Trouble is, as grown up and grouchy as Sum 41 may have become (on record, if not in Strokes-mocking video), they sure aint no Fugazi.

The singer's curious persona is mirrored by the musical pyrotechnics, Queen meets Rage Against The Machine in a metal production of Godspell!, an inventiveness and fury that makes their MTV contemporaries look as dynamic as lard models of Linkin Park.

Imagine a two-piece BRMC if they'd grown up in a sub-zero landscape in Denmark where the only cultural sign-posts are trashy sado-pulp novels, distorted Velvets bootlegs and endless re-runs of Marlon Brando in classic biker-flick 'The Wild One'.

Having already redefined garage last time around, he's conjured up an album equal parts R Kelly, Ali G and Terence Trent D' Arby, which will only send him further into the stratosphere.

Easily as good as the last Chemicals album and often snapping at the heels of Daft Punk's 'Discovery', 'Machine Says Yes' is as broad in its retro reference as it is happy to revel in the futuristic.

At least his grimmer outlook has inspired some equally raw music.

Sadly, it seems that with 'Audioslave' these people who were involved in some very exciting rock records in the 1990s, now seem happy to be making some bad ones from the 1970s.

Those waiting for another record as challenging as 'Vitalogy' will be left disappointed. But 'Riot Act' is the sound of a band entering a powerful middle-age. They still deserve your attention.

'Under Construction' is stuck all over with shocks and surprises, more than enough to keep the rogue-scientist glitchmasters who mutated 'Get Ur Freak On' in mischief for months.

Put it this way - if you don't loathe the likes of Starsailor and Travis with every fibre of your being then there's absolutely no fucking chance whatsobleedingever that you'll like Ikara Colt.

Jay-Z has upped the commercial rap ante once again.

As uncharismatic as its creator, it's certainly boring, but no more so than anything Richard Ashcroft has come up with.

'We Are Science' has a spooky cinematic scope with a dubbed-up, electronic gospel feel for our times.

If he still sounds semi-conscious half the time, so be it. Three albums into his misleading career and Damon Gough, it seems, can still write strange, life-affirming pop music in his sleep.

Complete and utter filth from start to finish, and that's as high a compliment as we can bestow on an album.

Timberlake, having failed to imprint his personality on 'Justified', simply stands or falls on the strength of the songs. Luckily for him, half a dozen of them - mainly Timbaland's - are brilliant.

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.

Eminem's urgent radio hit 'Lose Yourself', you already know. It's excellent.... The two other new Eminem tracks '8 Mile' and 'Rabbit Run' are on the money, too, the latter being the shortest, shoutiest thing he's ever done. Elsewhere, things get more patchy.

It looks like a Mariah Carey album, it sounds like a Mariah Carey album.

'Kiss...' operates on a level of perversity, honesty and originality that blows most bands out of the water.

Everything they had, they still have - but now every note is ten times more focused and urgent.

By turns dark, funny and heartbreaking, the songs on 'Original Pirate Material' are snapshots of ordinary life as a young midlands resident, set to innovative two-step production.

The music is a spectral combination of bleepy 80s synths, lightly crunching backbeats and dreamy vocals; the mood is pure post-clubbing afterglow, in bed with your loved one, in some snowbound Ikea log cabin.

An impressive consolidation rather than a startling revelation.

As before, attempts to explore London's seedy underbelly verge on hamfisted and voyeuristic. But, again as before, Soft Cell really flourish with Marc's relationship horror stories, which happens on two songs.

Despite all this seemingly new wave-laden, impeccably cool, retrograde influence, 'Make Up The Break Down' is indisputably now.

It's ace, like you imagine Madonna would've sounded if the records had matched the raunch of her videos/concerts/multimedia-experiments.

Even if this is business as usual for Xzibit, then at least business is good.