It's tumultuous. It's breathtaking. It's expressive without the barest hint of Radiomuse indulgence.

He can't seem to decide whether he wants to make a straightforward hip-hop remix of Jay-Z's tunes, quirky sampladelia like DJ Steinski or Coldcut, or an avant-garde project in the vein of plunderphonic composers John Oswald and Negativland. A lot of the time, he falls awkwardly between the three camps.

Like their debut, 'Start Something' is ultimately too long but where it occasionally flags the pace is soon picked up again.

Towards the end, Herren's love of the glitch tentatively tries to reassert itself, but poetry and seductiveness manage to pacify it for the duration.

With 'Talkie Walkie', Air are headed back where they came from. That they do this without actually retracing their own footprints and have produced an album with its own delicate but distinct hallmarks is a measure of their talent.

As a celebration of the b-side, this is such a charming set, despite its inconsistency.

By rights, Elbow should be pretty annoying, the same kind of lardy, overblown and overrated band as their compatriots Doves.... Yet there's something rather haunting and affecting about 'Cast Of Thousands', just as there was about 2001's 'Asleep At The Back', which raises Elbow far above most of their peers.

It's overlong, like almost every rap album today, and it's not the sort of place to come expecting erudition or insight. But for one singular rapper unwilling and unafraid to stick to his guns, it's a deeply satisfying record.

This is a pompous, blandly histrionic album, faintly monumental in its drabness.

A rather more satisfying record than their second.

Delivering his lyrics in a breathless barrage, 'Boy In Da Corner' packs the energy flash of London MCing into its grooves and for that alone it deserves attention.

Mostly though this is bland Hollywood fodder masquerading as something more.

Although 'Love Is Hell' comes with the assumption that it's more honest than 'Rock'n'Roll', the influences here - albeit different - are just as distracting. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]

It's not as far out wild as 'Kaleidoscope' but it is a consistently inventive and brilliant record.

On the evidence of 'Democrazy', the wrong self-indulgent flake got fired from Blur.

Another masterpiece.

This is what she does, really: talk clever, talk dirty, talk funny and, with Timbaland's dedicated assistance, annually expand the possibilities of what pop music can sound like.

This album is nowhere near as imaginative or as interesting as its maker thinks it is.

All fine in principle, except we've heard it all a million times before.

Even the vague pointlessness that hangs over this product (some interesting rarities – aside from the not-very-different 'alternate takes' of a few tracks included here – wouldn't have gone amiss) can't detract from the incredible music contained in the first two CDs.

Quite the most lifeless and unloved record to be released by an artist of Spears' global stature.

In a nutshell this is The Beatles most average album with some of the fluff removed.

It easily stands comparison not just to the stars Jay-Z has been forced to compete with since 1996, but to the all-time greats of hip hop history.

Ultimately there's something very 80s about Pink. Something very kitsch and plastic; something very 'Breakfast Club'.

More commercial - and much better - than 'Rock'n'Roll', occasionally resembling the grandstand melancholia of Coldplay, and more frequently their antecedents The Smiths and Jeff Buckley. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]

Adams can undoubtedly pen this classic rawk stuff with his ears closed and, as a result, the 15 tracks here lack heart.

Finally, it seems the venerable Iggy has realised that his own brand of nasty, brutish, reductive rock'n'roll is superior to practically any nasty, brutish, reductive rock'n'roll that has tried to supersede it.

This is a great album, choc-a-bloc with great hooks, melodies and harmonies that evoke the great songwriting of the 70s.

Frankly, this is it all over again.

Three albums in and Basement Jaxx are still so far ahead of the pack that they're a barely visible dust cloud on the horizon.

This may be the point at which even those well-disposed to the nice and the quirky start to note diminishing returns.

The 'world-music' excursions of the previous 'Global - A Go Go' album are less in evidence and 'Streetcore' is a sharper, leaner collection for it.

Almost by accident, it seems, The Rapture have pulled it off: the album of the year.

