"America's Sweetheart" is a thrilling record. Held together by that extraordinary voice, which sounds even more shredded than it did in the days of "Dick Nail" and "Pretty On The Inside", she can still deliver.

Ms Dynamite's irate sloganeering may look effective on paper, but until she relearns how to connect with the everyday world, this is little more than ranting in the mirror.

"Riot City Blues" starts fairly poorly and gets progressively worse.

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.

It's certainly not Joy Division, but there's a bittersweet, melancholy and intelligent edge here that's worth investigating.

Corgan is slowly swamped by the style he's adopted.

'Night Train' has been pitched as somewhere between an EP and a mini album, with the impending fifth to be the "proper" follow up to 'Perfect Symmetry'. For their sake, but mostly for our own, this gifted band need to try a lot harder when it comes to that one.

In This Light And On This Evening is a weak, ill conceived and uninspiring effort.

It's a far bolder and more convincing album than her first, and suggests Lewis might be able to pull off an even bigger and more unexpected triumph than winning "X-Factor" and scoring an international hit.

The rest is a lacklustre recast of her debut that displays about as much personality as Duffy's sweetly banal interviews, all of which suggests her production team are a weakened bunch. Like we said, a remarkable return.

This is a determined little bastard of a record by a band in a bug-eyed, rhythmic sweat, who know it’s time to come out with their guns blazing.

Like the three Killers albums, Flamingo is patchy, the sound of a vivid talent not living up to its initial promise.

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

While 'Shaman' is less than the sum of its parts and strays into AOR territory too much to ever truly be cutting edge, despite its R&B and Latin infusions, it will, at least in America, sell by the truckload.

Most of 'Dead Media' resembles a third rate Pulp, Denim or Babybird - steeped in tales of sexual disappointment in bedsit land but without the considerable charm, warmth and wit of the aforementioned bands.

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.

Live, there's little doubt, these tracks will find their own groove and grow, but here they're like show dogs, primped and primed and hard to love.

'Beat 'Em Up' is not shit but ain't exactly loveable either. However, it does confirm that Iggy Pop can still kick up a fuss with the best of them even if the end result isn't as legendary as the man who produced it.

For now at least this is the sound of a band trying to do too much at once and sinking under the weight of their heroes.

Represents an ill-advised body swerve from the duo’s idiosyncratic home territory and plunges them deep into the thoroughly becalmed waters of MOR ambient pop, offering up languid, beats-driven, down-tempo tunes that aren’t so much radio-friendly as downright sycophantic.

Scarlett Johansson has proved herself as much a rock queen as a roll queen.

Neither a triumph nor a calamity, EUPHORIC HEARTBREAK delivers just enough to make you believe Glasvegas may still have that perfect album in them some day.

MSTRKRFT make a racket that's impressive at first but eventually the echoes of it return to bite them.

He may not possess the eloquence or understated flair of a (Neil) Hannon or a (Richard) Hawley, a fact highlighted as the cheesy horn arrangement of 'Run With The Boys' sends things all a bit too Phil Collins, but most songs here play host to a charming menagerie of ideas and perhaps prove that the band dynamic he's lusted after to this point was the one thing holding him back.

Ultimately, D12 have made the fatal mistake of reducing themselves to the pitch that probably won them their deal: "think horrorcore rap, Gravediggaz-style, mixed up with middle-everything baiting lyrics even more extreme than Eminem." And that's not enough.

While she's been guilty of gluing sure-fire singles together with rotten fillers on her previous two albums, Britney uses this opportunity to take the odd risk and adds a welcome edge to her sound.

Not quite as effortlessly enormous as 1999's blistering 'Synkronised', 'A Funk Odyssey' nevertheless won't disappoint anyone taken with the band's direction on that record.

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