There's nothing raunchy or attitudinal here, just blustering dance-pop numbers and mushy ballads that owe a debt to Lady Gaga, minus all the flesh, spunk and bonkers stilettos.

Therein lies the danger of building an iconic persona on your current obsessions and an unerring belief in everyone else's interest in your thoughts. When it hits gold, it's magnetic; when judgement lapses, the convictions seem tired.

As a whole, 'Total Life Forever' may feel too self-consciously clever to really convince but Foals evidently have a brilliant career ahead of them and this could be its crucial cornerstone.

Although only eight songs long, Body Talk Pt. 1 is a fully formed, imagined futuristic world that uses technology to propel it into a future version of the present day.

There is nostalgia by the truckload, lamenting of times past, talk of lessons learnt. Frankly there's a lot of looking back, but it doesn't feel weighed down by it all.

A genre redefining album from the most innovative and exciting voice of a generation? Not exactly. Yet while predictably wide of the genius mark, at its best it does tag Drake a breath of fresh air.

True, there isn't necessarily the one big hitter that will guarantee the Scientists' vault back into the big time limelight. But Barbara is packed full of enough immediate favourites to claw back their fan base from the off.

A long 14 tracks, it's fairly unfocused and though the pair have done enough to prove that they're not just out to annoy, there is still something fundamentally unsatisfying going on here.

It's a horribly overlong, confused creation and Aguilera's brash personality and lioness voice are often sacrificed in pursuit of its many different styles. But when its experiments work, she's never sounded so interesting.

Compact and succinctly direct, its 16 tracks rarely break the three-minute mark but are packed with a greater density of ideas than its predecessor.

You can forgive Cruz for wondering who he's meant to be for his second album, but we're less indulgent of such wishy-washy nonsense that "Rokstarr" puts across in the name of heartfelt R&B.

He is unrepentantly romantic throughout the album, though never quite twee or overbearing, which is quite a balancing act.

Marina & The Diamonds convincingly fight off the encroaching talons of expectation by embarking on a rampant, stomping adventure, letting no idea lie when it can be crashed into another loudly and a microphone placed nearby to collect the resulting sparks.

He's perhaps not very hopeful that 'This Is Happening' will capture the same number of ears and hearts as 2007's terrific 'Sound Of Silver' did, but it's a fine and thrilling epitaph nonetheless.

It's that sense of humbling, childlike wonder that defines what they do with their weathered hands. And they do it as brilliantly here as they always have done, which is high praise enough.

Underneath the goop, the recycled riffs wear thin and there is such lack of songwriting that, though they might get heavy, tracks also get dull quickly. But here's the rub: some of it's catchy and ridiculous enough to be enjoyable.

The songs might be helmed by waves of guitar fuzz (their self-styled 'loose wool' sound) and dissonance, but the gentle orchestration provided by long-time collaborator Padma Newsome and the defiantly tough, robotic drumming of Bryan Devendorf give these songs a warm, phosphorescent glow.

'Night Train' has been pitched as somewhere between an EP and a mini album, with the impending fifth to be the "proper" follow up to 'Perfect Symmetry'. For their sake, but mostly for our own, this gifted band need to try a lot harder when it comes to that one.

The sheer scope of 'Latin', however, is what rescues it from feeling like a box-ticking completion of a mission--as 'P.I.G.S.' races off into the distance after its lull, there's the feeling that there might still be more to see, more work to be done.

While the wine-favouring moustache-sporting figure of Franz Nicolay is no longer a fixture, the remaining members are present and correct albeit in a somewhat more reflective mode than of yore. It suits them.

The Fall are the most predictable and unpredictable band in Britain.

There are some fiendishly catchy hooks and very occasionally a real quality to some of the songwriting, enough to suggest that there are better things to come from the young trio once simply aping the already done-to-death genre du jour has finally lost its appeal.

A dismal and insipid collection of retrogressive mid-tempo ballads and textbook alt.rock moves.

