Some the hooks are among the best the band has ever written... [Yet] the 10 songs never feel like an Album so much as it does a collection of songs, more like productive jams from a group of middle-aged friends unwinding or celebrating than actually adding any kind of blues to their songwriting chops.

It's difficult to say that there are some great songs on this album, but it's true; unfortunately Lewis fails to take advantage of this fact by lagging behind the innovation and originality of the preceding 80's revivalist movement.

What really makes this album the disappointment that it is is not the songs that wallow in the background. It's relistening to his earlier work that puts it into perspective.

This is the main strength of Fang Island's songwriting, their ear for power-pop catchiness. But they've also implicitly revealed their fatal flaw: they don't give you enough of a sense of suspense and release which makes those climaxes your favourite parts.

These songs are all, for the most part, perfectly adequate, but we've heard better and stronger songs from Sadier before. It's not so much a sucker punch as a blunt disappointment from an artist who we know can do so much better.

Most of Hypnotic Nights already sounds worn out.

When Friends get down to it, the energy that brought them together dictates the making of half-profound statements in retro R&B funk jams; and frankly, the result is brilliant.... Yet, when they explore other avenues, the band seem unable to hide their influence and consequently come off as half-hearted.

If albums could have Nutrition Facts, Quarantine would lack the vitamins and minerals we normally associate with Laurel Halo's production, but it's hard to dislike the album entirely because, after all, she's still quite skillful at making her Metal Gear Solid-esque ambiences seize and enrapture us with their swirling, bubbling drones.

Because it's tediously unassuming, people will listen to it in the background once or twice while skimreading blogs and forget about it within a year.

It's good, but it's not essential.

The contemporary beats and intermitted uses of techno make this album youthful. For instance, Stupid has a stoic loop that runs through Womack's raspy cries and a sophisticated piano melody. It's a really beautiful blend of new and old.

There is a laudably uncompromising quality to the album which I admire. But by the time I get to album finale Brunswick Sludge I find myself getting a little bored with it all. There's only so much wacky noise experimentation I can take in one go.

It boasts some of the band's most emotionally charged material, but just like all their efforts, it requires bearing some stiff, docile guitar melodies to discover some of its finer points.

Go! Pop! Bang! is a fun album, even when it's suffering from the too many cooks syndrome. I just hope Rye Rye asserts more control over her next release.

When it comes to developing and honing the craft of songwriting to present a signature sound with a variety of ideas, The Temper Trap fall short.

For all the interesting noises that the band have come up with in the studio, the production really doesn't do them any favours, cramming them into a fairly narrow space and stripping them almost entirely of any sense of atmosphere.

On Make-Believe, a sloppy more-of-the-same same approach has crippled what this album could have been, ultimately leaving us with some vaguely interesting notions rather than well-explored concepts.

Although this may not be a masterpiece in the repertoire, I can't say that it lacks anything in particular, in fact, the opposite is true. It gives too much. There just became a point where I needed to avert my attention away from the heart-ache.

The songwriting [on Bloom] is rarely stronger [than on previous albums], never different, and more hit-and-miss than I thought Beach House were capable of. It's not their worst record, but it's already their most tired, and that should never, ever happen on a fourth LP. But at least it's pretty.

Each song is tediously nonspecific, the sort of doggerel any other prominent indie-rocker would cringe at the idea of singing out loud.

Europe often finds itself lacking in ideas and sticking to de rigueur jangle and well-trodden indiepop tropes.

Light Asylum works best if approached as a work of fantastic campness; after all, this would explain the whip-cracking sound effects on IPC.

Much of A Wasteland Companion suffers from the unimaginative fluff that plagued 2009's Hold Time.

Noctourniquet, while not completely successful, finds The Mars Volta at their most pop and their most reasonable.

The problem is that Ishibashi isn't idiosyncratic enough to make this a memorable record... That said, he gets it so right on Manchester it's unbelievable.

[The music] is not exactly bad, but has about as much creativity and passion behind it as a spreadsheet.

A recipe for disaster which tries to please everybody and ends up being enjoyed by nobody.

Perhaps ... the best way to describe Boys & Girls: unwilling to innovate or add anything new to its genre, preferring to remind us of the roots of rock instead of showing us what made the pioneers so great, a reminder of a past love instead of a new love for us to discover.

