Beams – Matthew Dear – It is as if the minimalist electronic whiz kid re-wrote "I Zimbra" 11 times in a row, a pretty great idea in theory. In practice, it isn't 1979 and the sound has built in monotony problems. At its best, "Fighting Is Futile" Dear is clearly an enormously gifted songwriter making a spooky and lovely soundscape. The rest of the time, he is like his hero Eno's ambience without the ambience or David Byrne when he had a rock esthetic without the rock esthetic. An incomplete sound – Grade: B
North – Matchbox 20 – When Thomas says the rest of the exiles on mainstreamers are co-writers now, what he means is Cook gets credit on one song, and all three original members get co-writing credit on two songs. The other nine tracks are business as usual. Two of the songs are pretty good, half of them are what you expect and the rest are worse – Grade: C-
America – Dan Deacon – Electronic white boys are to 2012, what singer-songwriter white boys were to 1971: you can't throw a brick without hitting one, and it hard to tell and not worth the effort to tell who is worth the effort. Oh and if you dislike them, you're a philistine. So I don't dislike this album which sounds like David Byrne -who would have thought Byrne being mugged by an orchestra and a mac – Grade: B
Silver Age – Bob Mould – Mould unleashes his inner Sugar and releases his most Mould like album in ages. I'd given him around half and none of it stinks – Grade: B+
Beacon – Two Door Cinema Club – The problem is the band name of course, but they might get over it if the songs were anything but half finished electro poppers. Very unpleasant – Grade: D+
Centipede Hz – Animal Collective – Word on the street is that if you drop some acid and concentrate real hard the songs will magically. So go ahead – Grade: C
The Singer – Art Garfunkel – The S&G songs cut out with "My Little Town", if you don't have the Breakaway album, this will give you a healthy sampling, the standards aren't really good enough, the two new tracks suck. But Garfunkel has every right to present himself as one of rock and rolls greatest vocalist. And if the reason for this compilation, as the man recovers and attempts to regain that voice, is to tell us. Well, we didn't need reminding but we don't mind being reminded – Grade: A
Sun – Cat Power – Her best album is only RELATIVELY upbeat and the George Harrison title quite doesn't change that. But the songs are just plain brilliant, her voice is drenched in feeling and her songs are singular and beautiful. Shout out to "Manhattan" – Grade: A