One of the highlights of their career.

Although 'Winchester Cathedral' is quite obviously Clinic doing what they do best, it also represents the sound of a band who've clearly broadened their horizons.

Dulli isn’t in Johnny Cash’s league yet -- then again, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are the only people who are -- but 'She Loves You' marks him out as a fellow traveller.

The balance of unsettleing noise and artistic appreciation wavers perhaps a little too much and, as admirable a band as they are, wrapping your ears around their album unfortunately proves to be a little too much work.

With pluses so few and far between, it’s a struggle to make it through these 11 tracks without feeling nauseous from all the sickly pop filler.

The most sophisicated, deliciously out of step pop album of 2004.

While '...Ghosts' is all very pretty and nice, there isn’t quite enough to get your teeth into.

An album that is both abundant in depth and variety, as well as in terrifying walls of noise and gaping chasms of silence.

A wonderful surprise.

If it's pop thrills a go-go you’re after, you’ve got it.

It’s an album that’s playing it far too safe: melodies rise and fall, soaring and curving with painful predictability.

‘Armed Love’ then is The (I)NC’s straight ahead rock record but a superior one at that, one with a great deal of heart and soul, and one that should propel them onto the global stage.

It's the (insert made-up genre here, including the word 'progressive' and/or suffix '-core') album of the year.

If it’s slightly weaker than its immediate predecessor, that’s only because it’s following the same furrow.

Listening to 'Blueberry Boat' is a little like careening around an enormous multicoloured funfair - joyous, unpredictable, kaleidoscopic, tacky, and at times scary and sinister, sometimes all in the space of one song. But even if it occasionally makes you sick, it’s a thrilling ride nonetheless.

With the current renaissance of the one-man band genre, it's pleasing to see that we now have a modern-day figurehead worthy of rock’s glorious past.

It starts with impressive gusto but meanders towards the end, drifting into slow, forgettable balladry.

In less capable hands the results could be unsophisticated and cringeworthy - as it is, they team the neon luminosity of Duran Duran with the camp, boyish charm of Dexys Midnight Runners - and are as likeable as either of them.

‘Nurse’ is the closest to creating a landmark on parallel with ‘Daydream Nation’ they’ve come since that particular record's nameday in ‘88, and in it’s dense textures it maybe signals the extinction of the antediluvian No Wave idyll; a Robert Zimmerman trip that somehow got mixed up with Joni Mitchell, Black Flag and a conceptualist oddball.

This is by no means a ‘bad’ album... and you’ll be hard-pushed to find a more topical anti-Bush punk album released this year, but after 20+ years and umpteen albums that - lets face it - haven’t really strayed much from their influential style, does anyone really need another Bad Religion album after this one?

These songs are timeless. These songs are addictive. These songs are great. Why can't every album be like this?

One of the most assured, unashamedly danceable albums that we’ve heard for quite a while.

An unexpected treat.

She writes beats and creates streetwise slithery DogPop with b-lines and brawn and occasionally shows us that wide-open vulnerability is as vital and visceral as virulent heartsteppin’ sin-sharing.

For all its celebrity tricks and years of pipeline evolution, ‘Auf Der Maur’ still has all the hallmarks of the debut record.

Stunning and dizzying, Sung Tongs’ strangeness will spin around your head for months to come.

Despite some fine moments, on the whole there's not enough that's memorable or above average. No one would give Keane a second glance if Tom Chaplin did not possess such a gift of a voice.

Music is supposed to be a form of entertainment, but ‘Long Gone Before Daylight’ feels like a collection of aimless lullabies.