Only a couple of the tracks really resonate, even with repeated spins.

Through headphones, Ssss lacks proper punctum. Through speakers, it fails to infect.

While there's no doubt that Port of Morrow is well crafted, then, it fails because it is ultimately unmoving, and what Mercer has gained in style and execution is overshadowed by the album's lack of either invention or sincerity.

The song writing is passable, the sound is passable, but passable is usually as boring as it sounds.

It's a cleanly produced album, sure, but it lacks the attitude of the era from where it came, the 1970s.

Personality is not quite the dancefloor-igniting record that was expected, though nor is it a mere rehash of previous work – it is the sound of Rose exploring a variety of styles without successfully nailing any of them.

What's also noticeable is how unnecessarily restrained most of the album is.

Throughout, a spewing, pandering vitriol taints a band whose vivacity seems to be wearing thin.

Softening their sound hasn't led to more fans, but to a blander, weaker and unsatisfying sound.

They're already halfway to being the world's best My Bloody Valentine cover band.

The main issue with Mr. M is that, while it's beautiful on the surface, it doesn't really go anywhere.

There are some truly great moments here where the band crash around making glorious, daft, noisy pop music, but they stand at a stark counterpoint with the cloying experimental tendencies Barnes forces through.

The album sounds familiar far too quickly. [But] when Interstellar hits, however, it hits hard.

While standards are generally high on the record's first half, it feels like three EPs have been welded together to form Melt.

The album is at its most successful when Lanegan allows these alien textures [electronics, atmospheric guitar] to take a more prominent role in his songs, providing a counterfoil to his gravelly rock vocals. Elsewhere the songs meander too much for the album to coalesce into a convincing statement.

This is by and large a record that moves at its own pace, and a calm one at that.

It gets a bit boring, a bit sleepy, and altogether, it's a bit forgettable.... But, you know? It sounds good doing it. That has to count for something.

Plumb feels unsure of how ambitious it wants to be, but instead of landing in the middle of the road, the lack of focus and uncertainty create an incoherent mess.

There may be some great ideas on here amongst the mis-steps, but without any suspense, it is difficult to tell.

Sure, a couple tracks hit it just right, but by and large, once the album's over, it's not liable to pop back into my thinking.

It's elegant, but hardly likely to inspire any particularly stirring flights of fancy, or any reevaluations of the band's post-Moon Safari discography.

Considering how the lyrical content and flat as a rug singing in Weekends was written for an elementary school child to understand, they probably should've kept it that way; it occasionally downgrades the songs to a point where they are unable to rise above their cheesiness.

It all sounds very immaturely polished.

While I can appreciate their longevity, ironic style and pureness in their sound, I can't admit that this was enjoyable for me.

The often overly-enthusiastic arrangements threaten to smother the qualities that made Rodrigo y Gabriela special in the first place with the quiet brutality of their guitar playing often lost in the extended jam-band style... structures.

Far beyond simply avant garde, this is one for the abstract devotee.

There's a lot in here that brims with life but, somehow, it never quite unfolds.

There is nothing abrasive about Strange Weekend, nothing risky, nothing unique; there is instead just a shortage of "Wow!"

When this EP gets it right, it is a triumphant nod to Dear's versatile ear, but when it settles for being weird for the sake of it, it's simply messy.

A "more accessible, less-noisy Jesus and Mary Chain".

The album's biggest hindrance is a lack of ruthlessness at crucial moments, eschewing cohesion for broad-stroke stabs at too many genres.

While it is more realized than previous effort The Stand Ins, Okkervil River is showing potential for new direction more than they are showing versatility.

The Black Keys have created a record that they believe is how a rock'n'roll record should sound, but without soul or sex or genuine sweet emotion.

When it's good, it's great; it's just a shame so many tracks fall short of his usually very high standards.

Ritual Union is catchy and well-produced, but it certainly doesn't demand any more than a handful of listens.

After a promising opening trio of tracks, Sticks + Stones wanes badly, and begins to sound more and more like it's been focus-grouped by industry executives in pursuit of a quick buck until there's barely any semblance of character left.

