It's good clean fun, entertaining and inoffensive.

If you're not a fan of their weighty retro riffs, Into The Future is not going to sway you; but those who loved their self-titled debut will thrill to the darker, more convincing sounds of former single 'Stormy High' with its Plantish wails and solid Sabbathy riffs.

Any decent covers album should reveal its songs, not dress them up - but by Marshall's standards, Jukebox is an overly polite and frustratingly removed listening experience.

It's almost like neither [Dave Fridmann] nor the band could decide whether they were making an electronic or rock record and in dithering between the two settled on the awkward, frustrating middle ground.

Matinee is quite good; but 50 years on from the birth of rock'n'roll, quite good just isn't really good enough anymore.

It's that time of year when critics are desperate to anoint the first "great" record of the year. Distortion is too tricksy and knowing to be that, but it's a thoroughly entertaining also-ran nonetheless.

It's one of the most exciting debuts by a young female pop artist in ages. If occasionally it veers a wee bit too much towards the cutesy-kooky.

In short, it's the album everyone's been waiting for her to make.

Blige's eighth studio album [is a contender] for being the best of her career.

This is rap of mesmerising, addictive quality, written and delivered by a master in charge of every aspect of his craft.

The result is the best end-to-end Wu-Tang Clan album since their debut, 15 years ago.

Despite not being quite as smart as "Fishscale", The Big Doe Rehab certainly marks another reason (along with recent GZA shows and the release of "8 Diagrams") to suggest the Wu-Tang dynasty is going through something of a renaissance.

The rest of the tracks bop along with various degrees of offensiveness or inoffensiveness, troubling and achieving nothing.

The Black And White Album feels less like a fresh start than the end of something.

Red Carpet Massacre is largely just a ham-fisted example of what happens when fame, ego and squandered major label cash equate to a sad, missed opportunity.

This is a record that will happen to you, and when it clicks, the realisation that As I Am is a genuine classic is overwhelming.

Despite its branding as work-out music, 45:33 feels more like an amazing club DJ set than something to quicken one's pace on the treadmill. [Review of UK release]

Hearing him coast is still better than listening to most rappers trying; but the Jay-Z of today sounds like someone for whom making music is an enjoyable hobby, not a burning need.

If Hvarf is a mixed bag of treats and curios, then Heim represents something rather more thrilling: the future (perhaps).

Smoke pulls off the neat trick of seeming weightless and disassociated but never slight, playful, yet neither inconsequential nor silly.

Untrue is a devastatingly accurate depiction of urban UK--plugging the listener into the matrix of some godforsaken south London satellite, with its identikit fast food joints, repellent inhabitants and anonymous decaying sprawl.

The trio can't sustain this energy and inventiveness over the entire album.

Yet cartoon and divorced from reality as it is, his vision is so vivid that it never fails to seduce and fill you with the uneasy sense that maybe, just maybe, somewhere his disturbing dimension of bums and misfits really does exist.

Blackout is business as usual. Courting publicity more shamelessly than that infamous kiss with Madonna, Britney writhes, moans and generally gives good pillow talk for the duration of an album where crunk, glitches, squeaks and clubbed-up beats dominate.

The results are hit-and-miss.

Lyrically, Shotter's Nation brims with the insight and eloquence with which Doherty continually surprises you.

There are a couple of moments where Hourglass works perfectly.

A deeply special album, and one you hope enough people will allow to get under their skin.

Oblivion With Bells is a competent record and, it must be said, far stronger than the most recent releases by '90s contemporaries The Prodigy or The Chemical Brothers.

Wham, bam, rock and glam, it's Marshall stacks turned up to 11 and Kelly riffing away in the steps of a heap of bands who do it better.

She's melded the two sides of her history much more seamlessly; four-to-the-floor pop belters mix with touches of electronic and lyrical darkness to make one of the pop albums of the year.

Happily, In Rainbows is pretty, pretty good.

Like a feral Arcade Fire making whoopee in the Third Republic, The Flying Cup Club is an often magical listen and deserving of a wider audience than it will probably reach.

