However maudlin Noah & The Whale begin, then, there's a wonderful narrative here that sees them move from first-love blues, through resentment to healing and finally to acceptance.

This record can't claim such a free-spirited conception as its predecessor, but that's actually to its credit as not a moment rests idle or is flung in on a whim, every track connects like a pool cue to the back of the head in a bit of Friday night pub rough and tumble.

Perhaps the less successful tracks here might have been novel and fresh 15 years ago, but interest in library music and analogue synths was piqued long ago and some of Love 2 sounds like one example of many these days.

While A Place To Bury Strangers are obviously still in awe of the original shoegaze crowd, Exploding Head is a step towards sounding unique.

The problem is, Go Hard's constantly unsure if it wants to top the charts of its own accord, dominate Radio 1 with big-name collaborations or avoid getting friendly with the mainstream at all, and so flits between the three hoping no one will notice.

There is more than enough pop fuel here to maintain La Roux's unlikely momentum for a while.

A return to core principles, which has produced a handful of pretty love songs and a solid overall, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel certainly isn't the disaster we were promised, but then nor is it a triumph.

Minor gripes aside, My Way is far better than anyone could have expected from a singer whose reputation is still judged by his musical contribution from 20 years ago.

If not quite the cohesive, brilliant whole it should be, Wild Young Hearts is an impressive sum of beautifully executed parts.

Deeper and darker takes longer to charm, which is bad for singles, but should see the album's shelf life extend to long after Mika's novelty has worn off.

David Gray might not fit most people's definitions of a revolutionary artist, but he's effected his own startling transformation here.

Scars is the strongest Basement Jaxx album since 2001's "Rooty".

What potentially made Album exciting was that it seemed to understand that pop itself doesn't make sense, and that it can still work just as well with all the wrong notes in all the wrong order.

That it is a beautifully realised set of textures and sounds certainly helps, as does the fact that its keenly abstract, exploratory bent makes any attempted comparisons with his debut album practically meaningless.

With Truelove's Gutter, Hawley stands at the other side of his beloved city's bridge, leading the charge for the welcome return of pop that demands your full attention to get the best out of it.

Its ambitions far exceed its ideas, and the record is sunk by the kind of sonic bloat normally reserved for self-regarding sophomore releases.

It's all good sauce, one supposes, but as Mills wheels out of earshot, tongue and balls dangling in the warm night air, it's hard not to wonder where the thoughtful, sullen kid whose eyes cut like lasers through sink estate bull**it has got to these days.

This is something unique, often flawed and often flooring, and as fine and fitting a memorial for its lyricist as could be imagined.

Underpinning all these is a formidable talent for beats and synths most audible on glacial instrumental '10,000 Horses Can't Be Wrong.' It's this that makes Temporary Pleasure so strong and tightly knit and it's the reason it has enough minor-key disco stomps to keep us dancing all through autumn.

What we are given this time round is a rather boring queue of unmemorable songs.

Bellamy wriggles ever freer from the straitjacket of rock music, nearing the point where he can slide between genres as easily as his idols, Bowie, Queen and Prince.

There's a good, possibly even a great, album in here somewhere, but Kid Cudi doesn't get very close to finding it.

Can she master the bustle and colour of Latin pop as easily as she mastered sweaty electro? Tristemente, no. While never less than agreeable, Mi Plan is rarely more than that.

It is a rarity: a proper album, from a proper pop star.

Much scruffier and far less inhibited than Coldplay, and way more compelling than Editors, Two Dancers is widescreen stuff nonetheless and an album that will carry them across more thresholds than their first.

While Popular Songs may contain few surprises for long-term admirers, it is nonetheless a contrary beast in that it demands to be heard in a single, complete sitting.

He still sounds temperamentally incapable of making a bad album, but he's made his first boring one.

For all that she's miraculously clawed back here, the one thing that eludes her is the one thing that made her exceptional: her voice. Without it she's just another R&B singer, and, good as it is in places, I Look To You is just another R&B album.

The Time Of Our Lives is a great pop EP drowning in a sea of bilge.

Their strength lies in Turner's lyrical precision, his way of taking a scalpel to the minutiae of real life to make his heckling of fluorescent adolescents, weekend rock stars and scumbags seem like more than just booze-maddened ranting. Here, Turner's words aren't as direct.

Penate has gutted his sound and replaced it with something expressive, warmly empathetic and, best of all, blindingly spangly.

Soulsavers shove the mic in Mark Lanegan's hand and tell him to growl as loud as he can. He brings his friends, they all join in, and they make a lot of sense.

The Bachelor has more than a whiff of a histrionic West End musical confined to a primary school assembly hall which means it's 10 out of 10 for effort, but for execution...

The songs of OCD Go Go Go Girls stand-up to a certain mood--one, passed a certain age, that's usually buoyant and beer-fuelled.

YACHT don't aim to solve the puzzle of life; they just want you to know you're welcome to party round their house anytime you like.

Everything about Complete Me suggests a pop star of rare originality, charm and talent, and one who will win the world over person by person if he has to.

