Boy-girl group pop-rock that's polished and pleasing.

Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could.

It's good to hear a new album that brims both with strong opinions and great pop songs, often at the same time.

In producing a focussed follow-up that completely transcends its litigious backstory, Chairlift have summoned a watertight case for the defence with Something.

Overall this is a shiny penny of a debut, and it would be a terrible shame if Columbia's mishandling of this band resulted in it being forgotten.

Despite the lyrics failing to improve upon previous efforts, elsewhere Fever represents a significant step forward, and practically guarantees that BFMV will fulfil the expectations preceding its release.

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

Sharp, disciplined, and seriously compelling.

Whether you could go so far as to call Guetta an auteur might be pushing it, but it's a cohesive effort, if not quite a work of art.

Mathambo leaps about on a hotplate of styles, rarely dwelling on a groove for long. Move with him, though, because it's worth the breakneck effort.

This laidback attitude--and the audacious quality of the songs that seem to find him with such ease--is the key to much of his abundant charm, and even working at half-speed he delivers.

While Lopez has claimed that her new public image showcases the real her, she never could pull off the idea of being a real human being with actual emotions on record.

Jónsi is on form.

The problem with having so many different voices writing and performing is that Record Collection sounds like just that – a lot of different things plonked on a shelf that have their time and place but sound distractingly disparate when grouped together.

It is Rihanna's vocal--at once commanding, soulful and vulnerable--that anchors the song, and Loud itself, elevating it from a hit-and-miss collection into something oddly arresting.

Black Is Beautiful is their most immediately accessible album, but its 15 tracks (14 of which are untitled) don't sound much like hits. Like its predecessors, this set works best taken as a whole, when its unstable collage has time to establish what turns out to be a powerful atmosphere.

In fashioning it so lovingly and with such care, Bowerbirds have come up with their best to date.

Downbeat words are buoyed up by light pop textures, leaning heavily for character on the fragile virtues of a voice that, while full of expression, is not designed for pop.

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.

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.

Sometimes this build-up can establish a cocktail lounge atmosphere, but in most cases its emotional resonances hover on the right side of poignant.

Graffiti on the Train is clearly the work of a man and an outfit that's done the rock'n'roll thing and is now easing into the next step. This is a solid enough start.

Although not musically revolutionary, Tron: Legacy suggests the adrenaline rush of a black panther roaming nearby in the darkness, heard but not yet seen.

They sometimes feel as second-hand as The Black Crowes, but The Heavy's capacity for rabble-rousing is a potent strength, which in music – if not always politics – isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's easier to forgive the tracks that meander, ponder and lament. In fact, for better or worse, that's sort of the point.

Lynne doesn't try to break any moulds here, but respectfully doffs a cap at those that shaped him.

He does the classics to an accomplished standard – some perfunctory and forgettable, some bubbling deliciously – and everything is professionally packaged.

Proof positive that Tripper is, fittingly, Hella more focused than its spaced-out title or the duo's hippy slacker personal demeanours might suggest.