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).

Yes, he's got Paul McCartney playing slurpy bass on As It Comes, and Neko Case pops up on the countrified duet Sing Me to Sleep, but there's no escaping the sound of his past. Nor any sense that it's a past that needs to be escaped from.

On Damnesia, the bare bones and glistening edges are on such clear display that even the most cheerful listener's day will be darkened by Alkaline Trio's gathering storm clouds.

This is a far from perfect album, but at its peak it’s highly mature, seasoned music. Exhaustion clearly seems to be beneficial to McRae’s unique sound.

The band’s lack of a defining musical style has proven an advantage here, as frontman Damian Kulash and co. were clearly able to explore their boundaries, unconfined by audience expectations.

There are no excursions into dubstep, no guest rappers and no raunchiness, just good clean wholesome party (as in jelly and ice-cream) fun.

Oh No I Love You is a warm affair and a slightly more together reflection of Tim than I Believe was, and the accompanying remix album with cosmic re-works by the likes of Seahawks is a bonus too. This deserves to find itself in as many homes as possible.

She's a quick-witted lyricist with a sharp eye.

Even during its less-memorable moments, this is an album that maintains its atmosphere, and Elson is an engaging narrator (although there's no trace of her Oldham roots to be heard).

Fear Factory’s slices of digital dystopia no longer sound futuristic or groundbreaking, but Mechanize is a powerful statement from a revitalized and still-relevant band.

The Road From Memphis hasn't got any of the surprise factor of Potato Hole; in fact, it's more like reacquainting yourself with an old friend. But it's a work of such high quality it doesn't really matter it's nothing new.

Consequently Familial initially seems timid, even half-hearted, but persistence reveals an album full of sweet sentiment and honest meditations.

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

In creating a work which pretty much unfailingly sounds like it could have been made 25 years ago, Future Islands have rejected a lot of current sonic trends--only for their sound to land fashionable-side-up anyway. The tunes are the thing, of course, and the tunes are good.

What It Means to Be Left-Handed contains more ideas than most guitar bands muster in their entire careers and will certainly consolidate Pierce's core cult audience.

It’s a genre experiment that might encourage more sceptical listeners to err on the side of caution, but if you’re willing to let yourself be swept away, then the rewards are worthwhile.

Pink Friday isn't a classic by any means, then, but when Nicki Minaj is on fire nobody in hip hop – male or female – can extinguish her bright-burning talents.

Sometimes you wish they'd let themselves go a little more, but there's much here to adore.

It seems that the band still have plenty to say, and the means to say it well.

Liquid Love is undoubtedly impressive, well-honed and slickly produced, and it’s shot through with a glowing joie de vivre. But it’s too smoothed and tidied.

Subversion of the most intelligent, insidious, inventive kind.

The Clan sounds lean, experienced and relaxed on a recommended new collection.

Flamingo will keep the fans from growing rabid while The Killers take a break, but if Flowers releases another solo album before reconvening with his colleagues, teeth might well be bared.

It's perhaps too subtle and intricate for a marketplace accustomed to being bashed about the bonce by rave-fuelled RnB – but if your palate fancies some tuneful sweetness, Youth will melt in your mouth.

Hardcore fans can, of course, simply ignore it, but they're exactly the people who might've hoped for something more. As an introduction to Pearl Jam's on-stage prowess, however, this is a tidy effort.

At times it can settle too readily into a kind of country chug, and one begins to feel stuck for too long in a dusty, last-breath pick-up on some interminable road trip. But when it is good, it is very, very good.

If this T-Bone Burnett-produced album isn't a standout, it still has plenty going for it.

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

Overall, then, From Africa With Fury: Rise is a pretty solid second effort.

These 13 songs are a bold leap forward for Zygadlo, and feel like a personal, intimate success.

Despite the clunky moments, there’s ample proof that Team Bieber know exactly what they’re doing and who they’re talking to. As you’d expect, it’s the ballads that hit the hardest.

Not one for the casual fans, but more than enough to remember the good times.

While a talented producer in his own right, here we find Chilly collaborating with Berlin dance producer Boys Noize, re-rendering the elaborate, minimalist-flavoured piano debuted on Solo Piano as louche, polished Euro-disco with one beady eye on the chill-out dollar. It is often much better than this sounds.

Improving prospects aside, though, the basic deal is the same, and Cloud Nothings rattles along at a fair old clip, boasting an embarrassment of hooks delivered with unassuming, 'it's-probably-nothing-but' panache.

