Not only does it banish the memory of "St Anger" but it’s easily their best work in 17 years.

See, in All Or Nothing, The Subways haven’t just made a great record – they’ve vindicated everyone who still believes in the power and the glory of three chords and distortion pedals.

This is pure Tricky; sometimes at his near-best, sometimes coasting, but always unique.

It’s a sleeping giant of a dancefloor creeper that will be everyone’s favourite new electro album in approximately six months’ time.

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.

At best, his words are boring, silly or totally forgettable.

This album is probably the most solid foundation this quartet have had in 15 years, and it would be a disaster if it wasn’t a springboard for several more.

It’s one of the oddest beauties of the year so far.

They needed to up their innovating significantly but haven’t, leaving All Hope Is Gone above-average.

Their sound is timeworn and instantly familiar: the “set me free” chorus of ‘Streetwalker’ is pure Springsteen, while the honky-tonk of ‘Trashcan’ is classic Stones, made more remarkable by the sandpaper snarl of their frontman.

Is it an improbably good second album? Looks like it.

Simple but sensational.

They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.

The Uglysuit, whose country-prog-post-rock-indie-orchestral ramblings recall, variously, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Elbow, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket and the soundtrack for every emotionally self-indulgent US drama ever made. Yet, hearing the warm country musings of ‘Chicago’ or the aching two-note piano motif of 'And We Became Sunshine’, it’s hard not to settle into the seduction.

This is clever, girl-led guitar pop.

It’s not the definitive work the self-titling might suggest but it’s sure as hell worthy of the name.

It’s Waller’s voice--one that proved too powerful an entity for his former band, Vincent Vincent And The Villains--that stops The Rumble Strips from being mere Dexys copyists.

The album itself follows the thread started on 2005’s "With Teeth," which is to say Reznor’s again favouring songs over soundscapes.

Partie Traumatic is the sexiest, most outrageous outright pop album of ’08 so far, hard not to love and (seemingly) even easier to lay.

So, yes, it’s a tougher collection than the first, lacking the merciless hilarity you’d expect. But it’s also a strong step forward and one that proves they won’t disappear in the changing breeze of fashion.

A fine mix of fantasy and reality, made by a band who never run out of ideas, sung by a singer too smart to fall apart and too excited by rock’n’roll to stop being stupid.

Stay Positive not only confirms The Hold Steady’s status as one of the best rock’n’roll bands in the world, but establishes them as one of its most important too.

For an album called Melodia written by a self-confessed Beatles fanatic who once penned the gorgeous ‘Homesick’ and ‘Winning Days’, actual melodies are rare and most, like ‘Hey’ or the turgid ‘She Is Gone’, sound embryonic at best.

The only criticism is that the lyrics fail to make the impact implied by titles like ‘Feed Me, Jack; Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love’. That aside, this is an unexpected delight.

For the most part, The Stoop is a tuneful if beige Ronson-esque production, set against clever-lyrics-for-stupid-people.

Skeleton's only real weak spot: moments of genuinely inventive instrumentation and musical ambition are in abundance here, but somehow the songs feel less than the sum of their parts.

Sure, there’s a residual whiff of mediocrity here, but Carl’s clearly found something else in himself as part of this new gang, and as Dirty Pretty Things’ music grows in assurance, it appears Pete will remain a solitary man for some time yet.

For now though, this is a very fine record. Not Herculean exactly, but certainly something that NME loves.

While Hercules and Neon Neon took their dance nostalgia and turned it into something smart and new, Sam Sparro too often sounds like it's come straight out of an electro-funk generator--perfect reference points intact, but not developed or built upon or made unique.

There’s no suppressing the fact that, ironically, in loosening up and stretching their wings they’ve become a little more earthbound. Where once they conjured up the sound of, um, glaciers drifting across the surface of the moon, occasionally here it lapses into the sound of a wheelie bin being dragged across HMV’s backyard.

Songs begin fully-formed before spiralling into abstract drum loops punctuated by slicing guitars and vocal drones (‘Mess Your Hair’). At other times, the most perfect moments of Small Faces psychedelia or Velvet Underground basement pop will emerge from the most unlikely formless squalls (‘Sitting’; ‘Heart From Us All’).

