Listened to as a journey from beginning to end, this is a genuine attempt to progress to pastures new after With Teeth.

There’s a rawness to this record that most new bands – sorry, most bands made up of new musicians – would do well to soak up.

This is the next record you have to buy. Absolutely. Unequivocally.

This is CocoRosie's best long-player yet, and a sure contender for album of the year.

This is the most immediate album Cocker has put his name to in ten years.

He is annoying, simple as; his repeated ego-stroking irritates like a mosquito bite on an already sunburned forearm – it only adds to the pain.

It may not be perfect – there’s the slightest suggestion as the album draws to a close that ideas may be running thin – but for a debut record to sound this accomplished suggests a promising future, and surely they’re in the right hands.

This isn't a rave record. It was never supposed to be. It's a wildly varying catalogue of melody and energy that eschews genre and scene in favour of songwriting and awe-inspiringly beefy production.

The sad thing is that while nobody expects Kaiser Chiefs to be re-inventing the wheel, we do expect a pretty rock-solid, perfect pop record. Yours Truly, Angry Mob most definitely isn't rock solid or perfect in any sense.

You know what you're getting with Good Charlotte, and while it's all very well and respectable to make shapes on the dance floor to one of their tunes after several pints, buying this album is both pointless and foolish. It's a pop album; just burn the singles if you must.

This is not as good as its predecessor.

Shame on the person who made this. Shame on the people who release, market and play this. And shame on anyone who buys it.

The Bees have made a record sparkling with enough wit and ingenuity to make the past seem an undiscovered country well worth visiting.

Pale Young Gentlemen–-as an album--is musical theatre. Switching between moments of mid-tempo melancholy to upbeat cabaret, they strike a perfect juxtaposition.

While opening track ‘Get Innocuous’ gently apes his own ‘Losing My Edge’ for the first minute and a half, the rest of the LP gradually moves onwards and upwards; either improving and tightening the previous template, or trying new things altogether.

In fairness, We Were Dead... excites almost as much as it frustrates; the problem lying not so much in its commercial aspirations per se as an occasional inability to integrate them into a satisfying whole. That, and there’s too much shouting. And it’s way too long.

Drums & Guns is likely to split opinion to a greater extent than any other piece of Low's extensive catalogue, but avid fans should not be put off as behind the challenging production and at the centre of all their controlled experimentation lies one of the band’s strongest releases to date.

There's as much silliness and attempted cred-building as there is genuine excitement.

At its best, Glitter In The Gutter is a compelling journey into another time and place, perfectly pictured and realised.

This is an intellectual jaunt that reveals the beauty of pop music, both musically and lyrically.

El-P has masterfully used New York’s dark corners as a productive muse on I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead.

There's no sonic arsenal, nothing to make you sit and check your ears, just gentle, simple songs that sound like the laments of a sad generation.

The reason Tongues works so well is not because the song lengths are significantly shorter, but because both Hebden and Reid interact on the same wave length.

It’s all masterful.

All too often, I'm From Barcelona are either forgettable or just beyond cloying.

There's a profound lack of any surprises, anything you might not expect, any... inspiration.

Black Pompadour is not a bad album, it’s just flat; it’s delivered with little to no passion, meaning that listening to it in its entirety will be a test of patience for some.

Ultimately, The Rakes have softened their blunt and focused their attention to detail. This is a far more cohesive record but at the expense of the brutal urgency so prominent in their debut.