Hull is a fine lyricist, able to make everyday ruminations on relationships utterly riveting. But he's not consistently complemented by music that really matters, a couple of relatively perfunctory arrangements ensuring that Simple Math is no High Violet-matching masterpiece.

These flashes of stylistic innovation are rare. For the most part, it's all supremely controlled, sweetly inoffensive and velvety smooth.

On the whole, this is an interesting experiment in the creative process, as well as the values of musicianship and friendship.

The so-called purity of the sweet-voiced piano and violin are continually subverted by carefully applied extraneous sounds.

Overall, The R.E.D. Album stands as a solid return for its maker, as long-time listeners will connect with his no-frills lyrics and unsettling artistic demeanour.

Be Brave is not quite the barnstormer that its lead single suggests, but there is enough gumption to see The Strange Boys through any scrutiny of their credentials.

As a whole, Revelation Road is the closest Lynne has got to where she should always have been, even if she mightn't stay here long.

His darkest and most oppressive work to date.

Although this statement sounds very much from the heart, and many of these songs make you smile while other make you sour, it’s a shame that this album’s playfulness very often comes across as pretentiousness.

The Bloom and the Blight builds on the band's strengths and successfully maintains their idiosyncrasies, offering persuasive evidence that they are more than ready to step up a level themselves.

[The Midsummer Station is] a brave and bold addition to what is increasingly looking like a catalogue to relish.

Not everyone is going to want a 12-song cycle about the relationship of an extremely violent fictional farmer (no – come back!), of course, but within Heartland’s grand sweep are some riveting and quite glorious ideas.

Not only does it offer a bejewelled porthole into the flair of Alice Gold, but it's an album that transcends any accepted conventions of 'female singer-songwriter', and lays the foundations for a rock star.

There isn't a bad pop song here, and the balance between whimsy, sensitivity and boisterous fun is expertly weighted.

Spalding is too able a musician to botch this template, so the obvious enquiry is: does she bring sufficient personality to the table to avoid being derivative? For the most part, yes.

The album's better songs – of which a towering Black and the inventive if not precisely brilliantly titled Capsize the Sea are just two – even hark back to the time when their creators sounded fresh and exciting.

Glossing over realisations that the second half begins to drag, Hologram Jams won’t appease anybody who rates music to decimal points or regularly orders their record collection alphabetically. Instead, it’s fun in the same manner as a night out necking Lambrini and cheap cocktails.

A zingy fusion of disparate styles.

Three albums in, Tunstall appears undamaged, an ordinary girl you'd want to spend time with and an honest performer it's hard to dislike.

On the evidence of this impressive debut album, [Howard] is a gifted and immediately involving singer-songwriter.

There are enough moments of deft, delicate brilliance here to remind us of what a gifted songwriter he is.

So, while he fails to reward those fans who are everything to him with a great collection of pop-RnB, Brown at least gives them reason to believe.

Better Living, Flats' 34-minute debut album, is a commendably cacophonous outpouring which contains not the slightest germ of future commercial gold.

Heaven is Whenever is good for the exact reasons Hold Steady records always tend to be good. Such dogged consistency suggests it's doubtful Finn and company will ever come out with a startling masterpiece that frees them from Springsteen's shadow, but it also implies they're extremely unlikely to make a bad record.

The arrangements are dense and intricate and, together, Chief make an accomplished, purposeful noise--but it's rarely matched by depth of melodic imagination. For a slow-burner, Modern Rituals needs a little more fire.

On the whole, I Will Be invites you to be whisked along by the sheer energy burst: the pots’n’pans clatter of the drums, the crackle and fizz from the amps and the bitter take on romance from Dee Dee herself.

Their music is full of joy, of sensuousness and sensuality, of acid wit and ambitious creativity.

It attempts to create a context of isolation from all that, an aquarium-like zone of contemplation, in which audiovisual detail can be savoured, in stillness and without fear of missing out for a few seconds on the relentless info-stream of modern life.

The Sword have stepped up a gear with this release, and ought to crumble the defences of more than a few cynics.

Each song remains a steady, stellar journey to the next piercing solo until the noise removes itself after a surprisingly brief 50 minutes and suddenly there's a big gaping black hole where Moon Duo were. All that remains is to re-listen.