There exists a plodding, phoned-in emotional evenness here which, for a band trading on matters of the soul, is a big problem and one that will stop them entering the arenas those strings were employed for.

Had the production been toned down a bit, to just Young and some lo-fi synths, these songs would have worked much better. But then that would have invited even more comparisons to The Postal Service. A noble, but ultimately uninspiring, effort.

The big-beated momentum of yore is bogged down in McClure's new graceless Gallagher sneer and left to stagnate by a band more interested in re-heating anaemic Kasabian-esque psychedelia than building a plinth from which to preach.

Britney Spears, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce and Leanne Rimes are all artists Sparks' music evokes, but very little of it could be said to be distinctly hers.

Given that Sigur Ros seem to be going to increasing lengths with each record to seem less abstract and more human, a collection that unbinds itself from those constraints is, it turns out, a justifiable and often awe-inspiring exercise.

Perhaps with a bit more effort converting the jams into actual songs this would have been a worthy jump off as opposed to the album's incandescent highlight. Your forecast then, occasional flashes of brilliance but largely dreary.

But all too often there's the feeling that, in trying so hard to match the melodrama Ronson and Pallet have draped around him, Waller loses sight of the smaller picture and sounds confused, out of place.

So, while this is a terrific rock record, there's still not much here that our dads didn't nod-out to at Bickershaw.

Although Bombay Bicycle Club can't quite hold a torch to the all-conquering returning Maccabees, they're an armful short of effortless anthems for that, but they prove themselves worthy of operating in their shadow.

Weird enough but familiar enough to spook the status quo without blowing it out of the water, they will, hopefully, continue to make music for a very long time.

Like a slightly under-serving best of, though, we get glimpses of what they've done before, but nothing substantial enough to set a new high-water mark.

It helps to pick the right tune and Dando has good taste, judging Gram Parsons ('I Just Can't Take It Anymore'), Wire ('Fragile') and Townes Van Zandt ('Waiting Around To Die') to be worthy of homage. But that's all this album is, really. Homage.

Frankly it makes our blood run cold with images of Sunday supplement purgatory, Spektor trading soft-focus licks with Katie Meluah from out of suburban glove compartments for decades to come. Thankfully the reality is nowhere near as bad as that.

Where her former act just made sneering grunty fight-punk, Spinnerette have proper tunes, proper lyrics and proper choruses. Marriage to two proven master songwriters has probably helped. But whatever, it's a positive move.

There's a gleefully fluid rock'n'roll dynamic driving this whole record, more evocative of modern-day US psychedelic reprobates The Dandy Warhols or The Brain Jonestown Massacre, rather than students trying to be clever.

In a number of 'mature' developments to their sound they've laid down impeccably produced horns (see bombastic opener 'World War III'), come within millimetres of salacious classic rock in the excellent "Poison Ivy" (watch out for the implied "bitch" in the chorus!) and, on lead single 'Paranoid,' dispensed a chilled-out post-baggy number.

Happily so, as well, as any adherence to the backstory would ruin what's simply the best dumbass party album of the summer.

It's well-built, yes, but almost too well built, many parts sounding like they've been lifted directly from SY's vast back catalogue and slotted into place, like a jigsaw that needed completing, rather than the sprawling documents of noise and confusion this band's name is built upon.

Around the world in 60 minutes, then, Mos embraces both the jet-setting film star lifestyle and a re-found love for the game, making for the Deffest jam since that label gave Jay-Z the keys.

If the "Energy Never Dies", as Black Eyed Peas' acronymically-titled fifth album has us believe, why do they continually sound like the most tired, idea-less group on the block?

What pulls this album back from being anything but revelatory, however, is not only the typical lazy rock the band are purveyors of, especially 'Fire' and 'Fast Fuse,' but also the diabolical lyrical content that's employed throughout West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

As they expose the fragility of love and ultimately humanity, and mourn evolution's victims, they pitch themselves somewhere between Neil Young's heart-rending "Needle And The Damage Done" and a hard-bitten Dylan going electric, all the while retracing traditional folk's footsteps with a wonderfully homespun flourish.

What truly counts here is persona and with E casting himself as dog in heat, eager to reach a scratch that he just can't itch, the end result is yet another facet to a continually engaging and truly unique artist.

With such songs as 'Southern Point,' which builds from shuffling, folk-jazz grooves into a squelchy, winding fairytale, breathtaking piano-pop anthem 'Two Weeks' and the towering drama of 'I Live with You,' we join the consensus: this is a record to swoon over.

Aside from the incredible sonics though, Phoenix's real triumph here is successfully contorting the songs into ever more elaborate and unconventional arrangements without losing any of their classy pop impact.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about Manson's latest record is the couple of anomalies hidden within.

It's a well-made, well-polished piece of material. But she ruins it by painting a wacky overcoat over something that was probably fine in the first place.

While Relapse is a slightly more energised record than the listless "Encore" (despite a Dr Dre production that is, for the most part, tired and dated), it's hardly the comeback many hoped for.

there are many who will find this record torrentially annoying....But to many others, Manners will be a welcome zephyr of optimism ushering away the angst of epidemics and impending environmental oblivion.

