The Weekly Review

Blue Valentine limped into cinemas last Christmas with all the timing of an ex-lover phoning on the eve of your wedding. Its message was depressingly simple: everything wonderful soon falls apart. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Bon Iver’s self-titled record is a lush, surprising affair that beefs up the instrumentation without once threatening Justin Vernon’s fragile falsetto.

There’s a strange distance to Tamer Animals, the second album from Oklahoma group Other Lives. On first listen, it’s as if the songs are playing next door, so that we have to press our ear to the plaster to make any sense of them.

Let’s be honest, there’s nothing sexy about a cane toad. Even the most animal-friendly will struggle to find something to love in these toxic toadstools on legs.