Andrew Bird has a wonderful four albums to his name - the multi-instrumentalist (including classically-trained violinist) reached his zenith with The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, a gorgeous, clever, sophisticated delight of an album. Were you to imagine a muso Jeff Buckley, you'd not be far wrong, with Bird's wonderfully warm, soaring voice accompanying his pizzicato violin, and (often simultaneously) multi-tracked instruments. Noble Beast is a bit of a departure, and not an entirely welcome one. Whereas he's been pretty self-reliant in past, this album sees him rope in some members of Wilco to indie up the sound. The result, with Mark Nevers (producer of Lambchop and Calexico) at the desks, is a little one-dimensional - nice enough, but lacking the kind of flights of fancy that entertained so much, and that can easily be misclassified as experimental. It is an album that has a stronger crust to break through, and once in it is a little flat. Bird seems to have taken himself pretty seriously here - the whimsy of his music lost. Instead, Noble Beast sounds like later-era Paul Simon, but played and sung beautifully.

ACE rating 7/10

Justin Vernon probably didn't expect the acclaim that would accompany his debut as Bon Iver. For Emma Forever Ago was a massive seller, and a huge critical favourite. Blood Bank is his first release to add a backing band, and it is only an EP, dug out to keep the buzz going a little longer, no doubt. It actually features material recorded 2006-7, and, unlike For Emma, it is a more normal piece of work - less acoustic, more experimental. 'Normal' if you think that layered Vocoded voices in a Fleet Foxy manner is normal... Woods is a piece that jibes slightly with the profile listeners may have of Bon Iver, but interesting after a few listens. The EP is best seen as a double A single - Blood Bank and Babys (with its hypnotic piano core) - with some filler: Beach Baby isn't good, so Blood Bank is almost a perfect iTunes EP... Two songs and you're good to go.

ACE rating 7/10

No bigger Springsteen fan will write a review of this album, so this short paragraph is full of sadness. The plain and simple truth is that the best song on this album wasn't destined for the album - The Wrestler was written for the movie, and is included here as a 'bonus' track - 'compensatory' would be a better word. Instead, the album contains songs that make a long-term fan wince - the awful Surprise, Surprise that could be a Noel Edmonds TV show theme tune, the Manilow-esque Kingdom of Days and This Life, the headshakingly embarrassing paean for a supermarket checkout girl, Queen Of The Supermarket, or the 7-minutes-too-long cartoon Outlaw Pete (notwithstanding that Bruce could make a phone book sound great). In the good old days, these songs wouldn't have entered Springsteen's head. Other songs here - My Lucky Day, or the Orbison-like title track - sound like those left over when Born In The USA was stripped from its hundred or so recorded songs to its twelve. There is classic Springsteen here - What Love Can Do, Life Itself and The Last Carnival - but the album sounds like the odds and sods collection it started as: a carry-over from the patchy Magic. If Girls In Their Summer Clothes or Your Own Worst Enemy did anything for you, you may find something here. Anyone with some Springsteen in their blood should look away - Human Touch is a better album than this.

ACE rating 6/10