Long, luscious songs and cinematic melancholy are their usual preserve; their eighth album see these traded in for short, sharp shocks, metallic percussion, bullet-brusque sound effects, and frequent references to war, hate and death.

A debut that, frustratingly, juggles promise and excess.

For all its flaws and failings, for all that you may never feel like listening to it again, it's hard not to be perversely glad Embryonic exists.

An album that never quite delivers, largely because it's so unvarying in tone... Yet it manages to sound refreshing.

Fans of the girlish northern voices of sisters Becky and Rachel Unthank, and the soft, shining piano of Adrian McNally, will adore it; others might get lost in the whispery sweetness of Dream Your Dreams and Never Pine for the Old Love, longing for more gravel and grit.

Despite a handful of the elder Gallagher’s irresistible everyman anthems, much of Council Skies is unambitious and generic to the point of tedium.

At its most straightforward, Crack-Up features a digressive, segmented, prog-rock-style take on the sound of the band’s first two albums, with mixed results.

The results are decidedly retro-modern--that bit too well produced to have been authentically blaring out of a roadside bar in the 1960s--but are steeped in blues and soul and a lot of fun.

The format can run the risk of feeling one-dimensional, and the repetitive Mind Blues is more jarring than thrilling, but The Offbeat and Everything All the Time are giant, funky, instantly catchy collisions of voice and rhythm that will no doubt gain even more physical heft when they play them live.

Not only is Bernholz preaching to the converted, she’s also preaching to an audience who pride themselves on their tolerance for enduring hostility. It might make for a more engaging performance than straightforward listening experience, although Bernholz’s ingenuity does reveal itself.

It sounds like the work of an artist torn between doing exactly what she pleases and, perhaps understandably under the circumstances, giving her audience what they want. But there’s no doubt which of these impulses is more successful artistically.

Although Forster's characterful, Australian waver gets under your skin, the sentiments of these songs won't do the same.

There’s a lot that’s laudable about Caprisongs. Not least its desire to keep moving and changing – enough that complaining about something as straightforward as a paucity of memorable tunes almost feels miserly. But equally, it’s something that ultimately impedes your enjoyment of the album. As a soundtrack for the start of a night, it doesn’t quite pan out as you might hope.

The second half is dominated by a seedy funk that feels at once self-indulgent and unappetising, despite the odd dazzling moment.

If Replica occasionally drifts--literally–-too close to the whiffy bongs and flotation tanks of 90s chillout, it's never predictable, and is best experienced in a continuous sitting.

While Shake occasionally excels at crafting musical gems out of dark paranoia, her themes are stretched somewhat thin over the course of the whole record and on some tracks she ends up sounding listless.

Not all their experiments work, but it’s hard not to be infected by the excitement when they do.

The 5CD set of course includes his three now-celebrated albums.... Then there's Made to Love Magic, released in 2004, which includes out-takes and his final 1974 recordings, including the bleak Black Eyed Dog, and Family Tree, a set of home recordings he made before 1969, that was originally released in 2007. It's predictably patchy.

The album's big problem is not a lack of quality; it's the feeling that you've been here before, or you've been somewhere so like here as to make little difference.

The result is curiously timeless. Soul, swing and funk classics of yesteryear become strange, new blooms under Ndegeocello’s care.

Overall the mixture never quite gels, and the rasping timbre of Cantrell's voice ain't the prettiest sound you ever heard.

The mood is sombre, the pace slow-to-mid and Staples means every word she sings.

it's almost impossible to listen to without making comparisons, and Local Natives are not the beneficiaries of the process.

Her mystery and malady are communicated best on dreampop tracks Hell and Back and Colour of Water; moments of spaced-out, doomed romance on an album that’s otherwise a little too long and indulgent.

The best songs paint him as guardian of the apocalypse, pairing his world-weary soulfulness with murky, mutant beats. Hopefully for the next album he’ll hang up his top hat and focus on those instincts instead.

For Those Who Wish to Exist proves Architects’ ability to oscillate between thoughtful, interesting, finely wrought compositions and gleefully hulking exercises in metal obviousness is still intact. The fact it often feels stultifying regardless proves turning climate anxiety into gratifying entertainment is a very difficult art to master.

There are a couple of more upbeat songs on the album, but it is dominated by angry political comment and world-weary laments that are aimed at a Malian, not western, audience.

It’s a tough sell for anyone not already on board with McKee, especially since the songwriting is rarely persuasive enough to take the edge off the intensity.