It's a sweeping, expansive album, that covers a lot of ground and leaves the listener satisfied.

Even if Lost Girls often sounds like scrapped ideas taken from a larger project, Khan doesn't go too deep into nostalgia—still working firmly within a pop framework.

While Eavesdropping On The Competition and Jonesy Boy won’t necessarily being appearing on any coffee tables in the near future, they don’t feel up to the standard of the other nine songs. This is a small complaint because when Catacombs works, it really works, and it mostly really works.

As strong as the hooks and melodies are in British Home Movies, it’s her artful narratives and evocative choruses that really stick, enveloped in micro stories of traveling along paths that are paved with memories.

Songs distort from their structures, allowing for a gelatinous cortege that serves to distinguish the album with flair and maintain a fetching edginess throughout.

Grounded enough to know the limits of the listener (songs meander, but only to the confines of their ideas, never tiring out a single theme), but more than adventurous enough to remain extremely exciting.

Stylistically eclectic, or maybe even chaotic, Obey is a sublime release, its melancholic moments offered grace and any ounce of frenzy more subtle than overt.

Their amalgamation of indie and electronica is by no means revolutionary in itself, but their form of guitar infused music is an important one.

It is by far their most focused and polished album, and Danger Mouse makes sure that everything is sonically smooth (even if a few feel almost like Broken Bells b-sides).

The album mostly screams avant-garde in its minimalism, sometimes to its detriment, but there's no denying they have the talent to justify the mystery they've built.

Stuck on Nothing opens strong, closes strong, and the intermediate tracks are interesting enough to maintain interest. Free Energy haven’t created anything cataclysmically new, but they have created an entirely likable pop album.

Tres Cosas does then what all good third albums should do – it takes the best bits from her earlier works, perfects the model, and then goes a little bit further.

You only need to read through the song titles to get a sense of it all, but the carefully constructed builds of tracks like Wish We Had More Time and This Is Where It Ends make spending time with sorrow hard to resist.

Given the long list of contributors, the singularity and cohesion achieved in Goodnight City is something to be applauded. It is also solid evidence that Wainwright’s creative well has not run dry, but rather thrives upon the influence of others.

It's an album of striking and stark beauty, with finely crafted songs that feel stripped to their bare essentials, and just allowed to be what they are, unadorned.

Dig into it deeper and you’ll find a surprisingly rewarding account tell-all that sounds like an extraordinary premise to a film. And the score they write for themselves, as thrilling as it is, can be somewhat overwrought at times, resulting in an aural mood that could've used some dramatic nuance.

Sonic Youth have captured that exploration perfectly and transformed it into a piece of work that not only embodies the various degrees of emotions and thoughts we all experience, but it creates new ones whilst doing so, through it's exploratory and deeply affecting methods.

It’s a buoyantly hopeful album where Hyde gives a final wave goodbye to his darkest days before moving on to greener pastures.

Where Chapman excels where others fail is that he's endearing about his self-deprecation, often conveying truths that read as casual as his relaxed arrangements. He also likes intertwining astronomical reasoning and science into his contemplating, because why wouldn't he.

The ambition they pursue overall shows in what Young himself affirms to be the band's best work, and their belief in that shows through and through.

Overall, Arrow is the quintessential Heartless Bastards album to date.

While the music might still be a bit detached and remote, the more collaborative nature of this record does make it easier to meet half way, as does Stelmanis’ unerring sense of pop melody, and of when to drop a 4/4 beat for maximum effect.

With Ha, Ha, He., they have refined that formula [of the self-titled debut] further, sharpening up the edges of their sound and ultimately delivering a superb record.

There are no compromises to be reached, and that's what makes No One Can Ever Know such an authoritative listen.

Like 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, Before the Dawn is commendable for its almost obsessive attention to detail that has produced a collection of gorgeously layered and dense songs without ever sounding laboured.

It's difficult to judge a soundtrack separate from the production. But even without the visuals, Lazarus is still worth a listen or two. The performances range from solid to great, and the covers of these classics are often fresh.

This brief collection of tracks shows growth and expansion whilst maintaining the addictive pop elements and retro recording style that made us fall in love with I Will Be.

Only a few songs ('Beyond Here Lie’s Nothin’,' 'Shake Shake Mama,' and 'I Feel a Change Comin’ On') really jump out of the grooves and the rest sounds like our greatest living songwriter coasting a bit--which is a whole lot better than not giving a shit ("Self Portrait") or flailing around aimlessly (pick an 80s record).