This is hot.

It feels like a bunch of friends jamming on a farm, even if there are still a few electronica elements here and there.

Think of it as avant-garde composer John Cage trying his hand at disco and getting it right.

A floundering mess that bores you to tears.

There's still some banjo-pickin' and fiddle-playing, but The Long Way's clean, soft-rockin' vibe is striking in contrast to the traditional bluegrassy leanings of 2002's Home.

Though you might have pangs for United's enjoyable weirdness, It's Never Been Like That is serious fun.

The songs are still full of lush guitars and dense, clattering percussion, but offer the added bonus of being more grandiose and emotional.

Broken Boy Soldiers won't reverse global warming, but it certainly tops Get Behind Me Satan for rockin' entertainment.

The main attraction is still Baird's and Weeks's haunting voices, which turn a risky experiment into a genre-defining classic.

Once you get past the placid bit at the beginning, it's straight into the relentlessly pummelling assault we've come to love and expect from the mighty Japanese trio, and Pink's wallop-per-second rate puts it in a class with Heavy Rocks at the top of the Boris heap.

The really exciting news is that [Sexsmith] actually takes some vocal risks – and sounds like he's having fun doing it.

It's a disappointing underachievement.

A courageous statement that should resonate far and wide.

It's too bad hackneyed spider-woman metaphors and non-specific allusions to 'regret' don't match BHP's level of sonic sophistication.

Sounds like one big, happy family get-together.

Brutally beautiful.

Somewhat self-indulgent, it's remarkably listenable considering some of the "instruments" used.

Frusciante's guitar work... almost single-handedly saves the project, but not quite.

Eno definitely does imbue the mix with some sonically compelling elements, washing songs through some darker-than-usual moods.

Unfortunately, singer Gary Lightbody can't resist playing it safe. He slides comfortably back into the stadium-size ballads and mushy MOR formulas that scored on their million-seller, Final Straw.

The artful and relatable way Dawson writes about real life makes each song like a little individually wrapped gift.

The Oslo five-piece flirt with overindulging their feedback fetish... but avoid wankery by reining in the songs just before boredom sets in.

This is a groovy record from start to finish, with no major standout fantastic song and nothing that sucks.

At last, everything Escovedo does well is represented on a single disc.

They easily incorporate traditional folk elements like Nick Drake with contemporary indie rock and cinematic string arrangements that often soar above many of their songs' humble openings.

A lilting acoustic-y record with ethereal leanings, plenty of canned, overproduced studio gloss and occasional dangerous forays into mild rock.

Not surprisingly, the resulting cameo-plugged record sounds more like a G-Unit album than an Infamous one.

While it's hard to question their motives and integrity, Avocado fails to deliver the grand statement we might expect.

10,000 Days sounds messy and poorly paced.

The shelf life of this stuff can be fleeting (ask the Darkness), but for now it sounds pretty good.

While the rest of the band have proven they can write solid music, it's singer Geoff Rickly who presents the biggest problem, and that's mostly because the man simply cannot tone down his over-emoting.

It's clear that Skinner has worked on his flow a lot. He sounds less loosely conversational and more bound to the rhythm.

The gusto with which Springsteen delivers the many verses of Froggie Went A-Courtin' leaves me wondering if the millionaire everyman is simply unaware that his country is at war.

Although Harris does her best with some tasteful harmonies to save the session from the usual Knopfler over-egging, there's only so much she can do.

TBS's main problem is that they write precisely two kinds of songs: energetic pop rock with whiny vocals, and midtempo power rock, again with whiny vocals.

A likeable, though inconsistent, record.

Two-thirds of the songs fail to cohere.

Rather than try to duplicate the new-wavy sounds of their current output, the trio smartly keep the sound consistently raw, and lead singer Kelly Jones hasn't sounded this inspired or dangerous since 97's Word Gets Around.

Many of the familiar signifiers are gone, yet their well crafted and characteristically tuneful compostions still have a recognizable Calexico feel.

Amazingly, though Elan Vital easily could've become their resounding Sandinista flop, Zollo's clean vocals, knife-sharp melodies and subtle politically charged songwriting help secure its nomination as Pretty Girls' London Calling.

It's more exciting than most everything made by glitch gurus on their laptops today.

Dreamy and hypnotic, alternating between sparse and lush, these tunes' tempos tend to stay down, and things can get pretty stagnant, but there's a great sense of ambience and mood.

Actually, that's the vibe of the whole album: retro mid-90s LL.

Sound The Alarm shows that while they're still very much an acquired taste, these guys are much more capable than many would have liked to think.

The result still falls within the confines of lilting indie pop but this time goes beyond cutesy pastiche.

Mostly, though, it's the usual whining about his tortured life as as a once-celebrated pop star and being unloved in a harsh world, but with fewer droll song titles and clever couplets.

Surprisingly impressive.

Molko still manages to carry songs with his affected, nasal delivery as the band provides a steady backbone.

RJ puts aside his cinematic loops to deliver his roughest and toughest beats, over which Blueprint spits the party and bullshit blues like a man watching his most celebrated contempories fiddle with iced-out jewellery while their country burns before their eyes.

Some nice instrumentation, with mandolin and other strings makes for an odd juxtaposition with the stunningly inane lyrics.

While sometimes dreamy and ethereal, South are able to bridge quieter moments with danceable, gloomy pop – simply speaking, a great achievement.

While the bouncy good-time foolery is charming enough in small doses, Islands' relentlessly giddy glee gets annoying awfully fast.