It's their confident leaning on heritage-metal in particular that sets Bullet For My Valentine apart from local contemporaries Funeral For A Friend and Lost Prophets, but it's also that strength that holds them back.

Bobby Ray has a little way to go to match his mentor's lyrical ingenuity, but as the first post-Lupe rap star he's already absorbed the most important lessons about form and function, inspiration and integrity. It's a great start.

Whacking on the slap and going electro needn't have felt so dysfunctional--the songs do hold up--but a complete disjunction in styles sounds confusing and ultimately robs the album, and perhaps her comeback, of an identity.

The monster-mash hokum can occasionally grate and Brown lacks El Wino's authoritative way with some of the more downtempo material, but there's plenty to suggest she will find a receptive audience for her passionate pop sound, overbearing quirks and all.

It's a wonderful, kaleidoscopic groove-fest that has nothing at all to do with a world in which Oasis still hold sway.

It feels like a definite upgrade for her, Kate Nash deluxe, courtesy of producer Bernard Butler's expectedly lavish touches. But her standard style of outloud diary readings are not privy to the same overhaul. They prevent it from feeling like much of a progression.

Because beneath the clownishly self-effacing exterior, there's an artless ambition at work here that's terrible to behold.

Where the album triumphs though is the crystalline clarity of the songs, their titanic emotional wallop and Marling's quite exquisite delivery.

There's a connection with the contemporary world, with the apparatus and detritus that layers 2010 up around us all, that hasn't really been seen in Sigur Ros's music before.

Does it offer us an exclusive window into Slash's soul? No. Is it a neat CV and a sneaky way of auditioning the next Velvet Revolver singer? Probably. Like any other mixtape from a friend, listen to it in the car, then stick it in the cupboard under the stairs with the others.

With each offering clocking in around the two minute mark, 'I Will Be' is over almost as soon as it's begun - leaving behind a smouldering trail of hazy mysticism and filthy bass lines. It's short and sweet, but there's a definite sting in the tail.

There are moments where Usher's old charm and vocal velvetiness briefly resurface and remind the listener of what a bright talent he once seemed....But these highlights are rare, and Raymond vs Raymond mostly sounds as shallow and unappealing as its singer.

It's warm, analogue production bolstered by Madlib, ?uestlove and the inevitable J Dilla exhumation that makes it a summer smash in waiting, not least on 'Umm Hmm''s exhortation to let your feelings show.

Let's be clear about this: Head First is by no means a bad record, with its lush pop gloss and flickers of melodic loveliness. But it is a bad Goldfrapp record, their flimsiest and least adventurous yet.

As ever though, Liars emerge with their own sonic identity intact - you can 'hear' LA in the chaos, disquiet and vast, starving spaces of these songs, but they remain a band that don't surrender easily to their surroundings.

The album finishes almost as well as it started with 'The Mall & Misery' (a bit of country, a bit of disco, lightening bolts of new wave guitar, harmonies to intoxicate), proving the album's effective inevitability is not tedious and the quality is clear whichever direction you approach from.

Musically, too, there's a definite sense of progression. These tracks have a richer and warmer sound than anything the band have previously released, and rather than standalone expressions of emotional dysfunction, they feel very much connected, bound together by their complex arrangements and sumptuous yet subtle production.

Hands is both exciting and inconsistent, an uncertain step in very much the right direction.

Wisely though, they've seen this as a time to consolidate, not experiment or wander off on the tangents which have undermined them in the past.

Hidden backs up some audacious conceits with studious application and winds up a major achievement from these po-faced sentinels of the secret history.

Black Light is, as it implies, a dark record. It's also a brilliant, shinning beacon of electro-pop sophistication, but it's a dark, dark record all the same.

Derulo's desperation to cover all commercial bases is only matched by an inability to stamp his own personality on them.

While one could be forgiven for dismissing American VI as the scrapings of a barrel, the truth is that five of its ten tracks are worthy additions to the Cash canon; no more, no less.

