A 55-minute mess called Curtis, undoubtedly one of this year’s worst releases.

Strawberry Jam, 2007’s strongest album so far.

While another concise and accomplished release from an immensely talented rapper, it fails to really deliver the one thing Kanye's always excelled at: beauty.

It's far and away the finest record Frank Black has produced in a long time, and shows that it's time for the old pretenders to show the new pretenders a thing or two about writing a rock song.

On a Saturday night, in an adrenaline soaked club with a nasty bass--Simian Mobile Disco is amongst the greatest fun you’ll ever have. But on a perfectly round, 16 gram piece of plastic--it ain’t really worth a damn.

There's not a single stand out track, good or bad; and the likes of this album have been released, oh, a million times over, in the past 8 years--it’s not bad, not good, just a drop in a calm, tepid, flat ocean.

Take this album to your heart and cherish it as the sweet, accomplished, and skilfully made, underappreciated little gem that it is

Our Ill Wills surpasses the band’s 2005 debut "Howl Howl Gaff Gaff" because it takes modest chances and expands on the band’s strengths, doing so cordially all the while.

The album isn’t without its faults--its probably too long, and though the production may differ from other albums, it blurs together somewhat over the course of the album. However, there’s one song on this album that renders all such complaints irrelevant--the title track. None Shall Pass is undoubtedly one of the best things Aesop has ever done

From start to finish, the instrumentation and production on We Are Him is immaculate

Unoriginal, haphazardly thrown together and lacking most of what could make it the least bit enjoyable, Places Like This just proves that Architecture in Helsinki is a one trick pony.

Planet Of Ice marks Minus The Bear at the top of their game.

It may all seem a bit lackluster for a band that is known for being impulsive, but toning things down was actually an effective move to make.

Our Love to Admire’s lesser tracks seem to have placed a greater emphasis on texture than melody or even rhythm, which is arguably the band’s most potent weapon. As a whole, though, Sam Fogarino will be satisfied.

Ultimately, Justice is another example of rearranging and reshuffling the devices of the past, but with complete understanding of their effectiveness to a point that sounds fresh.

Although Buffalo Tom will certainly never set the music world aflame with their lyrical content, Three Easy Pieces proves that getting old never sounded so good.

As with most any debut, Marry Me is imperfect and not without clear misfires, but with Clark’s unwavering confidence, the whole record seems clearly aware of this, and these failures still serve a purpose.

Desire is most memorable as a collection of amazing verses. Not only is there not likely to be better rapping this year, Desire is the kind of album that reminds one of why emcees matter and just how much they can do.

Icky Thump is an anti-climatic, vaguely appealing record that unfortunately feels like a retreat from the ballsy piano-based pop eccentricity of Get Behind Me Satan. And that's a shame because going back to basics — at least in this case — feels like surrender.

The album also crammed full of innovative bleeps and squeaks - if you're familiar with Four Tet you'll know the sort of thing--which add more of a unique selling point which in the end isn't all that necessary, because this is a somewhat dazzling album from some great talents, and it has an abundance of riches.

One thing the album does not suffer from is a lack of ideas. In fact, it sounds like the band has crammed each song with sounds, licks, rhythm shifts, basically anything they could come up with, hoping to manufacture inspiration from creativity.

In the end, Memory Almost Full is a reliable, easy record for a man who’s been far too reliable for his own good.

Ambitious, varied and unquestionably fun, this is one of the most joyously unpredictable records of the year.

The sound remains unmistakably Shellac: guttural, sarcastic, and chock-full of anger.

With The Boxer, The National has not only crafted a contender for Album of the Year.

Powered by its fluid and seeming invincibility, Mirrored is almost frighteningly cosmic.

It’s the lyrics that truly standout.

Graham Van Pelt has provided us with us with the blissful whimsy needed to enjoy the dandelion tufts of summer with carefree trust.

Wilco has come up with 50% of a classic album and 50% of a merely decent one. Buy it for the moments you simply won’t hear anywhere else.

Certainly few guitarists playing today evoke the kind of mad intensity on display here, but like the Comets on Fire, the whole package rarely comes off as good as you think it should.

It’s an engaging listen, sure, but sadly Our Earthly Pleasures lacks the euphoric punch to make a listener jump up and down vigourously.

It's a collection of tiny, almost unnoticeable changes that make this record so much more solid than its predecessors.

Wolf sometimes succeeds in emulating Kate Bush’s knack for combining the utterly bizarre with godlike musicianship, but sometimes he falls short.

It kicks ass.

Just because something “sounds” like a classic record, it doesn’t mean it is.

Lovers of schizo-rock will have plenty to revel in.

Not everything dazzles, but it’s truly shocking what does.

There’s a lot of bluster and enthusiasm here but I’m struggling to identify much in the way of true substance.

Cooder’s playing is sometime perfectly suited for the project, but other times seems horribly out of step with Mavis’ intention.

A pretty decent album with a lot of filler.

It’s mostly a collection of decent tunes, polished to a blinding sheen.

A stunning collection of songs, in the grand Brit-pop tradition.

Not quite a soaring rock masterpiece, but certainly a bold move that achieves a variable degree of success. Because of the Times proves that Kings of Leon have the ability to change move into new territory, as so many of their garage peers from five years ago have failed to do.

It’s fair to say if you don’t find anything worthwhile somewhere in this record, you probably just don’t enjoy electronic music.

If you’ve yearned for a band that takes that dramatic indie-rock template but injects a bit of post-rock drama into it, then boy, have you ever come to the right place.

Overall, a fine album, self-released or not.