Perhaps less time spent constructing solid, unremarkable riffs and more spent testing out the percussive qualities of chunks of dead rodent à la Scott might make this album actually exciting. As it is, it’s just adequate.

Itâ??s in its latter stages that Viva... truly goes stratospheric: on the magnificent orchestral pop title track, where Martin imagines himself as a deposed French king reduced to sweeping the streets; on the bruised â??Yesâ??, like Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode lost in a desert duststorm; on the Satanic blues hymnal of single â??Violet Hillâ??.

Madonna and Perez Hilton may be fans, then, but if you’ve got even a passing interest in actually enjoying a record, don’t buy this one.

The positive to come out of this, however, is that on their third album, rather than hollering “YEEEAAHHH” or “WOOOOAAHHH” or “BAAAAYYBEEEEEE” quite a lot over the top of his bandmates’ still-exciting noise, Harvey now has something to sing about.

Adele is not yet ready to produce an album of sufficient depth to match her voice.

Overall, it’s a brash, shiny, confident record, careering along on a second wind, or as one jaunty number puts it, “the return of inspiration.”

If you look at it as a Grand Guignol of rock cheese, this album is huge fun.

Dr Alex Paterson and co are open for business again, plying their dubby squiggles, electronic bubblebaths and trippy soundbites to the next generation of cosmic travellers. It’s well worth a dip.

This retro sound is no surprise as Echo & The Bunnymen producer Hugh Jones is in control, and he infuses No Fighting In The War Room with a sneering urgency. It works, but only in spurts.

De Martino and White are on an unashamed mission to make perfect pop, but seem to have treaded the path too literally.

If there’s a criticism to be made it’s that the album’s perhaps a little one-note.

The Futureheads have defeated the machine at its own game and made a record that’s every bit as vibrant and vital as their 2004 debut.

What stops The Red Album being a great Weezer album, is--for the first time ever--Cuomo’s invitation to his bandmates to sing and write songs too.

It’s safe to say this album messes with our heads. You could do worse than let it mess with yours.

You have to wade through a lot of plaid-shirted, porch-rocking psychedelia before you get there. The patient pilgrim, though, can look forward to unearthing the widescreen Laurel Canyon-birthed wonder of 'Your Protectors' after one or two plays.

The Bake Sale is way too good for posturing.

However much he hollers, Dave McCabe can’t escape sounding bored, and his often-schoolboy lyrics have begun to actively jar.

In sick times, with extreme politics on the rise and a fright-wigged bad Tory joke in charge of London, this is an album you can retreat to for succour.

Individual tracks can feel forced rather than organically nurtured. It all means that by the time they hit ‘Making Up Numbers’ and ‘Everybody Wants Me’, there are no longer enough new tricks in their bag to hold our attention, and ‘Emergency’ bleeds away without a climax.

No Way Down’s panpipes and ‘Windmill Wedding’s' outro menagerie racket are so gap-year utopian they make you want to ram joss sticks up Air France’s noses. Mighty peculiar.

This is a brilliant album that will no doubt top some ‘best of 2008’ lists, but it’s hard to work out if it’s a one-off or not.

Duffy’s debut is hoovered of personality, principally, because on this evidence, she hasn’t got any.

Just because Brain Thrust Mastery doesn’t attempt to shoehorn some hamfisted social commentary or poverty-ending rhetoric into its 11 tracks doesn’t make it lightweight indie fluff; far from it–-We Are Scientists are serious about having fun.

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.

Despite the occasional flashes of brightness, it sounds like they’ve taken that brief (an homage to the mundanities of love) to heart.

The Last Shadow Puppets is an awesome achievement--a modern reinvigoration of an archaic, dead musical language.

'Trust Me’ works, kinda, by doing R&B without palely imitating US fare: take ‘Hot Stuff’, smooth ’80s dance-pop that makes game use of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’.

Despite No Age’s enforced restrictions, they’ve come up with an album that--in its urgent, accidental variety--is far more exciting than the studied stylistic uniformity of most rock bands’ efforts.