If you can’t find something here that has you smiling and quoting the old saw about rumours of indie’s death being greatly exaggerated, it’s time to take up opera.

[Dalle] may be the New Courtney Love, at times even the Punk PJ Harvey, but she also has a depth of emotion that was last displayed by Kurt Cobain.

A bitterly disappointing, lacklustre album that is sadly short of distinct memories of any kind.

It's a rich, bright, clever and engaging album that should trash those lame prejudices against Belle & Sebastian once and for all.

The latest in a long line of frustratingly hit and miss solo efforts.

There's nothing on this record that has any danger of keeping you from your beer. There are two gears: fast and slow, shoutalong and sobalong.

Her bland-o-meter appears to be well and truly busted.

LFO's gift is an ability to strip Detroit's electronic music of its soul, punishing any soft southern edges with a brutal attack of noise, while still managing moments of subtlety and consistently adventurous beat programming.

For reasons of quality, as well as the inevitable loss of the shock of the new, 'Fatherf*cker' isn't quite the album its predecessor, 'The Teaches Of Peaches', was.

A unique musical vision with a genuinely unique and beautifully skewed worldview to boot.

Eventually, 'Results May Vary' could become a fascinating document - a frightening insight into the vacuous state of 21st century culture.

Their records sound very different, but they're both astounding.

Essentially if you like the bands that have so clearly influenced Stellastarr* you'll like this record. But it's difficult to really love a band that haven't yet found a voice they can truly call their own.

It's a record that benefits from the homogenous, warm feeling such an intimate set-up can make for, the tracks setting up Stone's remarkable voice rather than intentionally distracting from the singer's limitations.

This is rock with a big fat drunken grin scrawled over its face in lurid red lipstick.

It's the sound of a man who's worked out how to be good again, who finally understands his own strengths and limitations.

Some are already calling it a landmark. This year's 'Deserter's Songs' or 'Soft Bulletin'. In truth it's probably better than both of those records.

Much of 'Amazing Grace' is the tired evidence of a man rehashing the same ideas - rather than sounds and movements - like a robotic, assembly line Andy Warhol.

What some see as derivative, unoriginal bollocks others view as honesty, craft and a lack of pretension.

The trouble is, the grandiose sounds he carves often sounds more polystyrene than pompous, no matter how many coats he applies.

It's the state of the great man himself that's truly depressing. If the slurring on 'Murder' (pronounced muurrrerrr) is an attempt to sound like a stroke victim, it's worryingly convincing.

A skull-numbingly dull record, utterly bereft of the anti-establishment rhetoric these boring fakers aspire to.

The Raveonettes have something the Mary Chain lost around the time of 'Automatic': an understanding of how to make a tight three minute pop song feel exhilarating.

'Love & Life' suggests "the queen of hip-hop soul" is truly now at the top of her game.

Here's the '80s revival long plotted by style journalists given an accessible alt-rock face, a deftness missing from most of the arid purveyors of sexy robot music.

Ruthlessly, relentlessly refined, the surprise is that you don't get sick of what is, despite its surface changes, a fairly predictable formula. Rather, you want to hear it again. And again. And again.

They now have more in common with Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers than they do their former mentors Papa Roach.

Not quite what we might have hoped for from such historically important innovators. But not quite as bad as it appears, either.

We should laud Young for taking such risks at this stage of his career but 'Greendale' sounds like the sort of small town you spend your whole life running from. Or the place you go to retire.

'Youth and Young Manhood' is nothing more than a great rock'n'roll album.

It's certainly very cleverly composed and constructed but ultimately sounds aloof and impenetrable and, as a result, somewhat devoid of emotion.

Musically, DC continue to improve, supplementing their acoustic, sparse approach with radio-friendly pop and tracks that subtly ebb and flow; just beware of a few lightweight and labouring moments.

Taken in three-minute doses, 'D-D-Don't Stop The Beat' sounds fantastic. Taken all at once, it's proof that too much fun can be hard to bear.

