Merging aquatic Americana that casts its net over the gang mentality of Arcade Fire, The Polyphonic Spree and Broken Social Scene – and that most über-overexposed of F-words, folk – it’s clear why Johnny Marr is touting the Californian throng as his new favourite band.

While homegrown folkies such as Laura Marling are happy to lose themselves in twanging bluegrass and Americana, it’s refreshing to hear a Brit ploughing up our own verdant folk history. Scot troubadour Alasdair Roberts does just that.

It’s a collection of snapshots of a band stretching towards a brilliantly kaleidoscopic, eclectic new sound--and almost reaching it.

There's undoubtedly something there with Frankie--those effortless, skippy choruses aren't as easy to do as they seem. But he and his Heartstrings haven't quite found their true north yet.

That voice, when she exploits the grit of that Barbadian burr to the max, is more unique and richly textured than ever, and that and her crack production team are all the personality.

Twelfth solo album Saturns Pattern backs up recent promises of another shift in sound, sending him into uncharted, acid-spiked waters.

The actual music on Blurry Blue Mountain, however, is warm and enveloping.

On their sixth album, however, they advance on their trademark blokeishness to embrace a beefier and slicker kind of guitar-led groove.

Ultimately this is an album to dance, not cry, to.

A rhinestone-tipped treat. [22 Oct 2005, p.41]

Ultimately the one thing truly lacking on Dungeonesse is the bright spark that makes pop stars so entertaining to obsess over.

More subtle now, but Alice and Kacey are keeping us guessing.

Momentary Masters is his most satisfying, cohesive record yet, and, in many ways, his most personal.

Musically it’s not a huge departure from Subiza, but if it ain’t broke there’s no point fixing it.

Again finds them excelling in the art of morbidity. [27 May 2006, p.33]

45:33 is loads of fun, a satisfying folly that's as central to an appreciation of "Sound Of Silver" as the lyric sheet.

Goodwin could be a solo star yet.

Trading bolshy indie for pin-drop lullabies and pedal steel guitars, 'Whiskey Tango Ghosts' is Donelly's 'I'm a full-time mum and dammit I'm happy' record. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]

Their fifth album (strung together by a loose concept about an imagined village you needn’t worry about) is as softly satisfying as a bobbly old jumper. One with thumbholes.

The album’s first half is fantastic.... The album’s second ‘suite’ is mellower and less consistent.

A wobbly start, but luckily The Coral are just finding their sea legs.

If White Men really recalls anything, it’s those early TV On The Radio records made before Dave Sitek had figured out what he was doing--and you can take that as a sincere compliment.

Their seventh album, might be one of their best, with the band and leader Britt Daniel sounding as energised and playful as a puppy

It’s a graceful evolution and one that rocks just as hard as the squalling fury of The Distillers ever did.

Sébastien invites you to follow him, like a sexy David Koresh, and with tunes like 'Sedulous', 'Pepito Bleu' and the aforementioned 'Cochon Ville' ('pig city' en Anglais), the call might just prove irresistible.

There are a couple of duds, (‘Book Of Love’, ‘Please Say No’), but, as forlorn closer ‘You Were Right’ ably demonstrates, few bands do heartache with as much majesty.

A strident, self-assured album.

Both modern and natural, tragedy has tugged defiance from The Charlatans once more.

While an ambitious selection of productions have reinvigorated his approach, as the album rolls on, the same solo call-and-response hooks, and methodical, self-effacing verses show that, vocally, he’s content sticking to familiar, functional turf.

There are moments when Cloud Nothings sounds like your average punk-pop record, but Baldi is willing to render outside the lines with his own idiosyncratic noodlings and daubs of C86-era colour.

They've gone all mature, come to terms with their past and kicked on to the future too.

It's an unyielding piss-up of tattooed garage riffs, petrol-drenched blues and Marlboro-chuffing growlers. [1 Jul 2006, p.35]

An appreciation of jarring off-key vocals is essential to really love Naytronix, but at the root of all the batshit tinkles, twonks, robot vocals and dial-up noises is a smooth melodic funk pop perfect for seducing the microwave of your dreams.

Tremors is frustrating. But when the colours align it’s alluring and impressive.