As difficult as it is to take Edgar seriously at times, so earnest is he about his sexualised sonic seercraft that resistance is futile. In short spurts, Majenta's kosmische perv-core satiates.

Steel strings slick with gumbo grease and sweet gospel inflections.

Lekman has always had a neat turn of phrase, whether barbed, droll or plainly silly. Again, there's [sic] plenty of them here.

Not a bad album, but not one for the ages.

Fans of the band, and those with a rustling liking for a certain kind of beard-here-now Americana, will devour this like a bottle of the Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler referenced on the last track.

Falling Down a Mountain opens with the six-and-a-half-minutes of insistent, monotonal jazz of the title track. Mercifully, this fails to set the scene for what follows, as the album is dominated by the band’s whimsical, playful side, a usually dormant but altogether delightful aspect of their character.

He's blessed with a gift for clear language, rarely missing his point and delivering his thoughtful lines with flinty disdain.

Sea of Cowards works hard to dispel those not-unjustified notions of The Dead Weather being Jack White’s third-best band. What’s even stranger is that they appear to have succeeded, in spite of the fact 80% of the record proceeds from a fairly lumpen blues template which at first glance would seem to suggest a continued dearth of inspiration.

Her worldly-wise tone can still come over a little smug but give her time – she'll grow younger than this yet.

It's remarkable how purist a reenactment of three-decades-old LA hardcore this record is.

Should he ever stretch himself as a musician the results could be fascinating – think The Beach Boys before Pet Sounds, and what they felt capable of afterwards – but right now he's operating in a comfort zone that should guarantee continued commercial success.

For the most part, this is a fine debut and speaks of even finer things to come.

There's plenty to raise a smile over these 12 songs, and that's no doubt exactly what She & Him intended from them.

Even when it sounds routine – Simple Song sounds exactly like a Shins song written to order – it works, simultaneously mixing zippy and plangent, joy and resignation.

While slightly more subdued than before, the pint-sized sparkplug proves she can still churn a stimulating groove, and doesn't need cartoonish gimmicks to do so.

Black Light, their sixth album, finds them enlarging their repertoire to relax into wider influences. In the absence of a frontman they are aging well.

They sound like they don't just have a warmth for the genres they plunder here: they know them inside out.

The compositions are pretty formulaic and the lyrics aren't overly technical. Still, it works for Mill as a respectable effort that exorcises personal demons and moves him beyond illicit history.

Original it isn’t, but it trades innovation for let-loose fun, and wears its influences proudly.

A wonderful grab-bag of anomalous sounds that pilfers magpie-like from genre after genre as it charts its 41-minute course.

An album of thoroughly contagious, albeit fairly derivative, Strokes-flavoured gutter-rock.

It’s accomplished, mixing studied nostalgia with current concerns, but not a standout in its field.

It layers on the schmaltz but stops short of choking the listener with sentimentality by revealing a wickedly singular wit and some snappy expectations-eschewing cuts.

A very unusual blues record that's also a very unusual Kid Koala record, putting aside his typical playfulness and reminding us that he can truly move us with his turntablism, as well as amuse.

You Stand Uncertain isn't quite legendary, but it is exceptional in today's hurried dance scene.

Whether or not Never is a record you'll want to revisit that often is a moot point, but its ability to hit like a spring-mounted boxing glove to your peripheral vision is hardly in doubt.

Two or three songs slip into Jack Johnson-ish blandness, but for the most part The Sound of Sunshine makes good on the promise of its undeniably appetising title.

This is another tippy-toe step forward in a strange journey that's seen them steadily chart a course beyond the ubiquitous post-rock tag to take in orchestral pomp and clattering psych-outs as they forge some sort of hairy, woebegone chamber music for an indie set raised on Dirty Three and The Black Heart Procession.

Not quite yet the coherent full album that its time in the making hinted at, but nonetheless a welcome addition to record collections.

It's a sturdy set of mostly new material mixing Afrobeat and funk with traditional influences.

These are sleek soothing balms sombrely and meticulously crafted to usher the listener in.

There's little crowd-pleasing electro or fashionable dubstep on Higher Than the Eiffel, but Audio Bullys have made a welcome, well-produced and lively returning album that delivers the goods far more often than even fans could have expected.

Slave Ambient as a whole may be more confused than your average reality show star at a Mensa meeting, but it's full of decent songs with a lot of heart.

Everything is bound by a vocal that speaks to the soul... There are moments here, details of songs, which cause the throat to close, the eyes to widen.