The Gate is an impeccably stylish album that coaxes jazz from unusual sources.

It's an album of perfect modern psychedelia, pristine in content but ramshackle in style.

Night Work is a far livelier and more enjoyable record than Ta-Dah, which was a modest album with much to be modest about. But the nagging sense that Scissor Sisters aren't living up to the promise of their multifaceted, emotionally rich debut is slowly being replaced by the suspicion that they never will.

This is a full-on, joyous, positive album that makes you feel like celebrating.

It sounds like all involved had fun putting this one together, and the listening experience is a pretty fun one too.

Bastards' crew turns in a commendably original 13 tracks.

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

These four tracks--perhaps movements would be a more appropriate term--feel entirely alive, a spontaneous weld of anxious beats, the odd squirl of guitar and distortion, corrupted vocals and deep, chasmic bass.

King of the Beach offers a fascinating insight into the slightly skew-whiff mind of this talented young artist, now well on the way to mastering what could turn out to be an incredibly inventive career.

It's come late, but Basic Instinct is one of the best RnB albums of the year.

But subtle though it is, Tarwater's Bernd Jestram--who mixed the album--ensures that the imaginative details sparkle, so while Nes' world may at times sound familiar, it's still very much her own, a comforting and alluring one into which to retreat.

Forget austere, bleak, slavishly traditional renditions – this is Roberts and Morrison we're talking about. These love and 'waulking' songs – one of them originally sung by women weaving tweed – are expansive, joyful, mysterious things.

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.

Each track is certainly jam-packed with ideas, but they are woven tight and worked to perfection with the help of producer and mixer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) who has clearly done a sterling job of making sense of Hynes’ ridiculously overactive imagination.

The criticisms are minor--a couple of tracks slide back into familiar Americana, but even then there's no sense of the band coasting.

By evolving their formula without losing sight of the elements that it’s founded upon, they have delivered their most satisfyingly ferocious set to date.

It might sound like a cavalcade of cliches on paper, but with punchy couplets and shimmering production, Trey Songz here furthers his reputation an artist head and shoulders above many a lover-man peer.

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

Like many a "supergroup" before them, this one doesn't quite meet the expectations that their combined reputations create.

It’s a breath of air... and, mostly, that air is crystalline fresh.

The resulting album is an intriguing mixture of the ancient and contemporary, with every track sounding different: electronica mixes with traditional African styles, reggae with funk and more.

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

It's a tight 40 minutes of compacted, runaway virtuosity.

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

A record, then, that says nothing, beautifully. When Burrows develops a lyrical accuracy as keen as his musical one, these Arrows will truly burst hearts.

While not quite the amazing leap that Cut Copy made from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours, Zonoscope is by no means a bad album. But it is one that will probably sound better when wafting across a field during festival season.

Longstanding fans of the band will no doubt be able to immediately fall in line with Giants' odd and unique groove. But for the uninitiated, the overall sound seems crude, even amateurish... Give this album a day or two, though, and its 10 songs begin to slip into context.

There's nothing vague or routine about this elegant, charming and quietly profound record.