Unfortunately, there are none of the ridiculous disses, insane freestyles or wacky interludes that make real mixtapes entertaining.

Jay proves that, yes, he really has nothing more to say except to state the fact that he's back.

The songs here are saturated with detail: ornate swirls of neoclassical lyrics, melodies that slither, then loop in on themselves, layers of sonic textures and feral noises. And too often, tunes with good bones cave in under that weight.

Love may not be a full-on revolutionary take on the Beatles catalogue, but it does bring back some of the most awesome material ever to come out of a recording studio.

Snoop plays to his storytelling strength, crafting a record to show he still cares about the music.

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.

While they may never reach the heights of their Source Tags & Codes, the band can still push boundaries.

Unbelievably, the beats on Doctor's Advocate out-bang those on The Documentary, and the Game breathes compelling detail into the severe persona he established on his debut.

It's good enough to impress fans of David Gray and Coldplay.

That comedy gap between concept and finished product appears to be par for the course with Black's ventures.

Fans of Anne Briggs and Vashti Bunyan will find a lot to love here.

She catchily sends up herself, her Britishness and the unlikelihood of her (likely) stardom.

Wrist is yet another excellent record from mainstream hard rock's only real hope.

She's bewildering.

It's apparent Nelson doesn't share Adams's enthusiasm for the Fleetwood Mac and Grateful Dead numbers, but he's at home with Gram Parsons's $1,000 Wedding and Leonard Cohen's well-covered Hallelujah.

It's the mini-opera that moves spryly compared to the proper rock album half.

This is a musical just waiting to be staged.

His flow is generic and instantly forgettable and his lyrics are trite, inconsequential and full of self-importance.

Legend's lounge-track sentimentality often spills into schmaltzed-out Streisand-on-Broadway territory.

They've succeeded at making a good big-dumb-rock record, but you get the sense they didn't mean for it to be quite this dumb.

It's clear Sparta have finally come into their own.

It may not be the best introduction to the band, but it's a must-have for hardcore fans of Conor Oberst's vocal discordance and stripped-down musical tantrums.

One of the more interesting – and fun – cover albums out there.

Unfortunately, unlike Deerhoof's complex sonic and logical experiments, the Curtains' material feels too spare, too underdeveloped, less like well-honed songs than fledgling ideas that'd benefit from the input of additional bandmates.

After 16 songs ranging from electro-country to the parody-heavy We're The Pet Shop Boys and various quasi-conversational raps à la the Streets' Mike Skinner about losing his virginity, I felt the man should rope things in.

Most of this over-egged sissy-boy schlock would make James Blunt wince.

While World Waits isn't lacklustre in any way, fans of Frog Queen may be disappointed.

If you haven't encountered Jenkinson's strange world of jazz-fusion-hardcore before, this is a decent starting point, and if you're more into the jazz funk than the digital hardcore, this is one of his less abrasive outings.