What saves this record from being another wallow in the misery of post-fame existence is the music.... 'We Love Life' is a grandiose, symphonic affair buoyed by succinct orchestration and white-light choral interludes.

No acoustic stinkers. No Live And Unrehearsed At K-ROQ radio sessions. No ropy early demos. No remixes. Just Green Day, playing solid, dependable, familiar idiot-savant punk-rock.

With 4everevolution Smith continues to avoid the genre's default Americanisms and instead dabbles in proggy electronic wizardry ('In The Throes Of It'), warped R&B ('Takes Time To') and sleekly produced, astute socio-political commentary ('Who Goes There?').

New is the sound of an old dog having fun with some old tricks.

Opening track ‘Back To Land’ wouldn’t be out of place at an Eric Clapton gig, closer ‘Everybody Knows’ is dreary, and ‘These Shadows’ could be a Mazzy Star throwaway. The rest, however, is gold.

It’s unlikely to gain any new converts to the cause, but you get the impression Hitchcock stopped caring about that sort of thing long ago.

Blood Red Shoes is probably the duo’s most satisfying effort to date--frustratingly short of the “quiet triumph” they sing about on closing track ‘Tightwire’, but an admirable racket nonetheless.

Yet another ’90s micro-genre gets the hipster revival treatment on Montreal duo Solar Year’s snazzy debut.

The result is a record that fully embraces the theatricality of its genre but falls just on the right side of ridiculous.

The Faint continue to ensure that across the pond there's an infinitely sexier state of dance-rock affairs. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

He sounds small, beaten and subdued beneath the Lemonheads-meets-Diiv slack drawl of the music. The key thing here? Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he also sounds totally believable.

Yes, we could have done without the plodding, church-baiting 'Hash Wednesday', but songs such as 'Explode', and 'On A Fix' more than make up for it and are so incredibly abrasive that you probably shouldn't put 'Eyes & Nines' next to valuable records on your shelf.

London duo Mount Kimbie are stronger than the latter temptation; this six-track mini-selection bows to no imagined commercial pressure.

If this is an indication of what to expect [on the next LP], things are going to get very hairy. [8 Oct 2005, p.43]

The rest of it though, is soulful and intelligent where 'intelligent' is not exclusive to 'good beats and rhymes.' Which is what it's all about.

The unlikely, ghoulish inspiration of a dead Dutch pop star has forced Pixies' frontman Frank Black into making his finest album since the demise of his influential '90s alt.rockers.

Thankfully, on The World Is Yours the band sound more engaged than they have in some time.

She’s every bit the equal of Bat For Lashes, Frida Hyvönen or any member of the Wainwright clan.

While the music may not always match up, the lyrics reaffirm The Libertines’ place as one of the most vital British bands ever and should usher a fresh generation of believers on board the good ship Albion.

Where once lo-fi underachievement stifled Barlow's outsider pop genius, 'Emoh' abandons dictaphones to the dustbin and sees Lou documenting his wonderful, incisively literate pop songs with something resembling sheen. [5 Feb 2005, p.51]

Their first record is good; their next could be mega.

New Gods is endlessly lovable stuff.

Butter is twitchier than a smoker on a 12-hour flight, and you wish Hud-Mo would have more confidence in his majestic melodies before shredding them. For the intrepid listener, though, this is popping candy for the ears.

This is a gorgeous album, but sacrifices had to be made. They’ve undeniably lost something that made them special in the first place.

Frustratingly, the one thing Held needs is the one thing their Tumblr-goth fans are short on: concentration.

The odd misfire aside, Feel It Break is self-assured and utterly consuming. At this rate, she'll be leading the pack soon.

This Bronx rapper-producer makes genuine party bangers out of dustbin scraps. [18 Sep 2004, p.65]

Mostly, though, Conatus gives you a more polished version of exactly what you'd want from a Zola Jesus album.

'Black Mountain' is like a stoned friend with really good taste in music burning you a mix CD. [Jul 2005]

He may have softened his edge, upped the production and pulled in the stars, but The Weeknd remains an outsider.

From the bouncy 'Same Mistake' (this album's 'Is This Love?'), to the darkly nostalgic ballad to years past, 'Misspent Youth', it's a comeback as irrationally happy-inducing as its title suggests.

They could turn even the hardest kids at school into pissy wrecks with the elegant dread-heart blues of this, their fourth album.

Angst-ridden indiscretions aside, Sigh No More is a fine debut from a band that's patiently picked up the tools of its trade, and chosen the right moment to give them full rein.

