Purposefully ridiculous but brilliant.

If there's any downside, it's that their sophomore album doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from its predecessor. But you know what? When you write songs that are just as strong as your past work, evolution is less of a necessity. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

With Valentina, [Gedge] has created another fine love album, full of clever, relatable, fine love songs.

Rhyton simply play their music, unfettered by the constraints of tradition, structure or expectation, and it's that quality that makes their album such a thrilling experience.

So while Jagjaguwar may well release a below par record in 2008, Shots is not that record.

The third chapter in She & Him’s discography won’t convert those who dislike the genre and it won’t alienate fans of it either.

Next to the realized space of OM's previous albums, which has always contributed greatly to the spiritual and meditative focus they convey, Advaitic Songs sounds flat, a detriment to the album which might otherwise be, next to their grandest, OM's most accomplished.

While Ghost B.C. could certainly use a little added variety, both musically and lyrically (maybe Satan could sit out as lyricist for like five songs on their next record), there’s plenty here to admire.

The whole thing mostly works, though, thanks to the generous application of a Blue Album power-pop filter. I Need Some of That channels The Cars (like much of Weezer’s finest work) and is the clear standout here, but there’s plenty more to raise a smile.

In all this album won't be world changing. The Vaccines are not "the saviours of British rock and roll" but What Did You... doesn't need to be. Instead it's inviting and well observed more than anything, a triumph typified by Post Break-Up Sex--a sublime sketch of that insensitively cute idiom, all guilt-ridden and relatable.

They have made a marked improvement from their 2009 EP, sounding more assured and confident. Every song is played with enthusiasm, and it makes for a blissful, hazy experience.

When he does adapt a more modern trap-orientated sound on the final two tracks it doesn’t really work, and this brings down the EP as an entire listen. Crown thrives when he stays close to his classic sound and the flourishes he adds, which today's stripped and skeletal approach to beatmaking actively avoid.

Femme Fatale equips Britney with material which is strong enough to enable the original all-American Pop Princess to hold her own in such an overcrowded context.

Each turn the album takes is a good one: the swaying Excerpts reinforces the scope of the music, the vinyl-affected Imprints throws some atmosphere into the approach, and, really, the whole of the album makes for an unrivaled listening experience.

A mature, assured, and beautiful album.

Though the band's approach is fairly consistent throughout the album, there are instrumental ideas explored with tracks like In The Branches of Yggdrasil and Nice Riff, Clichard, the latter of which takes a shot at some melancholic Richard D. James beat invention.

Every track is a potential hit, and Sia’s use of pure pop hooks, coupled with an astounding control over her rampant voice, makes this a very good record.

After all these years they can still write a catchy tune.

While Living on the Other Side isn’t a particular complex record, I do think it’s one that requires a couple of listens to fully appreciate.

Perhaps their impatience gets the best of them, especially in key moments when there's a build up and the momentum suddenly stops without a satisfying conclusion. That aside, An Horse carry on their full-bodied sound with a knack that is much to be desired.

I believe It's A Corporate World will please its devote followers. I suppose it's not terrible to hear an album soaked in happiness with all the sorrow and melancholy that already exists.

On The Slideshow Effect, Memoryhouse strips away the full production, lets the vocals rise to the front, and lets their songs do the talking. The bold choice exposes their weaknesses, but Memoryhouse still has plenty to be proud of.

Taiga is a more mainstream album than people may be used to from Zola Jesus. But that is not a bad thing.

Music for Listening to Music to isn’t just a background pleasantry; instead, it may very well be the one that could move Goodman into the foreground of her career.

This is fun music that is all at once euphonic, brash, unsophisticated in its simplicity--but powerful for that same reason.

Like a prestigious college, this band may receive more attention than it really deserves, but these art-punks truly have a lot going for them. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for anything this different.

The music is rich with personality, and strives to establish uniqueness and incomparability.

I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I think Interpol deserve a significant amount of respect for taking the risk and mustering the sheer talent to create something so deeply submerged in melancholia you can't even see light.

Just a Souvenir reveals itself to be a solid record, up there with the best of Squarepusher's work--as any good performer knows, you always leave the audience wanting more.

As with The American Analog Set, the music here is too quiet and specific to appeal to all, but I don’t think this is a bad thing.

