Yet though the music may not win any originality awards - Sebadoh and Guided By Voices spring instantly to mind as precursors - there is a refreshing lack of pretension throughout.

Santogold, then, is a great 21st century cut and paste pop record: self-conscious, referential and catchy as hell. Buy it, love it...then chuck it away and buy a newer model.

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.

Goes on a bit, predictably (20 tracks!), but only Jay-Z can match its highlights for party soundtrack of the year.

This minor masterpiece of an album is nothing less than a precision exercise in deconstructed songwriting.

Where once the bark was of Beck, we have - and this hurts - Wings.

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.

If Avril Lavigne dealt with her 'issues' by adding whiskey to her skinny latté, bummed about on a Californian beach at sunset and listened to The Go-Gos, this is what she'd sound-like.

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.

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

Ultimately, 22 Dreams is, simply put, Weller's best album since "Stanley Road", and one to be remembered for years to come.

The result is pretty much what you'd expect from an album bearing Lynne's name on the credits.

It's not just that these sentiments are timeless - these songs, in these hands, are only now receiving their definitive interpretations.

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.

Rather than mimicking and rehashing "Simple Things", she's found a warmth and depth of feeling that makes "Colour The Small One" the logical progression.

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 not original or slyly crafted enough - a couple of songs could definitely have benefited from a quick edit from Damon - to feel truly classic, but it has a charm and a vibrancy that's impossible to resist.

As tear-soaked and gorgeous as we ever might have hoped.

'Bionix' has definitely been released at the wrong time of year: it's got chilled summer vibes written all over it.

The Welsh agit-poppers' tenth album isn't terrible--certainly not as listless or confused as Lifeblood--but it does sound lazy, lyrically and sonically.

You must surely marvel at Thom Yorke's insistence to challenge his audience and his enemies.

It’s the way “With The Lights Out” fleshes out the plot that makes it so compelling.

Lady Gaga apart, the most interesting stars in 2010 are women in their 30s and beyond, artists with phosphorescent personalities that might burn the fingers of anyone wishing to mould them. Singers like Alison Goldfrapp, Grace Jones and Robyn Miriam Carlsson.

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.

While it's certainly refreshing to hear Oberst refrain from swaddling his emotionally-driven conceits in rock statesman's clothing, much of Conor Oberst seems too comfortably by-the-book to really leap off the page.

The lumbering, ponderous nature of both music and vocals elsewhere makes you wonder if much of Songs In A&E wasn't actually recorded in hospital.

'I Might Be Wrong' is Radiohead trashing the notion that 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' were difficult and sterile studio bound affairs.

It's another solid and undeniably enjoyable album. But from a woman as supremely talented as Blige, somehow enjoyable rates as a disappointment.