Glowing Mouth is a polished, well-arranged album that could find a happy home in countless collections.

It's spirited enough, neatly sequenced, but perhaps lacks the ingenuity to rework its influences into something that feels new.

The Gift wins at warming the heart in a time of reflection and recession, ringing subtly--via an impressively less-than-mechanical recipe--in the slushiest part of our brains.

Those expecting a worthy if belated sequel to "Movements," however, will be disappointed: even at its best, More! rarely exceeds inoffensiveness.

The Less You Know, the Better isn't a bad album at all, and will likely grow into something far more impressive, something that isn't quite evident on first play.

So yes, it's imperfect, and it's frequently beautiful, much like the world itself, yeah? Do you see? Oh, too relaxed to care? Righto.

Killer Sounds is as assured as third albums should be, and were it a debut album it would be feted as a bright start. However, there is the sense we should be expecting more from Hard-Fi at this point, as the sporadic sparks of brilliance here demonstrate they are capable of it.

While the technical prowess on display throughout this set is truly awe-inspiring--Mastodon might turn everything up to 11, but they never compromise the finer facets of their sound, and everything's captured here in crystal-clear clarity.

Freedom of Speech shows that one of Britain's most intriguing hopes still has some serious thinking to do.

On paper, everything about Timez Are Weird These Days lends itself to an ostentatious dose of elite, Hoxtonite posturing. But there's substance beneath the style, a welcome human quality to withstand the opulent demi-house compositions.

There's still only one Stevie Nicks – witchy, mystical and romantic.

It's just that there's a bit of an identity void at the heart of the thing, a lack of personality.

While the leader has become absorbed by the pack, however, at least I Am the West doesn't go down without a mouthy fight.

Far from a cynical money-maker, this is the unwieldy outfit that unanimously improves those essential runners: harder work to start with, but providing great rewards at the finish line.

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

It’s a melee of styles and disparate ideas – some inspired, some falling woefully short. If its sheer reach borders on folly, it’s still enjoyable as hell.

The contrasts are ecstatic, setting in stone just how remarkable a comeback New Young Pony Club have pulled off. The Optimist is a super-smart pop album at the top of its game.

Once you strip away all this nonsense, The Chapman Family's music is thunderous and well produced.

A rewarding indie-pop set that's as warm and comforting as a hot water bottle at the end of a bed.

The songs he's written with new acolyte Sorren Maclean and Idlewild bandmate Rod Jones are more assured than ever.

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.

She's an undemonstrative talent, certainly, but there's understated to the point of blending into the background – which is where much of Orangefarben sounds disappointingly at home.

This worthwhile venture serves as a fine complementary package, not exactly pushing at the edges of its makers' own creative envelope but exploring known ground extremely well.

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

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.

The overriding impression of Boys and Diamonds, however, is of MIA's global smash-and-grab style of musicianship minus the bonding agent of an overarching personality.

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

The good news is that one of the most consistently entertaining pop-rock bands of the 1990s is back together. The bad news is that the album they've released to mark their comeback isn't quite a classic.

The slushy sentiments will click with a tweenager in the throes of a first crush--but anyone with life and love experience beyond passing notes around at the back of class is advised to pass on this collection of monochrome musings in favour of something with a heartbeat. Perhaps, even, something that rocks.

All in all, Destroyed feels like both a return to the darkness from which Moby emerged in the first place, and perhaps his most year zero offering to date.

While keeping his music fantastically fresh and of the moment, this often causes a speedy ageing process.

It certainly meets every expectation, albeit without stretching far beyond anticipated designs.

Sleep Mountain has the emotional weight of a Boxer or a Turn on the Bright Lights, but it doesn’t quite have the tunes. That said, there’s still plenty to fall in love with here.

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

This is the sound of the Noughties – electro enough without being harsh, interesting without being over-cool, quirky without being weird. Empire Of The Sun have cracked the perfect blend of fond reflection and sexy new frontier frisson. If this is what the future sounds like, then it's going to be beautiful.

Second album Waking Up is a set of polished arrangements so middle of the road they make Snow Patrol sound like Animal Collective.

Overall, The Orbserver… is lots of fun for late-period Perry fans, and will appeal to Orbologists, too.

Senior makes a strong claim to be 2010's best electronic album. It's a record to lie back and drown in.

It's hard not to declare the record an admittedly limited success.

Rokstarr bounces to a beat that feels fresh and vibrant.

Robbins' first foray into music is a misstep compared to his successful acting career.

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.

While fans of rebooted electro-boogie are probably better off seeking out Dam-Funk's excellent Toeachizown from last year, Shobaleader certainly has its endearingly eccentric moments.

Linkin Park will always be a compelling and watchable entity. But Living Things doesn't deliver music as interesting or as arresting as what immediately preceded it. Which comes as both a surprise and, more importantly, a shame.

No-one will be disappointed by a Glee album which includes "Don’t Stop Believin’"--their chart-eating cover of the Petra Haden arrangement of the Journey song; or "Alone," or "Gold Digger." But it’s a shame there wasn’t room for their Winehouse-approved upgrade of "Rehab;" or the stripped-back swing at Bel Biv Devoe’s "Poison," as performed by the show’s all-male vocal group Acafellas. These would probably have lifted the second half of the CD, which loses some of the sparkle and joy once the barn-storming "Somebody to Love" has finished.

The album unfolds an immeasurable amalgam of genres and inspirations, all fused together in a diamond-encrusted bubble of futuristic, day-glo hip hop. The energy is palpable, the pace rarely lets up, and personality pervades throughout.

