Very modern, even if her pleasing sound never pushes real boundaries.

The darker, more mischievous mood at work is perfectly complemented by arrangements that are as inventive as they are austere.

While a faithful stab at synth pop, there's nothing on the Swedes' fifth album to match 'Young Folks' and, though more coherent, it lacks the eclecticism that made 2006's "Writer's Block" so appealing.

Frontman Pete Murphy overdoes the drama, leaving little space for the songs to breathe, while his colleagues fail to access the mystique that at their peak, in the early Eighties, served to distinguish them from goth's also-rans.

Check out the dissonant 'Womankind' ("Wish I had a lover who could turn this squalor into wine"), while the show stopper is 'Sing'--a collaboration with 23 female superstars that is incandescent.

Drastic Fantastic feels neither brave nor raw; Steve Osborne, working with Tunstall for the second time, has produced an album of flawless pop hits.

While many will no doubt have set the bar of their expectations too high, Jay-Z has pulled out all of the stops on Kingdom Come.

Probably the most exquisitely integrated single listening experience the Chemical Brothers have yet come up with.

Sublime.

A messy car crash of a record.

Vocally, a combination of steel and fragility is required, but Campbell can be frustratingly hesitant, often tending towards the limp side of haunting or ethereal.

There are great finds--'Man Who Couldn't Cry'--but some bones are best unpolished.

While Gilmour is in good voice, the unvarying pace is ultimately grating.

The result is writ large on this brilliant second album, which welds his drifting soundscapes to fractious, rapturous techno.

The band's contributions are low points on this 16-track epic, but Oberst proves as iconoclastic as ever.

Black's more soft-centred approach has since lagged behind, though this idiosyncrantic debut should help him make up ground.

So where do you go when you've been a backing singer for the Pussycat Dolls? Not straight to the scrapheap but kooky la-la land, it transpires here.

They hail from sunny Sydney, but this solid second set cements the Bells firmly in rock's melancholia tradition, echoing the Bunnymen and Tindersticks.

From production to persona, rhymes to flow, Public Warning is almost flawless.

Wait till you hear 'Norrlands Riviera', the best thing Belle and Sebastian never did. Blissful.

Mostly, it works well. Intriguingly, Gabriel fares better with more recent material.

Big, bold, cleverly-executed, thoroughly hollow stuff.

Beautiful yet detached, the music often bursts into life but more frequently simply drifts, all too willing to fall hypnotised under its own spell.

Their sixth collection is broad, bouncy and almost entirely forgettable.

Their second full album creates psychedelic intensity by combining the insistent rhythms of early 70s German bands with a fearsomely primitive garage sound.

It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this.

For the most part, the lyrics are so reliant on stock phrases - 'feel your touch', 'hold me', 'shoulda known', etc--that you could read anything you like into them without them carrying any personal feeling at all. If you can listen to that fluting, fierce, clear, dirty, magnificent voice while simultaneously shutting out the banality of what it's expressing, you'll have hours of pleasure from this gorgeously melodic, curiously old-fashioned album.

This is intoxicating psych-indie for heady days in unbroken sunshine.