His solo follow-up, though, is a more personal affair, dissecting the onset of middle-age, physical decrepitude and the end-game of marriage (he split from his wife not long after finishing this).

Back On My B.S. is 50 minutes of largely no-nonsense Busta, fist firmly planted in the mid-'90s. Of course, with that we get the expected ups and downs, but what Busta lacks in album length longevity, he makes up for in force.

Bloated, culturally inconsequential and decidedly average, the net result is a band getting far too high on an over-inflated sense of self-importance to the deafening chimes of cash registers the world over.

If anything the songs might be less hungry than on their debut and less nimble than its follow-up, but it is sure-footed and firmly directional and they have no trouble reaching the benchmark they'd previously set themselves.

Indulgent though it may be, it's easily his best. And despite an unfeasibly craggy production job, the rambling arrangements and recurrent references to nature and the elemental give it the feel of a dusty, long lost prog-folk curio.

Everything is that much thicker, more weathered, generously exaggerated and significantly less innocent. It pays increasing attention to composition and classy song structures and yet more to pulling them apart and lassoing passing listeners with the strands.

It's not just that 'Love Sex Magic' is the highlight, it's Fantasy Ride's only saving grace.

While it'd be ridiculously premature to cast The Horrors as the future of anything, this is a bold and often brilliant step in that direction.

Gallows are the sound of this country's rising fury. And people in power need to listen, because if it spills over, there'll be trouble.

Maccabees have not just merely avoided a sophomore goring with Wall Of Arms' bar-raising pop. They have got the crowd firmly back on their side in doing so.

With their abilities to self-censure and decide at what's fundamentally good gone seriously awry, the results are more likely to induce a rolling of eyeballs and suppressed sniggers rather than gasps of admiration.

A proper, fully formed record rather than a side-project doodle, Colonia is where artistic integrity meets pop conviction in a curious, deranged yet compelling sing-along.

In a time where we could have fairly expected another state-of-the-world sermon, Dylan's thankfully stopped the overdone end-is-nigh bell-ringing that's characterised his late-period, allowing the ghosts of romances past and present to permeate Together Through Life.

The truth is most of this new record is karaoke, too--it's just that, like their fans, the band are so desperate to mean something that they have the gall to call it 'new'.

Much of the album bathes radio-friendly funk-rock in a kind of Balearic after-glow--it conjures that feeling of bittersweet triumph many will have felt as last night becomes this morning, the conquering of a dark that is now needed if sleep and recovery from such an act is to be possible.

Ultimately though, the credit for the triumph of Yes is Tennant & Lowe's. While Xenomania bring a confidence and focus, the big choruses and nagging melodies are present throughout.

On Dark Days/Light Years, their ninth album, The Furries consolidate their best ideas--electro leanings, hypnotic motorik excursions, catchy, hook-driven riffs and layers of vocal melodies.

Sounds Of The Universe also happens to throb with sonic originality and dark, complex humanity, and is a fine addition to one of the richest, most intriguing back catalogues in pop.

Robbed of any arch qualities they might previously have hinted at, Art Brut are shown up as cuddly pop-comedians happy to tell the same joke over and over, devoid of any real insight and normal to the extent that you half-expect Argos to launch into a diatribe against aeroplane food.

That's the thing about Asleep In The Bread Aisle, it's all about promising potential, rather than the delivery of it.

My Maudlin Career offers soul and sophistication in abundance.

The main criticism of bands built on laptops is that they lack soul but while Telepathe's 'processes' may be intrinsically stylized, tracks like these and the thriving, exhilarating 'Devil's Trident' still carry moments of genuine romance, innocence and drama.

She's softened the edges just enough for you to find a way in and it pretty much liberates the whole record. The transformation overall is nothing short of terrific.

It would be thrilling to hear a Silversun Pickups record which finally shakes off all their influences and creates something entirely their own. Swoon isn't quite that record, but it takes them closer to that goal, and is a seductive, intricate thing of beauty in itself.

Maclean is clearly a scholar of electro/disco and each number is exquisitely arranged and executed, every synth sound modulates just so as it fades, every reference point lovingly rendered and the whole thing is buffed with a contemporary polish that eschews none of the off-kilter humanity that keeps disco delightfully distinct from its explicitly mechanised dancefloor cousins.

Dos offers proof that, while less may indeed be more, Wooden Shjips give you more of less.

While her second album is frequently more drama than action, over the long haul, the magical world she creates is one worth being immersed it.

Jewellery then is not quite the set of glittering pop gems its title implies but boasts a handful of rough diamonds nonetheless, fidgety and uncompromising though all the more enjoyable for it.

It gradually reveals itself as a lithe and texturally consummate work.

This may be a much welcomed return for Lady Sovereign from the wilderness, but in the case of Jigsaw, it would seem that she's missing a few pieces to make this comeback a complete success.

A check-your-pants rollercoaster, Tentacles isn't a critique of the times by any stretch of the imagination but it captures the feeling, the mood and the sheer abject terror.

If all that this still-decent album does is pique interest in what Dananananaykroyd are like live, then it will have done its job because that is where the magic lies.