It is dreamy and languid, warm and inviting in turn; a soulful work by a talented young singer-songwriter that hints at a bright and beautiful future.

Although it’s not perfect, We Will Not Harm You is a significant advance on [his] previous efforts.

This is their best album for years.

Thompson’s classic folk rock formula is revived once more, and his frequent guitar solos are as sour as his lyrical wit.

If there are discernible musical differences, it’s that there’s a little more clarity and slightly less reliance on the fuzz pedals.

Songs as bold, honest and passionate as these shouldn’t have any trouble fitting in.

Their aim isn’t always true: Armonica ladles effects onto Buttery’s vocal to cover up the paucity of its tune. But elsewhere, things come together quite beautifully.

It continues the band's long-running, idiosyncratic and distinctively creative career path.

Musselwhite's dialogue with Harper's soulful tenor and punchy guitar is pure Astaire and Rogers.

The 36 minutes of Mid Air [is] a masterpiece.

It's a soulful, self-contained delight.

Throughout, the lyrical clarity and emotional honesty of the band shine through, creating an album that is as much uplifting as it is in parts bleak.

[A] likeable, if light, follow-up.

On the whole, Collections is a misfire and proof that, sometimes, re-inventing the wheel doesn't always reap rewards.

This 10-track ode to the joys of a sad, sweet, mellow but occasionally dark and atmospheric love song is arranged with tender loving care and produced with just enough reverb to remind you of girl-group classics

The end-of-year lists for 2012 are barely gone from recent memory, but you can expect to read about Vertikal again in 11 months' time.

It's frequently beautiful, but perhaps too ephemeral an experience to establish a hold on anyone with more than music on their mind.

It's a solid, engaging and high-calibre Biffy Clyro album. And that's no bad thing.

Just occasionally the band drops hints that they might have a future beyond this loutish, two-dimensional debut.

Somewhere Else certainly reveals itself slowly, but persist and there's real beauty to be found here.

He sings with such soulful conviction, fitting the wizened candour of these strong, memorable songs like a battered leather glove.

For many listeners, Foxygen's influences will sound tired. But as they plunder the past, they're enjoying themselves, and the enthusiasm on this messy collection of songs is infectious.

The album unfurls at a leisurely pace, the band's characteristic blend of burbling electronica and acoustic instrumentation at its most formidable, and most satisfying, yet.

With its high-minded lyrical concerns, its family-sized choruses and its authors' buoyant pursuit of what, in lesser hands, could be a restrictive musical form, True North is a superior addition to Bad Religion's already towering body of work.

It's this tightrope between bruised self-doubt and fun blasts of noise that gives Wolf's Law its emotional heft.

The result is a bolder, brighter record than their debut.

He has created a work of insidious beauty: creeping, pervasive and better for it.

Toro y Moi goes longer and harder than before, and the results represent an accentuation of the elements which appealed in his prior work.

This five-part suite expertly blurs boundaries between Weber's sequenced beats and the florid, cascading melodies of the carillon (played expertly by Vegar Sandholt).

It's a consistently intriguing album and, in the long run, may even prove more enduring than its predecessor.

The evocative lyrics sometimes suffer from overly mannered or just overdone phraseology.... But these are ultimately prices worth paying for the pleasingly poetic, adventurous and occasionally florid use of words that mark Villagers out as one of the more interesting, literate and imaginative storytellers of recent years.

Yet at every turn, this new album eschews clichés--any strident shrieking, chanting and cod imagery--for something sleek, fluid and effortlessly modern.

Florence, Santigold and the usually brilliant Danny Brown do little more than tick boxes, and ultimately Long.Live.A$AP fails to match its hype with a coherent trend-setting statement.

Ultimately, God is less in the details, here, and Lonesome Dreams' success lies largely in the irrefutably vaulting sweep of the music and the ineffable air of melancholy-dented redemption which it so effectively conjures.

There are songs here that comprise bite-size fragments of multifarious melodies, drawing on myriad influences. But there are also tracks that sustain one tune and tempo over the duration, where previously only three or four would do.

The real revelation about Fade is that it is the most settled album they've recorded in years.

This is a fully realised tribute to early 80s pop-RnB music, filled with candy-sweet keyboard sounds and beats that could be the work of a battered old Casio drum machine.

Predictably but not to its detriment, Signed and Sealed in Blood delivers a mix of rousing rock songs and enough jigs and whistles to get a singsong going at one of their famous St Patrick's Day shows.

The man's bid for a place in the pantheon of gifted and fascinating greats is still on course.

The tunes, riffs and words might not be as impressive as those from the days of yore, but this is still a very arresting example of sonic art: tense and deranged, savage and serrated.

Berberian Sound Studio and Broadcast are a perfect match, and this soundtrack--something you may not want to listen to alone if you keep hearing a weird noise outside the window--gives you an idea of how magnificent this band can be.

Ten is incredible. It's up there with Gold, Substance and Discography in terms of greatest-hits sets.

It feels rushed, like it needed more time for its many ingredients to blend.

While The Cast of Cheers are shameless rip-off merchants on more than some occasions here, there's evidently ability at work, and a decent ear for a catchy chorus or two.

Though the vocals never reach that peak [on At The Dancehall] again, they're steady and reliable throughout.

With placid, feline production, tight harmonies and breezy beats, much of DNA ambles along the well-trodden path of the temperate demi-ballad. But it's the ventures away from this that prove Little Mix function far better either side of mid-tempo.

Tatum has nevertheless produced an album that, despite its obvious glances back at the past, is smart, sophisticated and of its own pop moment.

The result a stunning, profound, moving and soulful record.