Brave is actually one of her strongest albums to date.

For all the moments of heart-stopping splendour, the backing tracks sometimes sound as creaky as a "Prisoner Cell Block H" film set.

Trouble is, despite the band's concerted efforts to beef up and broaden their schtick with a radio-friendly production, too many aspects scream "novelty act".

Sometimes it's almost too much "classic Springsteen"; too many songs seem like retreads.

Souljaboytellem.com is hardly a revelation. Its strength though is its simplicity.

This yet again reveals PJ Harvey to be one of the UK's greatest contemporary songwriters.

There's no getting away from the fact that the goofy guy who used to play drums for Nirvana just made a classic album.

Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon is a feel good record for what's left of this 'summer' and even though it's packed with second hand magic and joy, such charms probably won't wear past the depths of winter, unless you truly are a hippy at heart.

The self-produced Beyond The Neighbourhood balances its meat and veg indie with enough electronic textures and hip hop beats to (sort of) catch the ear.

The only thing wrong with this largely excellent album is knowing that will.i.am has better stuff up his sleeve.

Minor gripes aside, however, Jose Gonzalez has crafted a fine album of rare beauty that seamlessly blends righteous indignation with delicate musical panache; a tough balancing act, to be sure, but one that negates the need of a safety net.

The World Is Yours is one of the year's worst albums.

It might be a little too airbrushed, arch and meticulous for some, but it's brilliant all the same, and, in the tradition of all great second albums, it could prove to be Hard-Fi's defining moment.

An underwhelming end to a sly, bitter, rocking album it maybe, but at least it makes plain the point that being polite does nothing for her and a bit of passion and rock'n'roll attitude goes a long way.

His voice still sounds like it could curdle milk, an anaemic whine with no substance. Song-wise, this is mass-production fodder about which there's very little one can say.

The full band approach seems to weigh things down so heavily you can almost see the red welts on the shoulders of its two leaders.

Curtis doesn't sound like it was much fun to make, and it isn't much fun to listen to.

This album's reduced sonic density is both refreshing and slightly disappointing, since the confounding head-rush of their tunes was always a large part of their appeal.

The album lacks the flab of previous efforts and, where he's been guilty of hiding behind guests before, the contributions are (perhaps inadvisably in retrospect) kept to a minimum. Sadly though, the grandstanding and chest beating take their toll on both Graduation's aesthetic and the listener's patience.

Proof Of Youth was made for rolling back the years and the rug, not chin-stroking contemplation. If shredded Axminster was The Go! Team's aim here, then mission well and truly accomplished.

Their third, Happiness Ltd, is a sulky teenager, and about as attractive and engaging as that suggests.

Not a bad record by a long stretch but a disappointment nonetheless.

Calvin Harris does nothing out of the ordinary, but still, he does it well.

For all the one-paced nature of its songwriting, wilfully lo-fi production values, inevitable Lily Allen comparisons and grating larynx, Panic Prevention is still an enthralling debut, and one that says infinitely more about the life of young Londoners than any amount of Bloc Party seriousness.

Architecture In Helsinki are hyper self-aware and they seem unable to write or perform any kind of song without imbuing it with some sense of irony or post modernism.

Three loud cheers for her scattershot creativity, please.

Aside from whatever awaits Rilo Kiley if they discover, like Courtney Love before them, that deliberately setting the dial to AOR doesn't guarantee success--is the seam of graceless contrivance. Not just musically--but lyrically.

Andorra feels free and fresh, comfortable exploring its own sonic identity.

They lack, for example, the ribald ugliness of Suicide, another big influence--but they deserve acclaim for sculpting the work of so many doomy forebears into something that, in their field, has rare pop purpose.

It would be crazy to suggest that Roots And Echoes is anything less than consistently fine, but from a band whose initial forays promised so much 'fine' doesn't quite cut it.

On paper then, Finding Forever has the dubious distinction of being the equal of "Be". In practice, its jaded formula falls someway short of the genuine energy of its predecessor's finer moments.

