He's back on his own terms, those of the earnest hyper-intelligent bookworm who won the plaudits of Jay-Z and 50 Cent, and sounding a lot more comfortable, with 'Hostile Gospel' and 'Say Something' re-staking a claim for the hip hop high ground over beats that are soulful and sonically coherent.

It doesn't stray too far from their original template but it is focused and involving.

She writes everything, and has a feel for timeless songwriting that means she can cover Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' live, and it works.

Straight out of Edmonton, Alberta, fast-talking MC Rollie Pemberton's impeccable second album confirms that the history of Canadian electro did not end with Neil Young's Trans.

The closer you listen to the jazzy guitars, Beatles touches and easy, shuffling rhythms ... the more it transpires that Tweedy is simply allowing the songs sufficient room to speak up for themselves.

As standout lead single 'American Boy' (on which she raps with West) shows, this could be one of the most unlikely comebacks of 2008.

The Senegalese seer is joined by a polyglot cast: the future's calling.

Lyrically absurd, musically turbo-fuelled.

From the full-on Nintendo Wii panic-attack of 'Alice Practice' to the breezy, off-kilter electro-pop of 'Crimewave' and 'Air War', this sumptuously squelchy 16-track debut already feels like a Greatest Hits.

West produces the bulk again on Finding Forever, and it's his skill in embellishing a sample and his unerring eye for a soulful hook that is consistently bringing the best out of his mentor-turned-protege.

While Narrow Stairs may scale down the melody-assaults of previous efforts, with their fresh groove and whiff of rebellion, Death Cab announce themselves as genuine rock stars.

The gear changes on this particular autobahn are swift and sometimes a little clunky.

Convening at the point where Iron and Wine meet Panda Bear, it's dreamy and chock-full of ideas.

The music's Pharrell Williams-assisted dancefloor pop; the words entirely Shakira's. Preposterously brilliant.

The loose, spontaneous nature of the exercise means there's the odd dud, but there are far more hits than misses. The result? A dead concept is temporarily revived.

[It has] an unexpected depth, unity and resonance.

The third album by Polar Bear suggests that this is a band running out of ideas.

All shuffling beats and pub wisdom, it's same again for Brown's latest.

The Fife songsmith breathes new life into traditional songs cribbed from versions by the likes of Anne Briggs and Nic Jones.

Skins have been shed, batteries recharged and the traditionally difficult second album dashed out with apparent ease.

The Hardest Way... is twice as good as any album about the price of celebrity has a right to be.

Complex, melodramatic, ambitious, vain, beautiful and frequently magnificent - Release the Stars may not yield many chart hits, but it feels like an album that will endure.

It's been four long years since the Banshees' last live release. But now we have a CD of brand new material from the high priestess of punk herself. And she doesn't disappoint.

It starts out blustery and familiar, before gradually revealing an unexpected and almost lovable sense of vulnerability.

On his 24th album, Springsteen reaches for the simple power and unabashed romanticism of early pop.

Their most rigorously conceived and focused [album] for years.

That it lacks any obvious singles hardly seems to matter. Viva La Vida is an assured return that should go some way to restoring Coldplays wilted critical stock.

Hurricane shatters the illusion, and flattens the force of nature known as Grace Jones into something quite humdrum.

Barat does a great job of revitalising the ramshackle thrills that the Libertines did all too briefly so well.

This Is Alphabeat feels like the story of a band having embarked on an ambitious experiment in classic pop, having pulled it off, and having turned in something of a modern pop masterpiece to boot.

Vernon is great at seizing on something simple and spinning it out to reveal its innner beauty and this EP shows that there's more than just heartbreak to the 27-year-old. The title track, however, does sound like something by Coldplay.

While the rhymes are frustratingly clunky at times ('What came first, the Chicken Nugget or the Egg McMuffin?'), her charisma ensures the result is rarely less than compelling.

Their debut is built from old Chapterhouse records.

Soul is about voice and music that connects the church and the bedroom, with elegance and earthiness. And, by that crucial measure, Jim is a great soul record.

Then, six songs into a characterless album, one on which ambience takes precedence over tunes, 3D and Daddy G unveil three stunning numbers that compare with anything in their back catalogue.

Minor mis-steps are a fair trade-off for an album that doesn't simply doff its cap in tribute.

The Michigan singer-songwriter is now best known for providing the Raconteurs with tunes and his fourth solo album adds a splash of their heaviness to his trademark Beatles-indebted pop.

Beyonce's superstar status is not in danger, but she should hand her A&R man a copy of this album.

The wholeheartedness with which this album hurls itself into the abyss of cod-symphonic astral pretension is to be commended.

This album proves that when Earle reconnects to the sheer joy of making music the results can be powerful.

It's Never Been Like That reunites the quartet with the kind of jubilant, foot-pumping power-pop that, at best, is informed by the brevity of new wave and the breeziness particular to pre-punk West Coast rock.

The chatter of modern culture might make such a response to 7/7 unfashionable, but such a thoughtful voice, and so deeply felt a record, shouldn't go unheeded.

A weary, beautifully realised work.

Moments of delight, such as 'Thinking About You,' are few, though 'Boots and Sand', about Yusuf being refused entry to the US, labours hard to inject levity.

The happy-in-love rockers are doggedly inessential, but ballads such as 'The Knowing' and 'Plan to Marry' redress the balance beautifully.

As ever, this most eloquent of rappers is stronger on zingers than philosophical coherence. But his dismal taste in beats strands his poetry in a sea of mediocrity.

Ta-Dah is easy to like but hard to love.

Barnes pushes their ninth album to sometimes unlistenable extremes and although it has its moments--'Touched Something's Hollow' is a beauty--the pleasures to be gained from this sexual experiment are few.