The quintet deliver a sincere emotional punch.

At its best 'Riot City Blues' is dumb, fun and silly. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

Even the ticking percussion and trilling synths can't hide the sheer melodic oddness of Gartside's songs. [3 Jun 2006, p.35]

Namechecks for Peter Beardsley and Peperami show eccentricity, but once you get used to his atonal delivery, Dawson emerges as a talented chronicler of the tiniest, realest details.

Call it highbrow, call it highfalutin, but with Wash The Sins, Esben are carving hulking tablets of stone boasting that intellect is nothing to be scared of.

Here he tightens the screws a bit to make 12 purposeful, concise tracks.

The '80s revival taken to its spangliest, synthiest, chino-flappiest extreme.... Our flashback to a dead decade has thrown up both guilty pleasures and glistening horrors.

Mournful, moving and minor key, Age suggests The Hidden Cameras’ defiant sexual politics are still vital.

Imagine a two-piece BRMC if they'd grown up in a sub-zero landscape in Denmark where the only cultural sign-posts are trashy sado-pulp novels, distorted Velvets bootlegs and endless re-runs of Marlon Brando in classic biker-flick 'The Wild One'.

The results are standard indie on top of a few croaky far-off bleeps, but the vibe is brilliantly consistent: dubby, cracked, and less dense than the surface of Saturn (very un-dense).

Two years since the last album, five members with wildly varying tastes and talents, enough ammo to blast out two solo albums on the side, and they still can’t quite make 10 essential tracks in a row.

Far from being terrifying, it sounds like Smith is actually having fun.

It’s not much more than the sum of its influences, but when its influences are this strong, it really doesn’t matter.

If Pe’ahi is a tribute to Sune’s father, it’s a warts-and-all portrayal of a turbulent relationship, but one delivered with a tenderness and intensity that propels the very concept of the retro garage duo into a fresh sonic stratosphere. Drop in, it’s an exhilarating descent.

Ocasionally, the shtick does wear a little thin and they lope off towards water-treading mid-pace. The line between parody and genius is always going to be fine.

Jeffrey Lewis has stepped in to chronicle the detritus of the human condition for his amicable fifth full-length album.

Another fine fusion of volcanic arena-rock and cherry-poppin' slow burners. [9 Oct 2004, p.56]

Sounds like a collection of songs poised to steal the heart of anyone with a bruised soul. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

‘The Yellow Roses’ typifies the lull in the album’s mid-section, and is all the more annoying when you realise how special this record could have been with a little more quality control.

Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son bills itself as a concept album, a road movie with no end, but the songs are tight, the meaning incidental and any big ideas play second fiddle to bewitching tunes and delicate harmonies.

Sure enough Freddy Ruppert's second album as Former Ghosts is as warm, life-affirming and snuggly as a coatless night on the Siberian steppes.

Fans alienated by My Morning Jacket’s more recent material will find plenty of comfort here.

It’s a moving record. The only catch is, when they turn down the intensity on ‘What We Loved Was Not Enough’ they sound like Arcade Fire at their most mawkish.

Shame it's slightly spoiled by the morbid fixations of those same lyrics--which are the only shit thing about this LP, really.

Ghost Stories is a feeling more than a collection of songs, and takes a willing reception for granted. That feeling's not rancorous, it's bloodless and resigned, but touching as well.

About half of 'Rock Steady' is just great, a career salvage job to compare with Madonna 's 'Ray Of Light'.

Elegant is the way the record confines Diane’s sadness to the past. It doesn’t wallow, it reassesses.

They Want My Soul is a cult record in the making from the quintessential cult group. Normal service has been resumed.

Its only disappointment is the absence of Roots rapper Black Thought to joust with him.

Adem mirrors the ambitious approach of Sufjan Stevens. [13 May 2006, p.41]

His straightest record yet, delving into crunk, rock, drum'n'bass and pop with varying results.

Criticism aside, Rocky's debut is full of superb moments and offers a rich tasting menu of unique sounds.

Rave Tapes doesn’t stray far from the Mogwai comfort zone, but nor is it the sound of a band clapped out. Nineteen years in, there are still crescendos left to climb.

Like their last, Only By The Night is front-loaded with world-beaters but then gradually ebbs back to more interchangeable moments. More than ever its strengths, when it succeeds, later become its weaknesses. It tries a mite too hard.