Fortunately, the remainder of the album is a powerful, intimate, sumptuous delight in which the orchestra enhances the innate grandeur of Antony's music.

If you know how Rod Stewart sounds, and are aware of these songs' traditional arrangements (sole new number aside), then you already know what Merry Christmas, Baby has in store. And whether or not you're going to want to pick it up from one.

An extraordinary record.

More often, however, Orbits has too much going on rather than too little.

The latest Lamdin offering, billed as Nostaliga 77 and the Monster, is a thoroughly intriguing instrumental set, staffed with an impressive line-up of leading British jazz heads.

Elling's individualist vocal reinterpretations are well worth hearing.

Mellon Collie is no masterpiece, but its ambition is clearer than anything else Corgan has ever been involved with.

This beat is where everything begins, with an essential simplicity that puts you in mind of Washington go-go, leaving enough space for delicate fill-ins and strong enough to support intricate arrangements.

Never ones for stating the obvious, Singing Adams have constructed an album that is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

It's appealing, generally engaging and all shot through with the confidence of a man who must feel he's got the hit parade Midas touch

With a wealth of subtle and understated performances by the supporting cast, including wistful flourishes from pianist Geraint Watkins, whose on-the-money keyboards have graced albums by Nick Lowe and Van Morrison, this is no unthinking pastiche or smirking parody.

It's hard to pretend this is entirely cutting-edge stuff, but the 70-year-old shows no sign of softening, his production rich without bowing to commercialism, his compositions full of unexpected twists and aggression.

While kin is solidly crafted throughout, there's nothing to justify the lofty artistic conceits surrounding it.

This is a credible collection of electronic RnB tracks that owes a greater debt to another, more grown-up Justin.

Clocking in at 36 minutes, this long-awaited solo debut is an impressive exercise in the integration of an expectedly wide range of aesthetics, revealing first and foremost a thoughtful composer with a skilled producer's ear.

It's a knowing retread of what works and what's expected--but boy, that's no problem.

Bastards' crew turns in a commendably original 13 tracks.

For all its battalions of writers and producers, Right Place Right Time is a surprisingly coherent affair.

Carey's gallant use of drum boxes and occasional, restrained glitchy sonics – like on the carousing Pickup Truck and undulating Into Tomorrow – round out Mason's sound, bringing a raft of rousing fresh dimensions to his previously straight-up folksy stylings.

Moving into darker, deeper spaces, it whets the appetite for further occasions when McAuley will fight the urge to rein it in for the dancefloor.

Fall to Grace is proof that pop doesn't need to be grey and restrained to feel grown-up.

Girl on Fire is a smart album, maintaining the high standards set on The Element of Freedom.

Taken as a whole, this is another surprisingly enjoyable album from a pop singer who has managed to broaden her approach without losing her USP.

If it were only possible to turn down the vocals, The No Testament would be a work of greater spiritual, and indeed secular, interest.

Overall, Rage Against the Machine has aged extremely well.

[An] inspired brew of, indeed, both fear and fun.

It might not encourage repeat plays, but to dismiss it as a racket is to do it, and its maker, a huge disservice.

Somehow, like James Blake and SBTRKT before them, Stubborn Heart have forged strikingly contemporary pop from an alternative future.

It's just 11 tracks of mediocre and easily forgettable American rock, devoid of any bells or whistles.

The Seer might not be the album you spend most time with this year--it's too emotionally demanding for heavy rotation – but it's one you'll be listening to for years to come.

The true spirit of Christmas is safe in Tracey Thorn's hands.

It's safe, something of a retreat from past endeavours to a sound more suited to commercial returns in the present.

It's incredibly pretty, but ultimately lacking in memorable moments.

These sky-surfing legends may have another great album in 'em yet, but for all its intermittently irie moments, Into the Future isn't it.

On most of these tracks, Minaj rises to the occasion.

Despite the spare instrumentation, there's no sense of repetition or lack of variety, and these emotive, excellent songs stay with you. A late contender for album of the year.

Hearing these songs in any format is a tremendous pleasure, and Hucknall here does them credit.

As fascinating as it is perplexing, anything but obvious, and therefore to be applauded.

It is beautiful and bereft and hard to listen to with easy joy--as are much of the best of these essential recordings.

Fourteen years later, this reissue reveals a record so unique and ahead-of-its-time that nothing else has sounded like it since.

It's the achievement of their fourth studio album that this giddy mix hangs together as an endearing whole.

These 10 songs often appear to be just elaborate jams, whipped up in the studio, with a few scribbled-down choruses added along the way.

It is instead, pure-and-simple party music, make-out music and get-down-and-shake-it music, harbouring the sort of simple riffs and hooks that easily hop across the decades.

The record is certainly denser and more difficult to find an entry point into than either of its predecessors; but this is not remotely to say that their label made the right the decision. After several listens, a handful of stone-cold, diamond-hard gems present themselves from of a scree of electronic beats and stentorian rapping/shouting.

They're relatively simple things to be sure, but they've been crafted with love and authority before being chiselled in stone so that they may yet last certain discerning metallers a lifetime.

The mixture of emotions across Unapologetic just doesn't sit right.

These are personal tales told using a well-established and communal language, and coated with close harmonies as delicious as a homemade carrot cake from a craft stall.

The unshrouded nature of these compositions reveals interesting and insightful aspects of the creator and his practice.

Enjoy Kaleidoscope Dream for the rarity that it is: an unerringly consistent, very good pop record.

Celebration Day is an opportunity to witness the power and the glory of Led Zeppelin, quite possibly for the last time, and they certainly don't disappoint.