It's Not Me, It's You is a wonderful record, and, better than that, a pop album brave enough to have a go at defining the times.

Their second LP is all candy-coloured dreamscapes. Lily remains a spikier proposition.

Although packed full of nerdy Sixties tributes and Spider Webb's dizzying antique organ sound, it's not stuck too far in the past.

This is glorious, 21st-century Technicolor po.

A cosmic, contemporary Human League.

Inspirational stuff.

It sounds like creepy supper club music.

This album's every percussive aspect has been honed to impart the maximum amount of pleasure.

Richly textured electro-pop teems with flamboyance and sees Wolf come over like a cosmic Martin Fry.

Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace sticks to what it's good at: undemanding arena rock that's just--just--leftfield enough not to jar alongside Grohl's previous incarnation.

Six years after his last album, England, Half English, Bragg has come up trumps: Mr Love & Justice, with his band the Blokes, is his best realised work musically for ages.

Rockferry is a fantastic album of burning blue soul.

This is a beautiful album. Moving rather than maudlin, uplifting rather than depressing.

Their second reunion carries the listener a good third of the way into this punningly titled fourth album. Trouble is, the second two-thirds are a very long slog indeed.

Not only does it sound like two very different acts but March, fashioned with a funeral band from Mexico, is far less absorbing than the synth-pop of Holland, whose five twinkly tracks contain a joie de vivre absent from its stodgy, reverential sister set.

You get the sense they don't know exactly what they're aiming for, and the resulting mish-mash of crude energy and unfocused ambition leaves the listener gloriously befuddled.

Consistently framed around a beat, a piano and her voice, her plucky and at times eccentric songs generally stick to themes of female neurosis, emotional fragility and, occasionally, what she likes to eat on her toast.

Teenager is as flat as the Mojave Desert, and, like a fusty pastel sweater bought as a birthday present, it's cosy yet bland.

Take one listen to the title track, accept that it's the greatest pure pop single of the year and everything you wanted from the Klaxons and didn't get, and you'll be seduced into wanting to believe that Midnight Juggernauts know what they're doing.

The remainder of their fourth album, however, has a familiar Midwestern chug, and is a gorgeous confection of girl-group soft rock and country-tinged balladeering.

It sags mid-album, but the Brits won't demand a recount.

Versatile but erratic, then, though Joe's emotional honesty is never in doubt.

F&M have added intriguing textures to the Krautrock of 2006's Transparent Things.

A masterly work.

Our Love to Admire fleshes out the dark edges of Interpol's sound to create a polished, muscular-sounding record that teems with life and bristling potency.

His serious moments are as hard to comprehend as a Chuckle Brother tackling a eulogy: you know he must feel emotion because he is a human being, but you are constantly expecting the arrival, stage right, of a pantomime cow.

A perfectly summery blend of Krautrock, prog rock and more danceable grooves.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a well-written, well-recorded, mainstream rock record.

Ladyhawke is an accessible but immensely rewarding listen, and while some of this singer's influences may be middle of the road, her album isn't even on the road.

The result is an album that, unquestionably, marks him out as one of the UK's most promising new producers.

Female duo Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes make stark, witchy electronica that's subtle and exciting, their mantra-like voices drawing you in like a sinister nursery rhyme, with melodies breaking through their oblique, half-muttered lyrics like beams of winter sunlight.

It's a state of the union address, an apocalyptic protest album. It also sounds phenomenal.

Yes, there's plenty of God and glitz. But the purity of that voice is still brilliantly captivating.

There are exceptions, notably Tortoise, Aphex Twin and Björk songs, while Lisa Germano's 'Slide' is magnificent, mainly thanks to Adem's eerie, cracked delivery.

The album occasionally misfires... but there's still sass and creativity here.

Now they sound less like they're playing to their strengths and more like they're admitting their limitations; they'll keep trying to move your hips because they know they'll never win your heart. Tonight is fine, but will you still love them tomorrow?

The band's favouring of big brass accompaniments and enthusiastic vocals gives this album momentum, but it's their preference for substance over style that ensures Tired... puts their modish peers to shame.

What the 22-year-old does with his whimsical art rock influences is less predictable; the arrangements take the songs in odd directions, piquing interest even when the genre experiments drag.

Mostly band and producer Mark Ronson have done what both parties needed to do in late 2008: avoid the ordinary and obvious, namely glossy stadium-indie and retro-soul horns respectively, and aim for the extraordinary.

It's still a career high, but B'Day could have been released at any point in the last three-and-a-half years and, in a year which has given us tracks like Justin Timberlake's 'SexyBack', it already sounds stale.

Roots and Echoes is a brighter, considerably more settled record than previous outings, less inclined to meander skittishly into dub, mariachi and sea shanties.

An eclectic, at times explicit, exploration of love, loss and lust, it's the work of a skilled songwriter comfortable in his own skin and canon.

The concept of LA as a 'Sunblessed City of Angels' is trite, co-opting another's song for the theme tune lazy, and much of what follows resembles a Beach Boys tribute band.

It's Elvis (or Mr Diana Krall as he's also known) in fine, lovelorn country form.

They might be no longer going through the motions, but those moves seem awfully familiar.

On this relaxed and cohesive set, Van's band fall into simple and graceful grooves and play like a proper group, not hired hands.

With neither the sugar rush of "Hot Fuss" nor the blustery thrills of "Sam's Town," this is the Killers' most beguilingly strange record. As an accurate reflection of its frontman, it succeeds handsomely.

Rick Rubin produces; a mixed blessing.

In a musical climate awash with just-above-average singer-songwriters, Elton is still among the brightest exponents of what can be done when you combine piano, voice, melody and heart.

The result, typified by the rousing 'Oh! Vanity' and emotive 'This is the End', is a melodic and hard-fought triumph.