It may be epic, sprawling and too unwieldy a tool with which to prise open a place in the charts, but it's also nothing short of remarkable.

So despite the new outlook and lofty declarations, why does 'Falcon' fail to take off? The fault lies partly in Fray's parochial outlook.

However much electro trickery he has at his fingertips, he needs some songs first.

It may be a scrappier collection than the exquisite, Tindersticks-in-aspic perfection of "The Hungry Saw", but somehow it adds up to something greater, the album as a whole bristling with creativity and the joys of trying something new.

Flamboyant, excessive and more Mikado than Micachu, you get the feeling that 'Life Is Sweet...' is an album that'll polarise people. But hey - if you don't like this one, Dev will be onto the next project tomorrow anyway.

The brothers keep it tight though, allowing themselves room to manoeuvre and muck about with time signatures and effects, but within the confines of songs that rarely exceed four minutes.

They seem keen to hold a mirror up to familiar pop tropes, but in doing so only reveal themselves for what they are - a gang of weirdoes carrying guitars. Perversely, their eagerness to engage the mainstream attention span often seems obnoxious in itself.

By narrowing their range and increasing their focus, and by wearing their hearts on their sleeves and not smirks on their faces, they may just have released their first, confidently Hot Chip record. And that turns out to be something rather wonderful.

With personnel changes and a series of guest artists the names of which ever-increasingly overshadow whatever actual sounds they're making, Massive Attack have fought a continual struggle to surpass 1994's 'Protection'.

If leaving Lost Highway was a blow to Regan's confidence you'd never know it from hearing this - he's definitely taken the right turning.

Furthermore, the way that 'Rulers Of Ruling Things', 'The Horn' and 'The Courage Of Others' arch effortlessly into trippier psych-rock inflected territory suggest a more expansive, weirder Midlake to come.

Herein lays Wayne's problem: he clearly has no understanding of rock.

Instead of pushing any boundaries The Soft Pack have made a vigorous, enjoyable and high-energy record with a bundle of opportunities for jerky dancefloor foot stomping.

Drum and Bass dons Noisia have been roped in on production duties and they've put a fair deal of weight into tracks that might otherwise have sounded flat.

Skim the surface and you'll find ten slabs of icily slick electro-pop, spend a little time and you'll uncover an altogether darker core; either way Unicorn delivers in whichever form you're looking for.

Their dedication to refined, pretty songs means there's a very narrow scope here that didn't afflict Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest" and which makes proceedings here sound a little wan and wishy-washy after a while.

The leap in quality is clear from the album's opening bars.

In This Light And On This Evening is a weak, ill conceived and uninspiring effort.

Spoon have created an album that will not only satisfy long-time observers but will also act as a gateway for those yet to discover their charms.

In the long, twisted canon of break-up albums, Everett doesn't only miss the mark, but makes arguably the first serious misstep of his career.

It's ironic and ill-fitting that such ditch-hopping actually embroils them in impassioned debate--and it's a credit to them that, love or hate these songs' lack of drama, you'll remember them very, very well.

It's effective, not good. More tellingly, it's catchy in spite of Ke$ha, not because of her.

It's surely a compliment to suggest that someone as abundantly gifted as she is can do better than this enjoyable, occasionally brilliant but disappointingly generic record.

Everything about this album smacks of contrivance and careful planning.

Despite being five tracks too long--specifically the five tracks which have him falling back to his syrupy ways of old Graffiti is hands down the highest point of Chris Brown's career.

These pop-centric cuts are, however, where Snoop seems most comfortable, if not most talented.

Throughout most of Untitled, Kelly seems to have taken the worst aspects of "Trapped In The Closet"--it's over-the-head relentless melodies and lyrics--and decided that they'll work in a song until the repetition instead relegates it to wallpaper.