Talahomi Way is so strongly rooted in a sense of location that it makes little sense in transit on a pair of headphones, where its fine detail is compressed and channelled directly into your ears, and the images painted by the lyrics are forced to compete with your own changing scenery. Music like this needs to inhabit a space, preferably a sunny one.

Woodkid has a sound that is unique in the music landscape, and most of the songs on this album are exciting, evocative tracks that play to the most basic of emotions: love, loss and redemption.

It’s a solid record; put it on and forget it.

The album also crammed full of innovative bleeps and squeaks - if you're familiar with Four Tet you'll know the sort of thing--which add more of a unique selling point which in the end isn't all that necessary, because this is a somewhat dazzling album from some great talents, and it has an abundance of riches.

Ten Kens are hook-savvy, brilliantly subtle at change-ups and they really capture your attention without making your ears bleed.

Not everything dazzles, but it’s truly shocking what does.

With the exception of the more melodious tracks coming in pairs and slightly hindering the flow of an otherwise excellent album, Specter at the Feast is a very good effort from BRMC, and an example of the continued revitalization that started sometime around Leah Shapiro’s arrival to the band in 2008.

The only problem (and I don't even know if its a problem) is that every track registers as an epic of some sort, so much so that the album itself registers as a pleasurable, cathartic blur rather than a cohesive statement itself.

When an album's main faults are that its too upbeat and lyrically too ambitious, it really is one that deserves to be talked about.

Although Kiss and Tell doesn’t quite match the dizzy heights of its major influences, it is without a doubt Sahara Hotnights’ finest album to date.

Get Lost may not be the incredible experience that Living was, but it's still a very enjoyable listen.

Their jokes and concepts and imitations have sunk into their bones and become tools for them to make some of the best music of the year thus far.

It closes with the sigh of "Bramble," another one of the band’s well-crafted whispers that seems more like a lo-fi sketch than a fully realized song. In isolated moments like this Welcome Joy shines as a companion piece equal to their first release, "Invitation Songs."

Ultimately, Time’s liquidity, while mesmerising to some, will be a distance myth to others.

Dinowalrus is at the surface, speaking the language spoken years ago by the voices on those dusty LPs they hold near and dear but that’s part of the problem.

Love 2 is not only the latest chapter in Air’s space-rock adventure, it’s a sequel that triumphs its predecessor.

Digging into Robert Pollard is an invigorating bit of fun, and it's what's made the man a success. By all accounts, Space City Kicks is more of exactly that.

Battle Born, doesn't quite reach those heights [of their debut, Hot Fuss], but it comes close.

Despite being nothing original, Crimes of Passion comes off a good rehashing of the genre, making you rethink what Jesus and The Mary Chain's Just Like Honey really meant.

Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you'd wish to be.

Boats has made something beautiful and invigorating at moments, while puzzling and slightly alienating at others.

It’s more of an unconscious escape hatch that Lynch has constructed with intangible aural elements--a fantasy place that he allows us to walk around in for a while until we are forced back into the realm of the painfully awake.

In the Cool of the Day is far from perfect, though. Moore's smooth vocal delivery suits the more minimal productions well, but it can become cloying when the backing track is too upbeat, such as on the irritating Up Above My Head.

It’s not Pixies as you’d like to remember them, but for the first time in years it sounds as if they’re actually enjoying themselves.

It's new, fresh, and energetic, all of which are not entirely surprising from an obviously skilled group, but it's in the execution that everything comes into clarity.

Most of the songs on In A Warzone are full of energy, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the slimmed down punk rock that the album delivers with gusto. However, there is definitely a point where they start to sound very similar.

All in all, it delivers the chuckles and a few guffaws, even if they are hitting up against the law of diminishing returns.

It's a nicely balanced record: It's not as if the 'old' Asobi Seksu has disappeared and been replaced with a slightly more cheerful android version of the band--but there's a definite shift here.

It's easy to criticise Talk That Talk but it's actually a fun and enjoyable record.

They embrace what they do best: creating music that balances this personal and political darkness with joy. In their strongest outing since All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the four-piece writes both sweeping anthems as well as some of the most effortless songs of their career.

