By the end of ‘West End Girl’, it’s clear the relationship in this tale might be over, but Lily Allen’s comeback is just getting started.

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.

It can be a taxing eardrum workout--its beefed-up guitar work (from Walker, Stu Mackenzie and Cook Craig) and jackhammer rhythms (drumming duo Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore) barely let up. But it’s also loads of fun.

The best moments of the album come when the band get candid about their hardest experiences, all the while leaning into the driving, raw rock sound they were known for.

‘More’ is everything you’d want a Pulp album to be, made richer from some lived experience.

Saturn is full of beautiful, intricately unique songs that could never be imitated.

There are far too many children’s voices, snatches of birdsong, glissandi of saccharine strings, and always the half-heard, half-sensed thwack of Frisbee upon social media manager.

It's every ounce of Idlewild's potential fulfilled at once.

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is undoubtedly a good record. It's just that in the Beasties' case, merely being good doesn't seem, well, y'know, good enough.

These songs contain the record's protest element as well as its exemplary musicality: heartbreaking soul choruses, classical samples and '80s rocksteady rhythms.

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.

On ‘An Evening With Silk Sonic’, the magic is in the way that the music moves: the songs are radiant and full of joy, formed from the synergy of two relentlessly creative minds. The album glows with appreciation for the simple but irreplaceable power of working alongside someone you trust and respect like no other — and it sounds as effortless and rewarding as an old friendship.

Although inescapably discomfiting, the music’s complex textures keep the listener snared.

For the most part, Rodrigo has passed the bar she set on that single [‘drivers license’], sharing with us an almost-masterpiece that’s equal parts confident, cool and exhilaratingly real. This is no flash-in-the-pan artist, but one we’ll be living with for years to come.

If all you can see is a tangle of influences then you're standing too close to the picture, and when Skying's visions come into focus, it not only reaffirms that Primary Colours was far from a fluke, but that they could go so much further.

‘As The Love Continues’ is an album that opens impressively but falls short at times during its second half.

Though occasionally too florid, this bass cat’s on the path to majesty.

This is an album to fall in love to, to break up to, to drown sorrows to, or to bounce around to. One-hit wonders? Well, the wonders part is right.

Burial’s success has brought with it imitators, but with this EP he’s outwitted them all by introducing a gloriously widened palate to his music that is both instantly familiar and shockingly unlikely.

Pusha T has managed to elevate his art to new heights, signalling that the artist is nowhere close to being done. Despite being longer than ‘Daytona’, there is succinct preciseness to ‘It’s Almost Dry’ with Pusha’s lyricism, in particular, never left wanting. Alongside the outstanding production, it makes for an instant hip-hop classic.

Eye Contact is a piercing glimpse into an imagined Utopia of infinite possibility, as if they've focused their years of digital psychedelic jamming into a single beam, and fired it beyond a horizon peered at in vain by their peers.

It’s unhinged, but poetic, assured, direct and deviously loveable.

Somehow they’ve retained their pop nous, making for an album that’s unique, but maddeningly all over the place.

Moments of beauty cut through the bleakness.

The devil be praised that, rather than visiting the shrink or brothel to deal with his sexual dysfunction, the Grinderman went to the studio instead.

Despite the rock, you can still dance to it. [Review of U.S. version]

A real-life pop record. Well, not pop in the Girls Aloud sense of the word obviously, more in the drop-dead, fuzz-box brilliant 'Here Comes Your Man' sense. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]

It's genuinely surprising, beautifully wrought and announces TNP as one of the most powerful artistic forces in Britain today.