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.