Despite some missteps (sadly, a few egregious ones), Some Loud Thunder is successful in displaying the group’s breadth of talent and ideas.

An LP with a long gestation period but a short attention span that revels in 1960s pop music and is as fun as it is jangling.

Wild Belle’s debut is a respectable exercise of ethereal pop.

Fresh with a 4th record label (Leeds-based Hatch Records), this latest coming is a dynamic, complete, and assured record, and an exhibition of how grunge music should sound in 2014.

Not as poppy as either Moon Safari or Talkie Walkie, not as out there as 10,000khz Legend, Pocket Symphony instead boasts songs that deserve more attention than previous numbers without performing the prog histrionics often found on their more experimental works.

It’s a confident, fantastic and ultimately very rewarding record that should be met with an open mind.

More quickly than you'd expect, Busdriver's quirks become endearing; his cartoonish vocal stretches to reach those high notes become normalised and you begin to appreciate how much heart he puts into his singing.

This album does its best to give certain fans exactly what they want in sexually-driven club grinders while offering up real, honest-to-goodness substance. It isn't always a perfect situation, and parts of the album border on forgettable, but when they get it right, everything's groovy.

Some people might Matt & Kim's music is without substance, totally incapable of being a sustainable addition to the sonic landscape. I submit that their saccharine hooks, covered in a coating of post-adolescent confusion, is just the opposite.

It's not up there with their very best, but it's actually not that far off.

For many reasons it is confused, self-absorbed, remarkably gauche. It is so often an intentionally uncomfortable thing to listen to... [yet] intriguing.

Call it voyeur. Call it artificial. Call it exploitative. Just don’t call it boring. It’s the first 50 Cent album in some time that can boast that.

The Other Side of Zero shifts from side to side with some regularity, ranging from bubbly and invigorating to downbeat and expressive. There's a real sense of diversity here, and it's what sets the album apart.

This new one is definitely worth checking out, or maybe even seeking out, if you dig the whole African guitar Indie rock thing. If you don’t, you may still be pleasantly surprised.

With their infectious beats and clear guitars mixed with head-bobbing electronic, New Young Pony Club has what cannot be learned, yet what is one hundred percent necessary for achieving greatness: hubris.

It may not be the most unique and memorable of albums, but there's a lot in Boys and Diamonds to like; great thumping melodies, intriguingly mad vocals and moments of beauty (particularly the delicate drumming that closes the album) and shows that Rainbow Arabia are a band that have the potential to be far more interesting than their mundane origins would suggest.

On Ghost Stories, despite a near derailment, they "fly on," moving in fresh directions while keep the catharsis that gave them their audience in the first place.

Overall, its their most accessible, one whose highs are much more pronounced than its lows.

Birthmarks' charm lies in its comforting familiarity.

All told, The Faint, once again, have written a succesful album.

The collaborations are interesting, and at times fascinating, but there is little doubt that the destiny of most tracks here will be, once again, as sonic accompaniments to visual productions.

While the record isn’t perhaps as instantly impressive as Scale or Multiply, there’s much to enjoy on The Third Hand for an appreciator of the finer points of this thing we call pop music.

Every song on the tracklist is fluid, fresh, and endued with a sense of fun.

Clock Opera have delivered a debut which, just about, delivers.

There are no real standout tracks, it is a four song EP after all and electronica has a slight tendency to blend into one long reverby track. But as a piece, it moves so softly, so deep and so colourful.

So Long Forever has a knack of sounding nothing like your prototypical debut album, with no sign of any unsanded edges or rawness. Instead, the album’s sound is that of a band that have honed their sound over a number of exponentially strong releases.

Euphoric///Heartbreak is not an easy listen--as I've already alluded to, it's a convincing notion that this four-piece remain incapable of that--and while it is more theatrically anthemic than the first album, it is feels equally credible and sincere.

People Problems is something the band can be proud of, and it's a great point to move forward from. It's not a breathtaking album, but in the end, it doesn't need to be.

For Long Way Down is an album that, while often samey and, in the grand scheme of things, says next to nothing, heralds the arrival of a highly talented artist.

Millionyoung refrains from too many of the bombastic tendencies of electronic music as a result, and we're left with something quite listenable.

The biggest, brashest cartoon this side of Eminem's early albums.