'Trust' is a reaffirmation of far more than a vow of silence: it's a commitment to beauty that precious few modern bands capture.

A brazen, heartwarming, classic '70s bardic rock album, spirited enough to compete with and instruct the Ashcrofts and Gallaghers.

Fans of the Mancunian mood sculptor will see this lavishly packaged collection as the latest step in securing Bazza's reputation as the North West's sardonic answer to Barry White.

The music here might be gimmick-free, but it's imbued with a dark sense of confidence.

Their world - sexual, drug-filled, and occasionally paranoid - has become progressively darker, and as such we find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

Despite the mutant promise of the title, 'Eve-Olution' is hardly startling. Yet as proof that mainstream hip-hop can still learn new tricks, it's a success.

It's an album of outstanding natural beauty, an organic, wholesome work.

It is one thing to make a clever record, it is quite another to make a clever record that could pass for a pop album, and which oozes humanity while simultaneously delivering a perfect snapshot of modern British life.

What saves this record from being another wallow in the misery of post-fame existence is the music.... 'We Love Life' is a grandiose, symphonic affair buoyed by succinct orchestration and white-light choral interludes.

Nailed to the dancefloor by Flea-like bassist Pat Nature, and dragged up to date by hip-hop beats and random electronica, musically Liars are taut as a tightrope.

Interpol temper this album with real atmospheric sadness: the guitar sunspots that flare through 'Untitled'; the echo and ache of 'Leif Erikson'; the way the magnificent 'NYC' brings on the dancing horses for a slow sad waltz through the city's sickness; the snap-shut metal box clang of 'Obstacle 1'.

Few bands could explore motherhood and terrorism without making you want to shoot them: Corin Tucker's electric-shock voice and the adrenal guitars make them as essential pop topics as schoolyard crushes and backstreet drugs.

FSOL fans may not be impressed. But for connoiseurs of sprawling, loony progtronica, this other-worldly masterpiece is so far out you need a telescope to see it.

In her music, as in her life, everything revolves around sex - but unseemly as it is for a woman of a certain age to frug bawdily alongside Damon Albarn, Marianne gets away with it.

Untrustworthy, confused, touching and idiotically ambitious; hard work that, undoubtedly, repays the effort.

Like so much of Gene's fine back catalogue, this is an album about the ways in which love can buckle you under and life can break you down, options closing in like the walls of an Indiana Jones dungeon.

Fact is, if you know enough about Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays to want to watch the movie, you probably own everything on this record already.

The immaculately chiselled 'Daybreaker' is so beautiful and distant that it almost isn't there at all.

They've just made the best rock album since Andrew WK's 'I Get Wet'.

When it works, the results are astounding.

Too many of the 15 tracks are padding and the entire record is neutered by a production that brushes everything up to a mediocre gloss.

Burke delivers as pure and proper a record as you'll hear all year. If you've ever laughed or cried, you need to hear this.

They’re a shaggy-haired, surf’s up pop band and painfully vulnerable all at the same time.

'Yoshimi...' sets yet another benchmark.

It’s actually Dire Straits gone trip-hop and everyone involved... should be brutally beaten to death with a tray of Ferrero Rocher.

By god is it ever long (it's 16 tracks), but on the whole it showcases enough of what makes the Chili Peppers a very good rock group – chief among these are John Frusciante's excellent, inventive guitar playing, and the fact that it is with tremendous conviction that Anthony Kiedis belts out even the most ridiculous words.

As dated as it undoubtedly is, it still makes for a pleasant enough ride.

No acoustic stinkers. No Live And Unrehearsed At K-ROQ radio sessions. No ropy early demos. No remixes. Just Green Day, playing solid, dependable, familiar idiot-savant punk-rock.