If you are the kind of person who likes your chocolate as rich and dark as it comes, and your red wine full and tannic, Calla have your disc ready. This New York trio mix driving guitar with lush soundscapes to create a wonderful fourth album - their first for the legendary Beggars Banquet label. With the catchiness of the Dandy Warhols at their best, the intensity of Joy Division and some Doves-like instrumentation, Calla don't break any conventions, but they do what they do awfully well. The songs are almost recumbent but maintain a remarkable suspense and dynamism. At times, the steady pace pushes this disc towards a more late night slot, but within that slot, it does a great job. Excellent slow burner.

ACE rating 8/10

Domino are doing an awful lot right at the moment, with bands like Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys managing to be wonderfully indie as well as breakthough popular. Domino is also the home of a group called the Blueskins, whose wild, manic blues-based rock went shamefully unnoticed last year. Let's hope that same fate doesn't befall this great debut by a spikier, wilder, bluesier band from the West Country. Derdang Derdang is the first album by the band after signing to Domino, and it combines the wonderful thick energy of the 22-20s with the angular rock popularised by the Arctic Monkeys. On a lot of the tracks, the band sound like a macho punk Talking Heads, taking on some Disraeli Gears Cream. This debut isn't polished, isn't clever, and isn't calculated, thank goodness. It is as raw a disc as you'll hear all year, alongside Two Gallants and The Black Keys. Thank Domino.

ACE rating 8/10

As a long time fan of Snow Patrol and Reindeer Section, it is somewhat disappointing to watch (and hear) the band turn in an average disc, after the outstanding, classic, Final Straw. Eyes Open starts well enough, but soon drifts into U2-lite balladry that sounds more like someone forgot to write the songs before they got to the studio - like Coldplay's XY, it's all nice enough, but hardly essential. Maybe it's the curse of the big hit album, and the weight of expectation, but there's no Chocolate here, no Spitting Games, and the inclusion of an acoustic Run as a bonus track points up the difference in the quality of the writing on Eyes Open versus the last album. Some tracks are anaemic - Shut Your Eyes, The Finish Line - while others are simply mediocre heads-down rock (think Embrace or Elbow). There are great Snow Patrol songs here - Hands Open, Chasing Cars - but there are more yawns than goose bumps.

ACE rating 6/10