There's plenty to enjoy here, but very little to get worked up about.

There are moments where the restraint feels almost too determined, as though the abundance of care and attention to subtle detail also places a cap on the kind of impulsive energy essential to a rock-oriented band.

It’s not surprising, then, that a number of the tunes on Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sound familiar. Besides the ones that sound like rewrites of Iggy Pop and Leonard Cohen rewrites, Cave and crew aren’t above recycling their own work--'More News From Nowhere' is just a riff on 'Deanna.'

So even though Burnett has assembled a crack acoustic support unit to play the choice material he's selected from Gene Clark, Townes Van Zandt and the Everly Brothers, without that magical X factor you've got nothing but two good vocalists trying to stay out of each other's way.

The biggest glitch is the production - the myriad elements sound cramped for space.... Too bad, cuz Butler's lyrics, which replace coming-of-age angst with poetic explorations of global anxiety, politics and an excoriation of celebrity culture, put Funeral to shame.

[Disc two] makes clear the fact that R.E.M. never could get back to the top of the mountain for most of their career

Shields is not going to grab you, but it rewards patience.

After a while, the microscopic detail underscoring each turn of phrase, delivered with such delicate poise and precise drama, is suffocating.

The problem is that Earl’s stream of consciousness style does not lend itself to easy listening. Off-kilter drum loops and piano chords bury the lyrics on Red Water and Peanut, creating an unfriendly sonic experience reminiscent of listening to a song with cheap earphones in a noisy room. Listeners will only be able to appreciate Earl’s poetry once they devote every ounce of their focus to hearing it.

The backup vocals that seem de rigueur on all Cohen albums are often unnecessary here and at their worst distracting when sung overtop the main attraction.

Though minimalist, it's not all austere.

Shaking The Habitual is full of thrillingly percussive highs and brilliantly deranged vocals, but overall its anti-pop move is more typical than radical.

Even though not every twisted move they make on Third pays dividends, considering the stakes, consciously fucking with their formula is a bold gamble for which they should be saluted.

His guttural howl on The Shrine/An Argument is the only moment when Helplessness Blues snaps out of its preciousness and hints that this genre can be more than a soundtrack to brunch.

Too few of the two dozen half-developed tracks here do justice to Smith's talent as a songwriter.

When they do get adventurous and experimental, they execute it with such smoothness that even those moments of danger and excitement sound muted and safe. It's a solid disc, but you can't shake a sense that the Budos Band is capable of more.

Plant's voice is noticeably lower than his salad-days falsetto, and Jimmy Page's guitar sounds slicker than before, but for the most part this is the Zeppelin of yore.

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.

The record is full of earnest female backup vocals and frequent reminders (like wind chimes all over the place) that the music is homemade. Yet like a lot of modern folk, the songwriting sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

The remix supposedly reflects how the band always wanted the album to sound, but it’s hard to tell what O’Brien did. It’s definitely cleaner, louder and more polished, but not dramatically different.

It's not the best album of Spoon's career, but it's far from a misstep.

While the production is tight, it’s not going to cause rival producers to sell their samplers and look for jobs in air conditioning repair.

Each song spills over with a breathless, unhinged vigour that impresses... But taken all together, the band's refusal ever to let up on volume, bombast, group-shouted vocals, fast-strummed chords or smashing drums makes Celebration Rock an exhausting sonic assault in need of variety.

If David Browne's Sonic Youth bio was to be believed, Swans, who emerged from the same noise-filled no wave scene in New York's early 80s as Thurston Moore, had a rotating cast of nasty-tempered psychotic rockers, with multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira at its centre. Listening to Swans' new album, the first in 14 years, you get the sense that some of that malevolence remains.

Throughout, his rhymes hit the mark, whether he’s painting a bleak picture of the Detroit streets, battling his own demons (loneliness, molly, more molly) or rapping at length about drug-dealing without glorifying it Rick Ross-style.

This is one of his best albums in many years, although that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Thankfully, there are just enough flashes of brilliance to save it, even if much of the album comes across as a really expensive demo.

Each woman's distinct singing and songwriting style is front and centre, but their voices blend beautifully.