Pretty but inessential, God Help The Girl may make more sense when the film is finally delivered next year. Up until then this is largely of interest to Belle & Sebastian completists.

Most of the album's remaining tracks are utterly vacuous interpretations of songs that few are likely to care much about. They offer nothing new to anyone or anything.

It's to Diplo and Switch's enormous credit that the style is fully authentic, the party in full swing the whole way through.

The overall effect of Skeletons is akin to being poked and prodded by a bratty child for over half an hour.

Clever, original, complicated, sometimes frustrating but more often revelatory, it will, given time, uncover its manifold delights.

Ultimately, The Eternal acts as a fitting and timeless aide-memoire of everything this mighty band has ever achieved.

The album may revive the band's career in North America, but for many of their loyal fans it will come as a major disappointment.

It's the sound of past and future uniting to good effect--and Kasabian's strongest statement yet that they're in this for the long haul.

For Miike Snow make weirdly wonderful music, not without its strange lyrical dark side, but with an overall vibe that raises you to your feet and makes you gaze at the blue sky. In a phrase, life-enriching.

Yet while this is good mood music, like a lot of soundtrack material it requires the element inspiring it--the visuals.

This is, therefore, a searing, no holds barred album, uncompromising in its delivery and unstinting in its musical language.

What the Paisley born artist has come up with on Sunny Side Up is baffling.

Ambitious yet restrained, elegant yet exciting, Veckatimest is an endlessly-rewarding album which seems destined to vie with Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion for the title of the year's best.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a slender, fat-free affair, all Gallic swerve and subtle swagger. This may well be the album to broaden their fan-base wider then the fashionable glitterati.

While this isn't a bad album--and Manson diehards are likely to enjoy it quite a bit--there's the sense that it may be an unwanted one.

Never less than dreamy, My Electric Family is endlessly inventive and rewarding.

Harmonium could quite easily have been a sterile exercise in musical pastiche. What The Soundcarriers have turned the album into is a living, breathing entity that restores the listener's faith in music.

By exposing his sensitive underbelly on album number two, Tiga builds up some impressive strength in depth, while pushing the electro-house intersection for all he's worth. It's a winning ploy.

While it sometimes does become a bit too overwrought, those people who found Tori Amos' vignettes so compelling will find much to love here. It helps as well that there's a light pop touch on many of the tracks.

He infuses Relapse with occasional sparks, but fails to transcend the same tired themes--except, of course, when he becomes Marshall Mathers, the Recovering Drug Addict.

Refreshingly free of pretensions and convolutions it's full of well-written songs with melody and fun at its big heart.

Abnormally Attracted To Sin turns out to be a collection of tracks that simply doesn't work as a whole because it can't properly be listened to in one go. Pity, for somewhere in amongst it all Tori proves that she's still capable of producing a storming album.

Minor missteps aside, Further Complications is a bold, progressive step forward in the so far, so very good solo career of Jarvis Cocker.

Processed it may still be, but the emotions this time round feel more human, and, as a result, make a deeper impact.

You can slice up its track-by-track constitution--a gently sung, interesting turn of phrase here, an evocative chord progression here--but it is a beautiful, haunting creature as a whole, and a poignant testament to the power of simplicity.

'Em Are I is an abandoned puppy of an album that you can't help but take to heart.

This is a rather catchy, rather clever slice of electronica that you could easily find yourself falling in love with. It is also the kind of album that you could hate yourself for buying because you get off on the kind of tunes the Tweenies find annoying.

Impressively, then, Nathan Fake has shown he is very much more than a one trick pony, with a bold second album statement that gets more impressive with every listen. We should watch his every move closely.