Beautiful songs one and all, there’s much to recommend "Eye To The Telescope", and given enough time and patience, Tunstall’s subtle charm seeps through making it an album to love.

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.

The Coral have refined their influences, dropping some of the more incongruous blasts and revelations for a more concise, controlled dervish of Northern guitar colour and shade, West Coast psychedelic fever and Spaghetti Western landscapes and atmospherics.

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.

Your record collection still only really needs a couple of Chk Chk Chk 12"s and that Out Hud album, but don't pass on the chance to see them live.

You simply have to marvel at the talents of a man who is surely amongst the most gifted and fascinating musicians of modern times, even if "The Avalanche" does feel like a vaguer retread of the absolute bravura seen on its big brother.

"The Back Room" is, principally, a triumph.

Overall, aside from the crummy rock-out of 'What If', 'Aaliyah' is accomplished fluid soul, with nothing too jagged or startling to spoil the polished veneer.

Everything here sounds familiar.

The album's predominant mood is not glumness, it is togetherness, and it invokes images of storytelling, late nights, campfires, whiskey and beards. The stuff of men with things on their minds.

Superficially then, White Denim might, on first listen, ape the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion but unlike garage revivalists like The Hives--whose studied revivalism has all the innovative spirit of a 19th century theme park--they've kicked all the best things about red-blooded rock into exciting new shapes.

Big by design, poignant yet relentlessly uplifting, it has the feel of a career crowning glory, or at the very least a second album, not a first attempt.

These 10 songs evolve unhurriedly and, as with all Mogwai's best moments, like time-lapse photography from the heart of a dark storm.

What makes 'Paid Tha Cost...' such an unexpected joy is the way in which Snoop's comic persona offers all involved an opportunity to loosen up and have some fun.

But its modesty is its weakness. For the last 15 years, Simon has been rejuvenating himself with challenges, with awkward collaborations and unusual idioms, testing and experimenting with his talent. With this collection of gentle, wry ballads and witty, shuffly songs he is, nearly, just coasting on it. Not that this makes 'You're The One' a bad album. It just makes it an ominous one.

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.

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.

An intelligent step forward from a unique and prolific troubadour.

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.

Danger Mouse hasn't commandeered his charges' muse and forced The Black Keys to change, simply encouraged them to co-operate and collaborate for the first time. Clearly, company becomes them.

As with previous LPs, “The Secret Migration” works as a set-piece but, with the strings kept on a tighter leash and the production less fulsome, it’s easier to notice the details.

While unlikely to ignite the zeitgeist as "Parklife" once did, "The Good, The Bad & The Queen" probably says just as much about Britain 13 years on.

After a first listen 'The Optimist LP' simply drifts over your head like yet another take on a well worn formula, but given a second chance reveals a glorious, often ornate sensibility that simply can't be ignored.

To be fair, "The Loon" stops short of pastiche, but it is too transparently a paean to Tape 'n Tapes' heroes.

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.

A terrific gonzoid metal album.

Alight Of Night is a garage-weaned, art rock, squat-dirty masterpiece.

While the die-hard These New Puritan fan might be annoyed that six of these tracks have been released before, there's enough to make it abundantly clear here is a band with a brilliant sense of invention.