Steele's self-conscious attempts to create a legend for himself only distract from what is actually a very good album.

New frontiers for rock aren't exactly broached, but then that was hardly the point.

A dreamy, sun-dappled delight, blending pastoral folk, psychedelia, free-wheeling, West Coast Americana and orchestral pop with such apparent effortlessness that its darker lyrical themes - the workings of sinister, invisible forces and the destruction wrought by war - are uncovered only by careful listening.

'Pole' is so minimal it's almost naked. But, by only including the things that matter, it's deceptively atmospheric.

Unfortunately, none of it's even remotely memorable.

'Quixotic' can't fail to mesmerise even those who thought Tricky too clever for his own good.

This is not an album to listen to casually. It insists on taking over your life for an hour, demands a level of concentration rare in rock, amply repays multiple plays.

Hitting that formula and riding it has drained some of the passion out of this sound.

Sadly for such weighty themes of trust, betrayal, loneliness, living out of a suitcase and long distance relationships, the lack of true darkness amongst the sweetness and light is a little frustrating.

Before descending without hope of return into the treacle swamp of R&B ballad hell that beckons at the halfway point, 'Dangerously In Love' offers a few passable moments.

And though the influences/peers - Stooges, Velvet Underground, Krautrock, Spiritualized, Primal Scream - remain the same, this exceptional collection of visionary psychedelia is more ethereal and somewhat bereft of the cloaked fug of death threats, serial killers or "eggs bearing insects hatching in my mind" that made 'Contino' such a brain-damaged future Goth classic.

Very much Tricky business as usual, the sound of a staggering talent laid-up with the longest case of musical flu in history.

What really makes this record engaging is that the simmering tension often chooses not to explode, yet somehow it works.

It's a record to get lost in, one that constantly surprises with its apparently infinite number of hidden harmonies and wry asides.

It's just not quite as great as some of us dared to hope.

It's startling that a commercial rock band could sound this blood-and-oxygen vital, this meaningful and mighty six albums into their career.

This is the sound of Metallica drawing back into themselves and their history.

[A] nine-minute sprawling, shifting and landing tidal wave.

Busting out of car speakers on hot London streets this summer, 'Ego War' is gonna make you think that, finally, we've got a Brit band worth adoring.

A return to quieter, more familiar Eels territory.

Cannibalising a musical canvas splattered with decades of paint, little here is truly original and the quality veers throughout, as is inevitable from the recordings of one - albeit artistically ferocious - city.

It's a masterclass in why they were, and still are, the greatest rock band to grace the Earth.

And to anyone that contends they don't make them like they did anymore: listen to this. They still do.

'14 Shades of Grey' features no standout moments or highlights, just a formulaic, plodding, sixty plus moribund minutes that make this album about an hour too long. Avoid at all costs, even if you're a member of Staind's family.

Had they imploded in some bizarre gardening accident following the release of 'Danger! High Voltage' all would be forgiven. That single still sounds classic and retains the power to get Aunt Peggy off her seat at the wedding reception..... However, the rest appears to be have been cobbled together in a matter of hours.

It is an important leap forward for one of the few American metal bands left who care about the form's emotional evolution.

Unlike his obvious contemporaries - David Gray and Tom McRae - Harcourt has produced an album that reaches out beyond the boundaries of the traditional songwriter, yet still comes packed with memorable melodies and robust songs.

It's an inferior re-run of the Marilyn Manson hammer horror panto that's been showing since '96.

Squeaky genius.

'What Sound' could easily place Lamb alongside Dido and Zero 7 on this year's coffee tables, but also sets them apart as a unique, ever challenging outfit who'll be worth following long after we've come out of corporate chillout coma.

The best songs on this cunning, efficient, frequently daft and fractionally disappointing album are the ones which sound most like the misty reveries of [their] debut.

A mature and, occasionally beautiful album, possibly the finest of their career.