It’s funny, melancholy, randy, touching, disgusting and deeply, deeply strange. It will baffle many--but at 17 tracks and 70 minutes, it has the feel of a magnum opus.

Nelson’s [voice] still boasts a lightness of touch. He might be a soulful elder statesman, but there’s a perkiness to his version of cult outlaw songwriter Billy Joe Shaver’s 1981 track ‘We Are The Cowboys’, which celebrates the multiculturalism of the American cowboy.

Teasing the limits of pleasure and agony, 'Black Foliage' is a messy, irritating listen. But it's worth persevering just for those odd moments of gorgeousness.

Each track is a treat - a sensible, lo-cholesterol treat, maybe, but still packed with oddly addictive rhymes and beats.

Ignore the flippant title, there’s material on ‘The Rest’ that could have fought hard for space on their debut album.

'Capture/Release' is fresh, unique, original even; its oh-so-contemporary reference points are revisited with such punk-rock vivacity and hell-for-charity-shop-leather vigour that they might be the first band you’d actually believe when they roll out the old "no, honestly, we were doing this long before we’d even heard of Bloc Party".

Right up to the cover of Mud’s ‘Lonely This Christmas’ done as though it’s East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’, this is a Christmas riot.

Guy Garvey’s solo debut follows the classic pattern--he’s off to play trad-based songs that “don’t fit the Elbow template” with his mates from I Am Kloot (bassist Pete Jobson) and The Whip (guitarist Nathan Sudders), don’t wait up. But as it reels out the old lines it proves quite the charmer.

It would be alright if they believed this stuff, but it's all done with the detached sneer beloved of hipsters worldwide. They're faux-hippies, not real ones.

A bold step forward that sees DMA’s coming into their own, it’s a two-fingered salute to anyone that sneers at the idea of trying something new.

None of which is to say it’s a bad album, just a lightweight one.

That surprising lack of offensiveness, though, isn't replaced with anything to particularly excite, leaving it a tasteful aural curtain of an album without much of a view beyond.

‘Culture III’ is more focused than its exhausting 24-track-long predecessor, but a stricter edit here could’ve enhanced the experience even further.

At six tracks it’s a slight but solid return.

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

If anything, on the likes of ‘Warsaw’ and ‘Cards To Your Heart’, it gets too dark, but there’s enough funk in their trunk to ensure that the coffee table crowd won’t be too terrified.

In summary then, better than most if you like that sort of thing.

"Both Ways Open Jaws" is tribal, prickly and wickedly playful.

What White has done with ‘Fear Of The Dawn’, in fact, is row his experimental tendencies back a little, as if to meet the desires of his audience halfway. Unfortunately, that can make large chunks of the ensuing record a confused and purposeless mess.

Despite the abundance of male influence on the record, from ex-boyfriend to songwriters to producers to mentors, Rihanna makes the sound her own, and fights back.

To be able to write with universality is the mark of a songwriter’s ambition growing, and here Mac DeMarco is transitioning into one of the best around.

No post-nu-metal. No nu-post-hardcore. Just a solid, honest, rock album.

Eitzel does doomed introspection with more wit than the average bear, however, and more tunefully, too.

As intelligent, bittersweet, angular stuff, whether it’s alt.rock, guitar-pop, or even emo is immaterial. Labels be damned - just call it great music.

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.

Muse have made a ridiculous, overblown, ambitious and utterly brilliant album, with more thrills than their previous three put together.

If 'Hats Off...' is slightly too much, too soon, they've still done enough to impress.

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.