Points for trying something new, but it's hard to disagree with Lindstrøm's own assessment of the record as something of an experimental misfire.

they've upped their creative ante somewhat, a number of these songs (assuming you pick the 'right' ones) coming across as more measured and mature, and a heck of a lot gloomier, than the upbeat bounce-alongs of old. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

[The closing track is] evidence of a big pink heart and of these musicians' ability to transcend their beats-based mindset. In other words, time for the boys to really future this.

Good Shoes have home-produced a record worthy of similar plaudits; there’s both hope and future here in abundance.

The Soul Sessions Vol 2 is Stone's most focused and rewarding album since Vol 1.

It's camp, but it's shadowy. It's epic, but it's introvert. It's highly peculiar, yet hugely commercial. It's one big, beautiful oxymoron.

You could argue that A Joyful Noise is the album Madonna should be brave enough to make. But it might also be the case that it's the album that Gossip should have been brave enough not to.

As it is, it's simply the next Leona Lewis album.

Francis is a trick-free troubadour and for all The Remedy's rather monotone approach, there may not be a more personal album in 2012.

In Case You Didn't Know doesn't surprise, but it certainly fulfils.

Apart from the odd soulful moment and some clever production, there is nothing here that sets them apart from their obvious influences.

Raucous boot-stompers kick up the dust around soppy slowies, with many a chorus dripping with the sort of gooey gobbledygook that typifies a thousand rom-coms.

Those glimpses on Perfect Symmetry of something flashier and sexier make this retreat to familiarity a somewhat saddening step backwards.

It's not particularly clever, but it is expectedly big: if you're a Carey fan with a stocking that needs filling this year, this'll perk you up better than any alternative speech or sherry trifle could.

A marvellous little record where improvisation rubs shoulders with immediacy.

Sadly, the songs here are slight and flimsy. Most of them sound like blink-and-you’ll-miss-it backing tracks for under-performing American drama series, pleasant and wholesome as a high-street sandwich, but instantly forgettable.

It's hard to tell how serious De Luca is being here, so over the top is everything (there's a song called Fish in the Sky. No, really). It could be misconstrued as a parody of 70s and 80s musical mores, cramming as it does all manner of instrumental bombast and excess into its 50 minutes.

To use a fishy term, McCartney well and truly floundered with this one.

What saves Grey Oceans is the occasional good idea: the Eastern-tinged Smokey Taboo mixes tablas and wilting strings with Bianca's woozy, half-rapped vocal to impressive effect, while the very peculiar Fairy Paradise is, more or less, Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy as remixed by Paul van Dyk.

Fewer Pro Tool and more risks, and Dhani might just be onto something.

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

There is truly nothing edgy about this collection.

Despite being disabled with rotten cover art, Ritual is a sturdy affair, and one that should continue White Lies' steady ascent towards something serious and important.

If you thought him too weird for your tastes previously, Tha Carter IV is the album to introduce you to the never boring world of an artist whose importance remains so significant that, should he finally collapse like the star he is, he's likely to take half the rap game with him.

There are some fine songs on Natural History, which deserve better than being presented as if they were museum exhibits.

Generation Freakshow is more mature, more considered, and less noisy, but it's nonetheless got Feeder stamped all over it.

While lyrical simplicity is welcomed when attached to music that dazzles, here it regularly sounds predictable.

By trying to interpret a whole new landscape and atmosphere, Howling Bells have compromised their strengths in an awkward attempt to force themselves into a new style.

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.

Thoughtful rap that deserves mainstream attention.

Something for the Rest of Us is every bit as easy on the ear as each of their albums has been since 98's big-league breakthrough, Dizzy Up the Girl.

Right now, for all its impressive fireworks, it feels hollow as its title.

Admittedly, the album contains the odd soporific song like No Freedom, but these turns are outweighed by tracks with a strong tune or an unexpected hint of sadness.

Stone packs all the power you expect, but her control misfires enough for some of these tracks to never quite click as they might.

It's clear that All at Once is a record of big sounds, bigger themes and enormous – and entirely achieved – ambitions. A crushing classic.

Go Now and Live is a measured and accomplished collection of songs--songs which work together as an album as well as they do individually.

The broad, stuttering beats do fatigue the listening experience eventually, but music this animated and unrelenting demands a very specific ear in a very specific setting.

This is a second album that genuinely builds upon its predecessor. Exile reinforces the feeling in modern pop that no other group sounds quite as hurt as Hurts.

For the flagrant pop thrill-seeker--judging by this incredible, irrepressible, ecstatic, brilliant record--neither will they ever disappoint. Don't believe the anti-hype: pop album of the year, by at least a dozen choruses.

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

Their most coherent, alive and plain best album yet.

La Liberación is so fixated on exhibiting its sense of fun that it forgets how to finish ideas in the process.

"Quite listenable" sums up most of Future History.

As a transitional release, however, Night Train points to an even bigger and brighter future: it mostly sounds like a band happy to enjoy the freedom of chalking up 10 million album sales, and everyone else can take a running jump.

Though not without its charms, Endlessly is too slight and uneven to impress unconditionally.

Hollywood Undead are content to deliver cliches--more out of a lack of imagination than cynical opportunism, but it still smacks of both. That's why to seasoned ears or any genre fan requiring more than more of the same, they're very, very boring.

The lyrics aren't the only thing holding EFUNK back: Soul Clap's chugging pace drags on the heels of their most anthemic numbers.

ANNA is strategic in its experimentation, but represents a fairly dramatic departure from its makers’ brand, so hats off to that.

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.

Ultimately, Form & Control serves it purpose as a ready-made playlist for your next party, but perhaps the band's oversimplifying of its sound has stripped away some of its mystique in the process.

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

One wonders if those responsible for this platter of past-perishable pop mimicry, these clichéd regurgitations of ubiquitous motifs, are indeed the same Danes who wowed admirers of sparkly melodies and insatiable hooks only a single springtime equinox ago.