Just like humanity’s primordial obsession with fire, Sky Swimming is difficult to disengage with.

It flits from doomy death marches to frenetic, fuzzy psych rock freakouts like the fantastic ‘Choco Plumbing’, while indulging in some quirkier elements including a stomping cover of The Beatles ‘I Want To Tell You’ and a sweet, Casio keyboard run-through of American standard ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’.

Full-bodied production is at the heart, though takes nothing away from the more laid back moments.

The big floor-filling moments are in there, particularly on the gripping one-two of ‘Staring at All This Handle’ and ‘Face to Face with Spoon’, but they feel incongruous in the thick of what is otherwise a woozy comedown of an album that fails to cover a great deal of new ground.

Sure, it’s a sound that at times can be guilty of slipping into little more than a background beat; the kind of thing you’d half listen to at two in the morning on Kiss100 cruising down a deserted motorway. This is not necessarily bad, just evidence of a sound that reflects the era it embodies.

It would be difficult for any band to return with new music after 35 years of absence but with Citizen Zombie the always challenging Pop Group have succeeded in returning with something vibrant, urgent and necessary.

After a debut that spent much of its time slinking like crawlers out in the shadows, it’s intriguing--if slightly disconcerting--to see Purity Ring in a warmer light.

Minus The Bear may have returned to the style that made their name, but there is still enough mileage in that sound to ensure that 'Infinity Overhead' is a marked improvement on their previous album.

Semicircle won’t seem like a giant leap for the band but is yet another upbeat, buoyant addition to their canon, injected with an even greater sense of community spirit.

It's a 'take it or leave it' kind of record, but invest in Cut Copy's deranged aims and it'll feel like being part of a free-spirited cult.

Granted, Chapter and Verse isn’t rewriting the book, but it is yet more proof that Funeral For A Friend still possess that same fire, that same determination, to keep making great records.

Whilst songs from this new record will actually fit nicely besides tracks from ‘Old Pine’ and ‘The Lack Long After’, Keep You as a whole, is somewhat forgettable.

An exhaustingly incoherent listen.

Taken on its own merit Rituals is a bright and bombastic record that harbours a darker underbelly. ... And though there’s a chance it will alienate a small portion of established fanbase, it will certainly earn the band more than it loses.

Although this album is unlikely to change any existing opinion about a band whose left of centre sensibilities have always meant successfully evading wider acceptance, there is enough richness in the material here to merit far more than classing Fellow Travelers as a mere novelty.

With room for refinement this isn’t LFY’s crowning glory by any stretch, but it’s a purposeful record that shows a trio holding on to the makings of something quite special.

Definitely an album of two halves, by the time you hit ‘Ferris Wheel’ and ‘Destroyer’ the record drifts off into Dylan-isms that while are nice enough, don’t carry the same idiosyncratic weight of ‘Singing Saw’ or ‘Drunk and On A Star’ that will some day carve out a classic from this hugely promising talent.

It’s dark, atmospheric and shoegazey--and as a sonic canvas it works well. But several of the songs struggle to say anything that’s not already been said elsewhere on the album.

The result is an album that’s pleasant but kind of passes you by, and for a singer that was always so charismatic, being just ordinary feels like a bit of a bummer.

There’s a sense of comfort running throughout that does result in repeated motifs, fancy tricks that have either appeared on previous LPs or within the same eight songs.

With ‘Fragments’, Bonobo is as listenable as ever. But this locked groove is one he seems too comfortable in. Once you hear where he can go, there’s a frustrating desire to see him latch on to that fragment of himself rather than the familiar.

Still Corners’ dream-pop takes on a nightmarish hue with snatches of ominous electro and brutally honest lyrics. Their time away has served them well on this new record.

Genres fall by the wayside as krautrock melts into a studied and dense electronica, and pulls either towards the tenseness of post-punk or the hazy surrealism of shoegaze.

They’re untouchable in one sense, but they don’t look to be building on more than solid foundations. Threading together moments of true beauty is a nagging sense that there’s so much of this parallel universe they’ve yet to explore.

The lack of time taken for ii to form itself--no weeks off to go back and reconsider minor changes, no reigning in the level of experimentation--gives the album the feel of a jam, but without falling into an undefinable mess.

Excess and saturation can only get a band so far without a knowing wink to match, and at the moment, it’s that mischievous streak of personality that feels slightly absent.

Far from snug or welcoming, the Gang’s overpoweringly thick-sounding ninth album is as refreshingly abstract as anything they’ve done before.

Competent. Completely forgettable.