I’d be surprised if the genre can produce anything much better than this.

This is probably the hardest Low album I’ve heard to appreciate, but it’s certainly worth it.

The songs are flat and unoriginal rock.

His songwriting style remains largely unaltered: eloquent, abstract, stream-of-consciousness rambles, tiny bits of which manage to lodge themselves in your brain. But his talent is most apparent as a composer.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is a triumph that will, like its predecessor, take years to unpeel.

There are sublime moments here, and occasionally the interplay is breathtaking. This is pretty rare however, which leaves the rest of the record sounding just as you’d imagine it would, which isn’t a bad thing, just not at the levels of creativity we’ve come to expect.

The beautiful melodies and harmonies don’t actually go anywhere, they just kind of float in and out of earshot, failing to develop or do anything harmonically interesting.

Picking highlights is futile; the record might run for less than twenty minutes but it burns brightly for the whole duration.

A mature, assured, and beautiful album.

Not as poppy as either Moon Safari or Talkie Walkie, not as out there as 10,000khz Legend, Pocket Symphony instead boasts songs that deserve more attention than previous numbers without performing the prog histrionics often found on their more experimental works.

The music is beautiful, spiritual, intense, fun and, as Lester Bangs once called the Clash, righteous.

While the record isn’t perhaps as instantly impressive as Scale or Multiply, there’s much to enjoy on The Third Hand for an appreciator of the finer points of this thing we call pop music.

If GY!BE is the Tolstoy of the Constellation label, DMST has to be its Chekhov.

Their jokes and concepts and imitations have sunk into their bones and become tools for them to make some of the best music of the year thus far.

As a whole, it leaves you thinking that Bobby Conn could have, if he wanted to, made a seminal underground record.

Heroic, monumental and wondrously sensual.

Great art must provoke or inspire you, and I’m sorry to all the folks out there “awash” in Eluvium’s dreamy “soundscapes” of pure “emotion” and “beauty”, but this record does neither.

This music is intensely free, ecstatic and original. But make no mistake - it’s very, very hard to listen to.

You absolutely, positively cannot go wrong buying this one.

Loney, Noir is a beautiful serving of melancholia, and one of the most interesting and fully realised home recordings I’ve heard in a long time.

Despite some missteps (sadly, a few egregious ones), Some Loud Thunder is successful in displaying the group’s breadth of talent and ideas.

The lack of engaging realism has always been one of the major problems for Of Montreal and the new material goes a long way towards solving it.

It’s grandly impressive and points to potentially greater things in the future.

The Bird and the Bee end up sounding like the soundtrack to some glossy drama about a bunch of over privileged kids living in Notting Hill.

Both immediate and a grower, Boys and Girls in America stands tall as The Hold Steady’s masterwork – full of grace and gritty charm, full heartbreak and raw emotion.

Compelling and emotionally charged.

Endearingly sorrowful without descending into outright misery, Leaders Of The Free World is exactly what we the listeners should expect from a band's third album.

One good single does not a great album make, and unfortunately, the rest of the record becomes pretty tedious, pretty quickly.

Glossily produced, the new album is much less thorny than Marshall’s earlier works, showcasing the artist’s songwriting and soul singing talents.

What’s most apparent on this record is that despite having a fairly eclectic approach to creating a pop song, and cooking up the occasionally psych-y moment to epic-ify the songs, if there’s one emphasis on here, it’s on great melodies.

The overall effect is of an album written and recorded on prozac that never achieves the emotional highs or the lows needed to make this kind of country soul great.

It’s confident and cohesive, but the precision may not be the Gossip’s ideal sound.

Slogging through the whole disc for the few shining moments just isn’t worth it.

It’s not that Diamond has recorded a masterpiece, since quite a good portion of this is decidedly B material. It’s that the good stuff represents Neil at his best, exploiting his considerable knack for melody and structure to the fullest.

Reminiscent without sounding derivative, this is another fine effort from Tan.

The great achievement of Feels is that it throws everything at every track yet never loses sight of the tunes themselves.

It’s definitely going to be divisive, this album – there are some who simply won’t welcome this definitive stride away from the electronic psychedelia that’s been the Boards’ purlieu for so long.

It’s all tons of fun, and is almost guaranteed to cheer you up with its overwhelming chirpiness.

If you like the singles, you won’t be disappointed by The Magic Numbers, but you won’t be astounded either.

A compelling failure.

The excellent-to-annoying song ratio on this album is definitely high. Still, their first record was solid from start to finish, and this one smacks so much more of Lennon/McCartney than Kapranos/McCarthy.

An album you should definitely own, and a band you should definitely watch.

As bouncy as it is insightful, as flashy as it is understated.

Wolf Parade is a great band, and while one will automatically think of Brock when they first hear You Are a Runner I Am My Father’s Son, (or any song featuring the first of the band’s two vocalists, Jason Krug,) many of the album’s strongest moments actually come when they more closely resemble other bands.

This album is nothing short of a miracle.

The result is that most rarefied of things, a Paul album with no throwaways.

Certainly, it feels as though Takk emerges from a group who, despite arriving at the zenith of their capability, has, at least for the time being, run out of things to say.

Frankly, Love Kraft sounds like a different band, which would be fine, if it wasn’t so less loveable and not nearly as bizarre.

In short, it's no Mass Romantic, but it will do quite nicely.

It sounds like good musicians doing a rush job, kind of like Blood on the Tracks without the spellbinding genius.

Nothing ground-breaking, but an all-round good proposition.

As usual the songs are superbly crafted, and very well-executed.