It’s no radical reinvention, sure, but the singer captures these songs in their most up-close-and-personal state, with instrumentation stripped back to nearly zero.

The record is both labour of love and exorcism - Frusciante plays every instrument himself and every song is, without exception, pointedly self-analytical and emotionally probing. This, combined with Frusciante's ropey but breath-catchingly fraught voice, can make for uncomfortable listening. Nevertheless, there remains an underlying optimism and fondness for unapologetically pretty melodies that imparts a redeeming and lasting warmth.

A cacophonous, fearsome and shadowy delight.

An excellent modern rock record. Dense, intelligent, user-unfriendly and challenging. [12 Mar 2005, p.57]

While debut album 'Faded Seaside Glamour' suffered from a mild dose of ADD, sprawling and meandering into atmospheric noodling between its smatter of acid-in-your-candyfloss pop hits, with 'You See Colours' Gilbert has sharpened his pop stiletto blade.

Fantastic Playroom packs enough innovation in its boosters to reach new rave escape velocity.

The gleeful squelches on ‘Life Of Birds’ might sound like a cheery Game Boy--but, next to the sinister electro-chill of the rest of the record, it’s a nursery rhyme.

It’s far too long at 67 minutes, but that’s the price of free expression.

Sure, this isn’t going to frighten the rabbits just yet, but they do occupy a beguiling space between playful celtic reverie and the pits of drone-rock hell.

Try as he might, though, he can’t cover up his odd but undeniable talents.

If there's a lesson to be learned from 'Making Dens', it's that there's nothing to be feared from pushing the pop envelope that little bit further.

In the end, MDNA is a ridiculously enjoyable romp, but oddly not for the bits that are supposed to be fun. Instead, it's the psychotic, soul-bearing stuff that provides listeners with some of the most visceral stuff she's ever done.

The pit-friendly snarl of ‘I Won’t Be A Casualty’ and ‘You Must Be Damned’ show that these guys are all still the real deal.

The album as a whole saunters and bounces along.

'Life On Other Planets’ is about three-quarters of the great album everyone knows they can make.

A record that's every bit the sonic departure it had to be, it nevertheless recalls its forebear's themes, seeing matters of the heart from a more reflective stance.

Adventurous, forward-looking and luxurious, all at the same time.

Even when easing off the throttle, The Warlocks find ways to blow your mind. [10 Sep 2005, p.66]

Bloodsports finally provides the send-off Suede’s legacy deserved 10 years ago. And, fittingly, it’s due to them thumbing their noses at the notion of growing old gracefully, and making brilliantly daft pop music instead.

On the laidback, spaced-out strength of A New Tide, they’re still as pleasantly beguiling as they were 11 years ago.

Producer Mark Ronson does an astounding job of taking them back to the Fab Five glory days of Rio.

White Denim (now a four-piece) have never been less than terrific, but as they move further from the garage and embrace their real love – early '70s Americana – they defy all probability.

Not be the most inspiring stuff, perhaps, but it is bloody good fun.

This one whips the spliced, spooked melodies and vintage rhythms of Blood into new, distorted shapes that at times recall the dark textures of Prurient's 'Bermuda Drain' or Fever Ray's debut.

In short, there's lo-fi, and then there's this album.

The album had to happen, and for a band that are now ostensibly a touring entity, the measure of its songs is whether you’d want to hear them being played at, say, Field Day this summer. Slipped between their classics, they’ll do just fine.

The result is not unlike Lana Del Rey, but with fun instead of fatalistic gloom.

A record that rather makes one want to have sex. [24 Sep 2005, p.47]

At its best, 'A New Morning' sees Suede show off their vulnerable side again. It won't attract any new admirers but old fans will love them more for it.

Romancing is full of brash, exciting music that's as fun as doing The Big Shop with headphones in.

Will... have you oiling your joints and gearing up for a bit of robobooty gyration. [21 Jan 2006, p.33]

Home Again provides a sumptuously soft place for tired ears to rest.

Perhaps it's the introduction of an outside producer (Per Sunding) for the first time, but they're sounding like a band with something to prove.

Its indie innocence would be too much if it wasn't for the darkened, Lynchian hum that hangs over the record

It's an album that leaves you in no doubt that Odd Future's leader is a rare talent.