Even if his insecurities can illicit a few cringes (he sounds genuinely upset with his haters on All The Shine), there's enough empowered anthems like Bonfire and Outside for Childish Gambino to pull through.

It's not a love-hate relationship I have with his stuff, it's more like a so what attitude. So what if he gets Laurie Anderson to recite drab poetry on his record, so what if he can play tens of thousands of notes in one breath.

Fortunately, his two other pieces on the record, Mallet Quartet, and Dance Patterns are nothing short of the flowery style that make Reich's music so rich. WTC 9/11, on the other hand, just sounds muddy.

If only Jones would also add some color to his verbatim accounts to match his minimal pop songs, then we would have a real contender in our hands.

He never gets beyond either producing a meditative song or joyful song. The difference between this album from all the millions of other acoustic albums out there? Not much.

There's a significant lack of depth to Within and Without.

To be fair, if it weren't for Lynch's lacklustre vocals and lyrics there might be a fairly solid collection of atmospheric retro rock 'n' roll here, but as it seems to be coming at the expense of his film career that's still not quite good enough.

Up until Lulu, I didn't think it was possible to be both enamored and disgusted at the same time. Mind? Blown.

As it stands, the best that could be said about Ceremonials is that it's a pleasant enough listen that will change absolutely nobody's mind about Florence and her machine.

Shadow's production is wantonly flashy, but it can't mask his lack of flair.

Whereas those earlier songs brought to mind a stream of sunlight trying to break through a grayed sky, now there's a battering of haphazard lightning striking against a furious ocean.

It's an in-the-moment album that's best when it's in the moment.

It is by no means a bad album, and if you're already into the band it will provide a new fix of freakout, but to deserve any more than a 6/10 it really needs to nail the transcendental and ditch the kitsch.

Despite some flaws in its execution, Biophilia does succeed in pushing beyond the already established album-singles-videos model, and the creation of a digital experience to compliment the music feels like a natural progression in the way that music is packaged and consumed.

Mylo Xyloto does have its unpredictable moments, some of which work more effectively than others.

There's much promise for an act like Gauntlet Hair to floor its contemporaries with time, but as it stands, their grimy, sewage system is in dire need of maintenance.

Original Colors isn't extraordinary music.

Tomorrow's World isn't a bad album but it's not a complete "return to form" either.

As an album, it's probably the dullest anticipation of the year.

The vocals are obscured, but nothing else really meshes.

The production is inconsistent and largely a bit too bombastic for Das Racist's usually free-associative, untechnical rapping.

As dedicated as he is to forming these characters into life-size beings, it doesn't change the fact that some are less interesting than others due to a lack of personification.

Celestial Lineage may be well crafted and even (relatively) accessible but by eschewing the ideas that coloured their previous work, Wolves in the Throne Room have ended up creating something that's not really black, but rather quite grey.

There's a weird combination of influences at work here.

While Palomo advances his songwriting by attempting a concept album, he fails to vary the songs enough to allow their inner essence to shine, to glow, to hook inside the listener, to haunt them.

More than anything, Big Talk reflects the Vegas background of its middling maestro.

Not once does this record manage to clamber out of its self-imposed constraints of mediocrity; and for a band genuinely capable of blissful set piece tracks, that makes it mostly a somewhat distressing token.

It's a mediocre album, and I'm only being hard on you because I sincerely wanted more. Like a pissy parent, I'm not mad at you... I'm disappointed.

Simply put, it's far too repetitive, especially considering its short length, and even on repeated listens tracks seem impossible to tell apart--particularly, after the strong opening provided by Welcome, the run of Apart, Motion and Expect all sound pretty much the same.

With Junk of the Heart, the Kooks are completely discarding level-headedness in favor of offbeat trial tests that fail to give any of the tracks any added gravitas.

I'm With You is the sound of a band that continues to coast off past achievements.

There are some nice moments in the mess, and sometimes I'm almost tempted to look past the annoyances before they build up--but sometimes, that's frankly just not possible.

Stuck in his salad days, the problem isn't so much what Wiley is doing, it's what everyone else has done in the interim.

They're good but not excellent; they have brilliant songwriting over mediocre melodies and the old-newness becomes old again quickly. Five. Right smack dab in the middle of nothing and everything.