Flamboyant, excessive and more Mikado than Micachu, you get the feeling that 'Life Is Sweet...' is an album that'll polarise people. But hey - if you don't like this one, Dev will be onto the next project tomorrow anyway.

The brothers keep it tight though, allowing themselves room to manoeuvre and muck about with time signatures and effects, but within the confines of songs that rarely exceed four minutes.

They seem keen to hold a mirror up to familiar pop tropes, but in doing so only reveal themselves for what they are - a gang of weirdoes carrying guitars. Perversely, their eagerness to engage the mainstream attention span often seems obnoxious in itself.

By narrowing their range and increasing their focus, and by wearing their hearts on their sleeves and not smirks on their faces, they may just have released their first, confidently Hot Chip record. And that turns out to be something rather wonderful.

With personnel changes and a series of guest artists the names of which ever-increasingly overshadow whatever actual sounds they're making, Massive Attack have fought a continual struggle to surpass 1994's 'Protection'.

If leaving Lost Highway was a blow to Regan's confidence you'd never know it from hearing this - he's definitely taken the right turning.

Furthermore, the way that 'Rulers Of Ruling Things', 'The Horn' and 'The Courage Of Others' arch effortlessly into trippier psych-rock inflected territory suggest a more expansive, weirder Midlake to come.

Herein lays Wayne's problem: he clearly has no understanding of rock.

Instead of pushing any boundaries The Soft Pack have made a vigorous, enjoyable and high-energy record with a bundle of opportunities for jerky dancefloor foot stomping.

Drum and Bass dons Noisia have been roped in on production duties and they've put a fair deal of weight into tracks that might otherwise have sounded flat.

Skim the surface and you'll find ten slabs of icily slick electro-pop, spend a little time and you'll uncover an altogether darker core; either way Unicorn delivers in whichever form you're looking for.

Their dedication to refined, pretty songs means there's a very narrow scope here that didn't afflict Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest" and which makes proceedings here sound a little wan and wishy-washy after a while.

The leap in quality is clear from the album's opening bars.

In This Light And On This Evening is a weak, ill conceived and uninspiring effort.

Spoon have created an album that will not only satisfy long-time observers but will also act as a gateway for those yet to discover their charms.

In the long, twisted canon of break-up albums, Everett doesn't only miss the mark, but makes arguably the first serious misstep of his career.

It's ironic and ill-fitting that such ditch-hopping actually embroils them in impassioned debate--and it's a credit to them that, love or hate these songs' lack of drama, you'll remember them very, very well.

It's effective, not good. More tellingly, it's catchy in spite of Ke$ha, not because of her.

It's surely a compliment to suggest that someone as abundantly gifted as she is can do better than this enjoyable, occasionally brilliant but disappointingly generic record.

Everything about this album smacks of contrivance and careful planning.

Despite being five tracks too long--specifically the five tracks which have him falling back to his syrupy ways of old Graffiti is hands down the highest point of Chris Brown's career.

These pop-centric cuts are, however, where Snoop seems most comfortable, if not most talented.

Throughout most of Untitled, Kelly seems to have taken the worst aspects of "Trapped In The Closet"--it's over-the-head relentless melodies and lyrics--and decided that they'll work in a song until the repetition instead relegates it to wallpaper.

Ultimately, the list of collaborators on She Wolf may be an impressive roll call, but perhaps Shakira would do better in listening to her own instincts than that of others.

The Fame Monster says nothing new lyrically, and has its troughs, but it's a bolder and more coherent record than GaGa's debut.

Encapsulating just how far Sean has come (if you're a Cash Money CEO, that is) Lil' Jon pops up to do his incomprehensible shouty thing, so ruining, for no reason at all, the only remotely catchy thing here.

By agreeing instead to compromise he's actually found both the quality and integrity he so desires and an album of songs which by anyone's definition sounds like a return to form.

If the hardcore fanbase feel a blanch coming on, this isn't all wilful eclecticism gone mad. King's work is The Fall's unifying factor that keeps it cohesive.