We worry on your {Marnie's] behalf about carpal tunnel syndrome, in fact. Until then, permit us to bug out to the controlled chaos.

You feel the need for something other than Bryan's croon, and it isn't there.

Warpaint's is a different darkness, not delighting in splendour or show, but in deftly exploring a bleak internal, romantically bereft landscape.

If there's one thing that this Arizonan four-piece have been masters of since their inception in the early '90s, it's consistently possessing the over-bearing sentimentality of a teenage girl. Their seventh studio album certainly doesn't veer very far from their past emotional sensibilities.

In revisiting the production of her '80s records she paradoxically produces something that sounds timeless.

There's two sides to Nedry. One is given to taking faintly voguish reference points, lopping off the sharp edges and smoothing out the kinks. It's pretty, but weirdly bloodless....The other is less polite....Message to the band: ignore your nicer side in future.

Not a bad record then, but one that's debased by the disappointment of one of the UK's bright hip-hop hopes selling soul rather than surprises.

Richard Paul Ashcroft has assembled that most ruggedly authentic of musical backings, a team of LA session players, and walked them through all of his most anodyne default settings, at a deadeningly flat pace.

He's made one of the best British albums of the year--that's why he should be feted.

Similarities to She And Him abound, but minus Zooey's showtune splendour, the vulnerability in Caitlin's voice chimes as true as the clink of a quarter in an old jukebox.

It's an impressive attempt to drag folk music out of the hayloft and onto the dancefloor and it marks the emergence of a smart, sincere and talented new pop star.

Throw in the tinny synth on 'Fish In The Sky' and this album couldn't get any more late-'70s if it tried. If it was a TV programme, it'd be Starsky & Hutch--a dubious honour to say the least.

It is pleasant, and largely forgettable.

The man who made the 's 'Dare'--can't add enough bells and whistles to stop the tunes from sounding like they've been faxed over from one of Stock & Aitken's duller days at the office.

For two men famed as political firebrands, Robert Wyatt and Israeli anti-Zionist and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon certainly make a beautiful noise together.

Ultimately, too many of these tunes are rehearsal room grooves in search of a hook.

Guilty of knocking underdeveloped material out one minute and trying to be too clever the next, It's What I'm Thinking... is surely the most focused and mature record of his career.

A record of beauty and balance, Swanlights cements Hegarty as the transgender: artsy and challenging enough for the Guardian chin-strokers, but with enough hushed melodic wallop to seduce all-comers.

A brutally romantic record.

It feels like the ravishing opium dream of a Victorian gentleman explorer, trying to recreate the exoticism of a long trip abroad through a prolonged period of narcosis.

Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.

It's only on 'Ghetto Stars' when that ominous whisper comes to the fore, that Mixed Race excites, and a cascade of strings that don't so much make us yearn for past glories as wonder what Tricky thinks he has left to prove.

It's far from bad, but if you're still waiting for a Clinic record as great as the utterly seminal Internal Wrangler, keep waiting, and probably don't hold your breath.

Comparisons to SK will doubtless arise but the production here is sparser, with more focus on intricate oddities.

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.

Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.

For all its occasional lack of bite and drama, Halcyon Digest's tender, transgressive pop proves a fine and focused addition to a uniquely haunting body of work. Cherish it like you would a phantom limb.

No Age will never be legit superstars, but they have a keen and loyal fanbase, something cherishable in a year likely to be paradoxically remembered for forgettable chancers.