An album which makes you feel like Maxïmo are parked when they should be in the fast lane.

[They] have returned sounding pretty much exactly the same as they did three and a half years ago.

They manage to create a hefty mass of synth'n'guitar led sound, while remaining friendly and accessible.

It all makes for a captivating listen or a dreamy forty minutes, whatever your preference - though a possible failing can be found in only occasional glimpses of the human soul.

If it weren't for the big three singles... and the habitually contagious Golden Skans standing well above the rest of the album, there would be nothing new or interesting about Myths.

Like its predecessor, the Kaisers' second album is patchy, but does have moments of brilliance.

You're left feeling like you're listening the audio equivalent of a normally classy mum dressing up in her daughter’s clothing.

At times, it's so relentlessly bouncy and upbeat that you feel like mowing down an entire shopping centre with an AK-47. Yet there's enough promise here to confirm that the hype about Mika is pretty much on the money.

Thorn's voice will always be a thing of undimmed charm and emotion, but the gulf between the music styles on display here, which flick from 70's disco, piano ballads and electro-pop seem like trying to keep a foot in both camps of the simpler days of her youth, and the ‘hip' dance crowd.

In buying in so emphatically into a US pop/soul template, Stone has effectively erased what made her so intriguing in the first place.

Comparisons with his subsequent work are inevitable and this feels like a disappointment when put alongside the more accessible likes of Donuts.

For Idlewild fans, especially of the older school, there is more than enough here to warrant a pilgrimage to your local record shop.

One man's pop is another man's weirdness. And weird, The Third Hand certainly is.

Like Oberst, the strength of her songwriting sometimes overshadows the rather interesting things going on in terms of production.

When so many performers are trying to push the boundaries, sometimes it's nice to have something so plain and straightforward.

Perhaps if each song were half the length, the fun, easy-listening element to PBJ's music would be more clear-cut. As it is, Writer's Block proves a real struggle.

This album is too much of a mess to be seen as a worthy follow-up to such a great debut.

Their calmest album to date.

Notwithstanding the occasional background music tendencies, The Bird And The Bee is a solid debut which will undoubtedly attract most connoisseurs of intelligent pop.

The trouble is that in the two years since Love Angel Music Baby she doesn't seem to have moved on or evolved at all.

The Cat is back, albeit more of a moonshadow of his former self and lacking some purr and bite.

Whereas their first album hit the mark perfectly, The Pick of Destiny swings wildly and misses.

Part of the problem is that faced with a performer as low-fi and minimal as Conor Oberst in the first place, many of the unfinished demos presented here, such as I Will Be Grateful This Day and Seashell Tale, sound much, much too thin.

All too often Rudebox plays like an undeveloped collection of half-baked ideas.

While this makes for pleasant enough listening, we know that Damon Gough can do a lot better than pleasant.

There are gospel singers, there are elements of Zepplin'y mysticism, and there are swampy Cajun tinged bits, but nothing hides the fact that it's too little too late.

With too much empty bluster and not enough decent songs, Sam's Town can only be regarded as a step back for The Killers.

[Jet] are making a career out of sounding like a Small Faces tribute band covering The Beatles in the style of Oasis.