Their debut album proper quivers and quakes with the cinematic electronics and emotional abandonment of a soundtrack to Armageddon.

While there are bands who share common ground with Outfit--These New Puritans, Hot Chip, Junior Boys--the appealing niche they’re easing into bodes very well for album three.

Pretty. Odd. is a victory for artistic ambition over cynical careerism, and we should all rejoice in their decision to follow their instincts as opposed to their instructions and actually do something different.

Little Joy might not quite have built a castle in the sky, but they’ve constructed a cosy little corner in our hearts.

‘Say It’ recalls the airy refreshment of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Contra’ and the garage-pop fun of Jonathan Richman’s ‘Rock’N’Roll With The Modern Lovers’.

A glossy, well-produced album of populist anthems with a gangsta undertow that expands his worldview and celebrates success.

It sounds like almost exactly the same record, just not as slap-in-the-face fresh. Still, if it’s more of the same, at least the same is pretty good.

An album of gloomy, almost gothic techno splendour. Beneath its typically sleek, urbane deep house grooves, it beats nervously with foreboding, fear and loathing for humanity as a whole.

'Real Gone' is not by any means easy listening. It is, though, possibly a new type of music. [2 Oct 2004, p.64]

High up the Mumfords scale, checking the boxes for straining vocals, loud and quiet dynamics, thumping bass drums and American gothic lyrics about rivers and literature.

By drinking deep from the coolest records and the hippest poets, Penny succeeds in beginning a new chapter for her band.

Like so much of Gene's fine back catalogue, this is an album about the ways in which love can buckle you under and life can break you down, options closing in like the walls of an Indiana Jones dungeon.

The good news is that 13 is an amalgam of everything you’d want from a new Black Sabbath album featuring three of the original members.

'Reveal' is the slippers, fire and photo album - but this doesn't mean REM have resigned themselves to the placid lethargy of age. It just means that they've found a place to sit back and take stock after a long, colourful journey.

It's the sound of the band mutating from the exciting, mysterious person in the club to the partner you pee in front of and take shopping for carpets. [15 Apr 2006, p.35]

It's at its best on the likes of 'Blackened Blue Eyes', which... is a cousin of their classic 'One To Another.' [8 Apr 2006, p.41]

The moments of dark introspection still linger in the album's secluded corners, but overall, 'A Brighter Beat' is exactly that.

Their sound, which paved the way for the likes of Bloc Party, is still pretty timeless.

Its high points are so charming you're willing to forgive the occasional low one.

They’re still doing it better than anyone else; ravier than Foals, more fun than Fuck Buttons, flexing more post-hardcore muscle than Metronomy. It’s just that we kind of hoped they might surprise us again. That said, if they’re not pushing any new envelopes, Come Down With Me is still satisfying on its own terms.

Yes, PiL have made better records. But it’s nice to know John Lydon still cares enough to rage.

When it works its magic, as on the opening suite of tracks, you will happily sit mesmerised for seven or eight minutes of glimmering sonic twilight and translucently tingling ambi-organic pearly-dewdrops droppery. But when the spell is broken, as on two or three later tunes, when more traditional instrumentation turns up late and dishevelled for a half-hearted cosmic-rock supernova, the effect is rather like gatecrashing some purgatorial soundcheck by a Pink Floyd covers band in, say, 1968. Or possibly Spiritualized.

It navigates a contemporary confluence of influences with such wit, intelligence and passion that (certainly if you like Joy O or Zomby) you will just simply love it.

While a couple of songs--most notably ‘Satisfaction’, a three-note guitar riff spun out for eight-and-a-half minutes--suffer from an acute case of stadium bloat, it’s all done in such a jubilant fashion that it hardly matters.

Cancer Bats are not just ripping it. They're tearing it a new one.

This Is PiL is a relatively edgeless makeover, albeit infused with the progressive spirit of '79, and bolstered by what has always served Lydon well.

On the one hand it's easy to knock; on the other it's difficult to dismiss. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

Gloomy as it is, there are some brilliant flashes of light to be found here.

Even with the rich array of sounds, every track has an impressive immediacy and it's that balance that makes 'Personality...' so uplifting. [22 Jul 2006, p.39]