What Havilah does is jump up and down on the rotting carcasses of The Vines and Jet, stabbing them again and again with a flag that says “Miles. Better. Than. You. Ever. Were. Mate.”

This is one house of horrors that’s worth the ride.

Produced by metal guru Ross Robinson, There Is A Way is a slicker beast than the Danan of yore, yet that rickety collision of a million ideas remains.

They're the metal Radiohead. Though it's definitely a million times more metal than anything the Oxford miserablists have recorded, 'Lateralus' still easily contains the same amount of misery and self-obsessed navel-gazing.

The results are undeniably lush, yet slightly lacking in soul. [16 Apr 2005, p.50]

Typically minimal and monochrome but beyond the dirge-like pace of tracks like 'Say Valley Maker' lies an unlikely optimism. [28 May 2005, p.64]

Both Marr and MM mainman Isaac Brock have a weakness for bombast that can make them sound like Snow Patrol playing Gogol Bordello, but the album heaves with vim and variety.

It's often as befuddling as it is brilliant.

Do You Like Rock Music? might be fashionably rough around all the right edges, but there's definitely still enough lyrical wit and musical beauty contained herein to warrant your attention.

With this, their follow-up, they're in familiar miserably poetic folk-song territory. For some reason, every song evokes the pub.

It’s Grace’s own personal journey with gender dysphoria in ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’, ‘Paralytic States’ and ‘Drinking With The Jocks’ that has the most impact, though, the latter being the sort of raging polemic that proves the hardcore spirit of Black Flag is still alive and kicking.

It's all flawless in a string-laden soul way, but too clean an effort from a man who, in the past, has been so much more exciting by letting the grit remain.

aside from the throaty rasp of singer Kyle Falconer on lead-off single ‘5Rebbeccas’, the mushy ‘Temptation Dice’ and Paolo Nutini-featuring ‘Covers’ – there’s little here that’ll appeal to the hundreds of thousands of people who bought "Hats Off To The Buskers." Yet it’s a good record regardless.

It's an intense record that lingers in the memory long after it’s finished.

Modeselektor bridge the gap between manual-memorising electronics and brick-subtle, MDMA-peppered bouncy abandon.

The Killers have made half of the album of the year. Lucky that now we've got Napster, you only need to buy half. [5 Jun 2004, p.55]

And so paranoia produces, if not a great album, a respectable transition from love-him-or-hate-him brass-toting berk into a genuine, bonafide pop maverick.

'Souljacker''s songs rock harder than most of E's nu-metal enemies.

Owens remains a naturally intuitive pop songwriter, and ultimately Chrissybaby Forever is a fresh slice of Californian good vibrations that arrives just in time for summer.

The difference this time is small but significant, in the overall high quality threshold - from the silken slo-mo waltz of 'In Love With A View' to the listless Dylan-lite stumble of 'She Broke You So Softly', there's not a bum note here. Which is not necessarily a recommendation. Because if you stand too close to these tunes they can seem suspiciously perfect, like a newly painted Wild West movie set.

The Manics’ 11th album is a subtle, satisfying record that showcases their continuing ability to soar, albeit without digging anywhere near as deep as their politico-punk-pop totems, 1992’s ‘Generation Terrorists’ and 1996’s ‘Everything Must Go’.

So while Nocturne is gorgeous, it's a little too predictable to become truly exciting.

Caoimhe Derwin and Jessie Ward’s guitars have perfected that Jesus And Mary Chain kettle-whistle sound, lending a haunted air to otherwise energetic stomps like ‘Heartbeats’ and ‘Talking.

Their head-fuckable tunes warp and distort everything into a kaleidoscopic pulp.

Firecracker mod-punk and allegorical political cut-and-thrust. [5 Mar 2005, p.51]

He’s crafted a tender and often forlorn eco-treatise.

Lo-fi electronica ('Getaway Ride') and ambient pop ('Dominic') create the spine of a charmingly off-kilter record, while 'I Love Our World' is essentially a field recording.

Twin drummers Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson are oustanding, but it’s Patterson who’s the real star – an all-American frontman whose honey-coated voice is practically begging for adoration.

It definitely ain’t perfect, then, but in concocting a scrubbed-up, carefully wrought maturation of their sound, Born Under Saturn gives us something close to Django Django unchained.

The Bardo Story sounds like a collection of rediscovered ’60s and ’70s gems uploaded to YouTube.

They’ve kept those colours nailed firmly to the mast, and never more so than on ‘No Money Music’, an aptly named track that adopts the aural scare tactics of Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’.