Ultimately, the list of collaborators on She Wolf may be an impressive roll call, but perhaps Shakira would do better in listening to her own instincts than that of others.

The Fame Monster says nothing new lyrically, and has its troughs, but it's a bolder and more coherent record than GaGa's debut.

Encapsulating just how far Sean has come (if you're a Cash Money CEO, that is) Lil' Jon pops up to do his incomprehensible shouty thing, so ruining, for no reason at all, the only remotely catchy thing here.

By agreeing instead to compromise he's actually found both the quality and integrity he so desires and an album of songs which by anyone's definition sounds like a return to form.

If the hardcore fanbase feel a blanch coming on, this isn't all wilful eclecticism gone mad. King's work is The Fall's unifying factor that keeps it cohesive.

Actually, closer to the truth is that it sounds like a QOTSA record with the kind of solid rhythm-section money couldn't buy. And if that's the case then this is the best QOTSA record since 2002's "Songs For The Deaf".

It's a far bolder and more convincing album than her first, and suggests Lewis might be able to pull off an even bigger and more unexpected triumph than winning "X-Factor" and scoring an international hit.

Before I Self Destruct needs as many bells and whistles as it can muster, because the music isn't going to cut it on its own.

Ignore The Ignorant looks for escape into the US indie underground, "Last Year's Snow", "Cheat On Me" and "Nothing" sulkier than The Cribs we've come to know, reluctantly 'pop' dismissals rather than worried cures for a mainstream malaise The Cribs apparently regard as terminal.

There's little doubting Wale's potential but 'Attention Deficit' is so much like a lot of other rap fare out there that it will very likely suffer to be heard above the cynicism directed at hip hop in 2010.

If you're the sort of person who can see music--even if you can't, perhaps--this is so colourful.

If it were anyone else, this record would be fine. Solid. Entertaining. But it's not anyone else--Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes. As such, you look for more and expect to tune in to find Julian doing the same.

Driving yet jaunty guitars abound and backing chants fill the required spaces, yet it all comes across too much like a sub-par parody of their former selves.

Sexy, credible, committed, In Love And War works damn hard for the money, and stands as another thoroughly modern record from a lady embodying strangely old-skool virtues.

Over 11 tracks she fails to pull in a single noteworthy vocal, that's if you can even locate it beneath the waves of effects designed to disguise how very little is actually there.

You suspect Fits would fit better live, where the audience have no choice but to go with it, but here the trio sound slightly too pre-occupied with pleasing themselves rather than the listener, greedily ripping through riffs with a tenacity that, while impressive, is often ultimately self-defeating.

If Lungs fails to make as much impact as those other debuts, it may be because Welch puts a little too much emphasis on singer and not enough on songwriter.

As much U2, New Order and Jan Hammer as they are The Field, Harmonia and Black Dice, ultimately F*ck Buttons are in a league of their own--and with Tarot Sport, they just bettered themselves.

Cox is evidently a songwriter and sound sculptor of incredible skill and though the inclusion of the two collaborations--both a little too in thrall to their guests perhaps--means Logos lacks the wholly immersive quality of its predecessor, there is little else to contest; truly, this is pop music at its most weird and wonderful.

Despite the hilarious wordplay though, it's hard to imagine anyone returning over and over to the actual tunes, you're far better off with a DVD and its accompanying visual gags.

Overall, Machine Dreams is bristling with invention and teeming with variety, a fantasy world you won't wish to quickly wake from.

This is a record that proves, again, Joss Stone's considerable worth.

It's quite brilliant, the one thing we have come to expect from this band.

Our suggestion: embrace the bizarreness of it all. It's all good fun, and let's face it, even though Christmas In The Heart is unlikely to invoke a last minute panic in Best Of The Decade list makers, it's way better than Slade.

It wasn't disco-pop and it wasn't chart-fodder, and sadly for them--and their label--attempts to make them so with the help of Rick Rubin has resulted in a record that sounds similar to the last but with the heart ripped out.