2 Sep 2006, p.19]

The music of Amplifying Host blends baked American blues with the ghosts of this island's folk tradition to wonderful effect, especially on 'Tessellations', which is like coming across a bedraggled family cooking beans around a campfire in the tinder-dry ruins of what was once a chocolate-box timber-framed cottage.

They're staying put, yet somehow they're kicking harder than ever.

If this really is Poliça’s “final paper” (as Leaneagh’s called it), then they’ve excelled themselves with the most intimate and empowering album of their career.

A record that otherwise skids wildly across art-rock history leaving steaming tyre tracks in its wake.

Clavish narrates his story against a backdrop of deep subs, eerie synth melodies, and dark ambience that allow his bars to cut through with a real sharpness. If he learns to refine his output a little, there’s no reason Clavish can’t achieve the levels of stardom he’s been tipped to reach.

In revisiting the production of her '80s records she paradoxically produces something that sounds timeless.

It’s far grubbier and more riotous than any high school musical.

‘Small World’ might be the biggest diversion from their main stage sound to date, but it’s also one of the most heartfelt and rewarding. Metronomy, it’s good to have you back.

Covering so much ground (‘Hydrate’ even bridges dubstep and reggae) means the album lacks a clear narrative or overarching theme.

Smart; savvy; insanely resilient: 'Waterloo To Anywhere' is just the ticket.

[A] curiously eclectic record.

Pierce’s creative and personal rebirth are evident throughout, but a return to the trappings of earlier records makes for a relatively limp second half. ... Overall, though, The Drums sound closer to what Pierce had envisioned all those years ago.

Rather than a fresh blast of wizardry, ‘Extreme Witchcraft’ is more of a feet-finder for our times.

Rise Ye Sunken Ships is actually pretty great, but guys, just dial it down a bit yeah?

Arthur Beatrice running their race slow and steady has resulted in an album full of sophisticated pop.

Father of 4 is a fine body of work that builds a convincing case that Offset is currently best-placed to be Migos’ break-out solo star: once again, the final act of a trilogy proves to be the finest.

All told, it's incredible this is a debut album. Accomplished, yet subtle, it works perfectly as a whole in a way all the production skills in the world couldn't replicate.

It's an unyielding piss-up of tattooed garage riffs, petrol-drenched blues and Marlboro-chuffing growlers. [1 Jul 2006, p.35]

So one third's great and two thirds grate, which is an improvement at least.

The Lo-Fi's are still operating more than competently, but this time round they're not likely to blow any minds.

The reason that 'Come With Us' seems unsatisfying is that The Chemicals no longer seem rooted in club culture the way they were in their Heavenly Social days.

It’s full of clever collaborations and interesting vocal performances; Roddy Ricch has placed himself comfortably in his own lane.

A union of intelligence and passion. [26 Mar 2005, p.51]

It's an album that leaves you in no doubt that Odd Future's leader is a rare talent.

It’s Waller’s voice--one that proved too powerful an entity for his former band, Vincent Vincent And The Villains--that stops The Rumble Strips from being mere Dexys copyists.

All we can say for sure is that here is a talent in bloom, the sound of ideas finding shape, winding out in all directions.

His third album in as many years shows he’s on a streak that’s both prolific and high quality.

Doom Days is a vivid snapshot of humanity and an imaginative, adventurous levelling up from one of Britain’s most influential bands.

Worship The Sun continues that approach, sounding more cohesive in the process. Somehow, though, it’s also more sluggish--their ‘60s indebted garage-rock drags where once it excited.

Though the album gets a little messier and more unfocused from this point, ‘Oceans Niagara’ points to a beautifully bright future for the M83 project.

For a record just 30 minutes long it feels impossibly epic and for all its scuzzy, lo-fi production, it still sounds fully realised. Not to mention fully brilliant.

This is glossy Americana, mixing The Avett Brothers with Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros, its piano- and violin-led crescendos emulating old-timey grandeur.