Aside from a couple tracks with standout hooks (Wild Gardens, The Better Plan), their songs are forgettable.

Every song has a lovely flow, with a steady cadence and easy accessibility that no fan of poppy indie rock will want to do without.

It's time to move some units, so quirky's out and tunefulness is in.

This is Ghostface's best album.

His voice is bland and has little variety.

While Lerche could pull off Bacharach's breezy lounge swinger persona, he lacks the pipes, the pain and the maturity to deliver the smooth retro romanticism these jazz-inflected ballads require.

With Subtitulo, Josh Rouse may just prove to be the missing link between Jack Johnson and Conor Oberst.

There's nothing on 3121 that Prince hasn't done better before.

These guys are passionate about what they're doing.

The album is absurd, confusing (the random sequencing can be a bitch if you're trying to follow individual plots), hilarious (only Merritt could pen a libretto titled What A Fucking Lovely Day!) and bloody brilliant.

Even if his singing never touches Damon Albarn's, he seems confident in his voice, using his shortcomings to his advantage to burn through 13 tracks inspired by a passion for late-70s Brit punk.

The super-synthetic ethos of the album starts to rub against your skin; the band's retro dance-music collage feels less like innovative referencing and more like flat pastiche, and the simplistic little-girl lyrics add nothing.

These tunes tend to meander and often feel like they should be going somewhere we never get to. But a lot of it is very lovely.

It appears that the recording regime involved in focusing on a series of 7-inch singles rather than a new album has brought back some of the old creative spark.

Their bleakest set of songs ever.

A beautifully tense and thoughtful record.

Case's overzealous self-production means there are layers upon layers to every track, which sometimes works to her detriment.

The professionalism behind these country-lite treatments keeps the band from sounding as relaxed and spontaneous as they apparently do live.

It's obvious Morrison was going for an early-50s throwback vibe, complete with oohing chorus singers and a forthright pedal steel twang, but it comes off more like a western-exotica caricature than the genuine article.

Admittedly, the whiny Martsch-inspired delivery of singer dude Christian Hjelm will be a turnoff for some, but the Figurines' compositional skill shows real promise, and their endearing enthusiasm should win them many fans over here.

Demented, sloppy, brilliant, and above all a great way to spend three-quarters of an hour.

Nine Black Alps are definitely louder and more aggressive than many of their Britrock counterparts, but that's really nothing to boast about.

Miller's compositions are typically well crafted and slightly artier than what you'd hear on, say, a Josh Groban disc, but this isn't too far off that sort of pouty boy bellowing.

Their riff-heavy songs are brashly delivered – favouring attitude over technique – but it's Turner's keenly observed vignettes of bored text-messaging teens that really connect.

While his tortured, guttural delivery comes off as the lunatic ramblings of an abusive boyfriend, the actual lyrical meat of The Last Romance rings with the uncomfortable, ugly truth of facing your hungover self in the mirror the morning after a one-night stand.

Uniformly mediocre.... It leads one to assume he's either lost the ability to discern the padding from the profound or he just didn't give a shit.

While the sheer density of Bejar's writing can be overwhelming, Destroyer's Rubies is, on a musical level, the most 'accessible' disc he's released in years.

The record is rife with brow-raising darts and the mindblowing beats to match, outstripping the last two Dilated records and threatening the alignment of your neck vertebrae in the process.

It didn't take long to turn the novel clank and grind of Kinshasa junkyard techno assault unit Konono No. 1 into an easy-to-use formula with enormous money-making potential.

Live fails to replicate the experience of seeing Eels.

A shockingly good batch of rock, pop and punk tunes.

Occasionally, the band comes close to falling back into old habits, but with their new enthusiasm for sounding nothing like they used to, they've successfully created an album's worth of intelligent music for the Warped crowd.

While Orton has a tendency to mimic her own melodies, she explores jazz structures here in engaging, exciting ways, and the indigent heartland iconography of her lyrics is beautiful without being cloying.

The quality of the compositions is consistent and the album has an overall stylistic coherence that makes the Minus Five sound very much like a real band. Now, if he could only figure out how to make it rock, he'd be onto something.

It's Collett's ability to lyrically and aurally crystallize moments in time that makes this album such a delight.

The writing here is sharp and stunning, but the real difference between this and other Cat Power discs is that The Greatest has room to breathe.

At its best, The Elected offers moments of quirky intrigue – a brassy horn here, a hidden banjo there – reminiscent of the Long Winters' chamber-pop, but in general it's a bit too safe.

She benefits from solid production by Saddle Creek staple Mike Mogis, who tweaks her retro sound with synths and electronic blips, but it's the stark M. Ward-produced tracks that, while more traditional, showcase the Dolly Parton potential in Lewis's voice.

Unbearably bland.

GBV fans should definitely check this one out – there's a lot to like.

At times, Cash nails the knife-edge of hurt and love so adeptly, you feel like you're intruding on too-personal confessions.

Long-time fans might be a bit weirded out by the shift, but a few seconds hearing Ditto channel Peggy Lee on the smoky torch burner Coal To Diamonds should assuage their fears.

P.O.D.'s new album sounds exactly like all their other ones.

So while Yellowcard's hearts may be in the right place, it's clear they're simply incapable of realizing this clumsy faux magnum opus.

A perfectly enjoyable and to-the-point album that leans heavily on influences like the Cure and My Bloody Valentine.

Their beats and rhymes reflect none of the punchliney fun they used to have.