John & Jehn probably imagine themselves as Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie And Clyde, when in reality they’re more like the indie-goth Richard & Judy.

That it’s Portishead’s best album yet is little short of miraculous.

Her UK debut album manages to piece together many of the elements of her chameleon-like career (Robyn is essentially a Best Of collection) and come up with what is the most inventive pop album you’ll hear all year.

So yes, a solid enough album by the standards of most pop tarts, but from the mistress of innovation? Pretty mediocre.

An eclectic album for Right Now, which shows what it means to be a modern pop star, and reveals a glittery crazy-paved path towards a brave new musical future.

If they want to be treated like adults they’ll have to release something, y’know, gooder.

The Seldom Seen Kid is a stunning record, a career-best from a band whose consistency has seldom been matched by any British indie band this decade.

This album may be svelte, but it’s far from slight.

Somehow, even after you know all the punchlines, the tunes are solid enough to still bear pressing ‘repeat’.

A strident, self-assured album.

Konk is the sound of a band in disarray, unsuccessfully attempting to hold things together.

That this debut tries for so much and almost achieves it all is to be applauded. However, in trying to run before they can walk, DIOYY have missed out on making the classic this could have been.

The hardcore will find ‘Live In Liverpool’ too light while new converts would be better off delving into the treasure trove of old albums.

Even if Prince, Madonna, Paul Weller, Shane MacGowan, Ice-T and Michael Jackson got together to form a freakish supergroup, they’d struggle to make an album containing as much vitality, humour and invention as Cave and his wizened cronies have.

Mountain Battles is both a joyfully lived-in and boundary-free album.

Their debut sounds sleek and exhilarating, although Foals seem cautious about completely breaking out of the punk-funk strictures that have confined them so far.

St Jude is conclusive proof they have far more interesting things to say when they let the tunes do the talking.

It is, however, undoubtedly a collection of many good songs. From start to finish, it’s a relentlessly difficult listen, and one that suffers from little in the way of dynamics or variety of tone.

There’s a fine line between blues authenticity and pub-rock tedium and, accordingly, Attack & Release often falls victim to parody.

Accelerate is by some considerable distance REM’s best and most cohesive album since Berry left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling.

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.

A notable progression from the foursome, and plenty of huge riffs to enjoy at the summer festivals.

Of all the dead genres, you’d think it would be hard to credibly reinvent blaxplotation-era soul, but The Heavy (who, along with Pop Levi, are heading up Ninja Tunes’ new imprint Counter Records) pull it off explosively well.

They’ve upset people’s expectations and made a handful of very good pop songs, but Twenty One ultimately just proves that they’re as unpredictable as they ever were.

Red is more a poor parody of the genre than a booty shaker.

Get Awkward is relentless, riotous and raw.

Reality Check stands as a fun, frank and startlingly perceptive debut that surprises for all the right reasons.

The Odd Couple contains few hints about where the pair will go next. For now, let’s revel in the fact that soul music hasn’t sounded this fresh and downright freaky for a quarter of a century.

It is also, perhaps more importantly, an album absolutely overloaded with spine-tingling, pulse-quickening electro noises.

Though it’s not entirely without precedent, there’s still more than enough innovation here to mark Visiter out as one of the summer’s must-have releases.

There are some particularly heady flavours here to be sure, some blended well, others not.

At their best the Young Knives can write as good a pop song as anyone in the country, but this is a disappointing second effort ironically weighed down by the English eccentricities that once helped them stand out from the pack.

What gives Saturnalia its real kick is the way it emotionally engages.

There are ideas here that could have been developed into a stunning 10-track album. Unfortunately, Quaristice contains 20 ‘tunes’, many of them elusively experimental ear-tormenters.

A strange, lovely trip.

Seventh Tree is bound to ruffle a few electro-feathered fans, but there’s no denying it’s a venture that sets the pair into new experimental territory.

Legrand’s nebulous vocals may have the effect of casino music at times, but we’re reeled into a settling autumnal haze.

The Raveonettes are super-cool Scandinavian noise-rockers and they’ve shored Lust Lust Lust in that turmoil to create their most engrossing album to date.