So, once again UNKLE have produced another good rather than great album that sounds ahead of the curve.

Lopping off about twenty minutes would have improved things no end, but mostly it needs focus - focus that would probably have come with time.

We Are The Night feels bloated and ornate amongst the elegant functionalism of post-millennial club music.

Occassionally, the songwriting does contain flashes of thoughtfulness.

Zeitgeist may not boast any platinum-plated singles of the kind that typified their peak, but it's mercifully far less flatulent than latter-day Pumpkins.

Crucially, it seems their ability to write a magisterially moving song such as "NYC" or "Obstacle No 1", both from their debut, seems to have abandoned them. In fairness, sonically speaking, this is their best effort yet.

Justice essentially have two modes: funky techno built with filthy overdriven synth sounds and gleefully daft disco/'80s pastiche so shiny as to be almost reflective. Both are held together with a studio rigour that makes the record bounce out of the speakers so forcefully that the moments of synthesis, where the sound coheres into its trademark elastic groove, become utterly addictive.

Expect to hear a smattering of gems from Time On Earth, more than holding their own with the band's much loved and more famous moments.

Super Taranta! is an album of such sweaty vigour, spittle-flecked passion, wide-eyed curiosity and a keen sense of the ridiculous it deserves a big fat plug on primetime telly.

With filth, loose morals, anger, frustration, big guitars and even bigger choruses at every turn, it's got all the DNA of a pure-bred rock classic.

Rowland's big problem is that she has the lungs but not the voice, at least not if we take that to mean something distinctively her own.

Uncle Dysfunktional won't compel a new generation to discover the back catalogue or question the popular depiction of the Mondays as cartoonish buffoons.

This is a pretty bog-standard Ash collection, nothing more, nothing less.

Carrying the minimum amount of filler and fat, this judiciously pruned collection conclusively proves that this is one tiger still capable of burning brightly.

What is certain is "Astronomy For Dogs" is a magic-dusted delight and that Anderson is a wizard and a true star.

"Icky Thump" is really a very odd record indeed, but then, oddness of a particularly bravura nature comes naturally to them.

Bon Jovi are at their best when delivering the country-tinged ballads.

Not content with making a diverse, punchy record brimming with those trademark riffs, Homme has written lyrics that make you think.

Why the hell is Ronson being applauded as a wunderkind for basically recycling big beat and hiring some horns?

The one-time Best Unsigned Band In The Country have come up trumps with a debut album brimming with whip-smart, post-riot-grrl attitude.

Where once Macca seduced us with great melodies, simple songs and great musicians, here the musical sledgehammer is on show too often.

It's heartening to see Smith mainly producing effortless gems in a genre that often sees men half his age struggling to do anything of interest in.

Put simply, this is B-Movie rock: from the death rattle vocals, to the clichéd riffs and hackneyed subject matter.

It is certainly Dizzee's least consistent record to date.

An album of class, depth and seriously hard grinding, it's a major transformation from pretty girl with potential to star turn.

His tenuous grasp on reality and good taste slips and he plummets into a tawdry, gratuitous and self-congratulatory flurry of misogyny, expletives and reggae.

It gathers momentum slowly, making for a brew so quietly potent and pulsating with repressed energy you're almost afraid to leave the room while it's playing in case it explodes messily all over the walls.

The Sun And The Moon", The Bravery's down-to-earth approach ought win them a second chance.

Maroon 5 are the new Police, the new U2: a wildly exciting rock band who understand how to make great pop music that works everywhere from the bedroom and the iPod to the radio and the stadium.

Herein lies the beauty of this band: geeky record collectors they may be, but they're quick to impose their feral energy and fierce individuality on proceedings.

This is so rich, so intelligent, so feeling, that most of us will throw our hands limply in the air and join voices with mum Kate McGarrigle who, according to the dedication on the back, "still whispers in my ear that I'm great".

These half-arsed stabs at nu-AOR end up pleasing no one, least of all the band itself.

We're all for experimentation, but please: Nashville?