Costa's sophomore album is every bit as anaemic as the Johnson connection suggests.

A lovely addition to the noisy canon and a barbed new year tonic.

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.

Unquestionably, it would have been better still had the songs been layered with a little less sugar.

Between the odd pretty guitar motif ('She's Too Much') and marching drum roll ('The Valley') the pile-driving beatwork and rapping cameos only highlight the fact that the weakest element here is Duran themselves.

A brave, if samey, affair, System is undoubtedly sincere.

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.

For all American Gangster's conceptual flair, the purest joy comes from 'Success', a tune which could have slotted into any Jay-Z album.

Whether live or unplugged, though, the effect is much the same: disbelief that one band can convey this much emotion when, for all the unearthly beauty of the music, the lyrics amount to little more than gibberish.

Untrue crackles with high-tension, excitement and yearning.

Britney has delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's 'Shock Value' and her own back catalogue.

As wonderful as it is unexpected, Dirt Farmer is a strong candidate for comeback of the year.

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

It's also about love, loss, the British urban landscape, laughing at yourself, great guitars, exciting chord changes, tight rhythms, the Stones-Who-Kinks-(Small) Faces-Clash-Jam-Smiths-Happy Mondays-Stone Roses-Oasis-Blur history of Britrock, rich, simple production, songs with layers, a really good band and a singer who has relocated his voice.

Backed with the gusto of big horns, Young's guitar is once again a thing of wonder on this track, now slashing and burning, now playing transcendent dance riffs.

Tankian has always got one more surprise up his sleeve. But his scatter-shot approach does not detract from the acuity of his polemical insights

This kind of electro-glam was acceptable in the Eighties, and Hourglass proves that it still is.

Raising Sand is an album of deep, dark Americana, a scintillatingly stitched patchwork of country, R'n'B and singer-songwriters that represents what Plant describes as "the America I have always loved musically."

A brave new direction it isn't.

Overpowered's bubbling, sensual, and soulful glitterball gems effortlessly tap into the perennial glory of feeling lost and lonely at the disco at the end of the world.

The quality veers wildly, but every so often he hits upon a great song. 'Just As You Are' in particular sets the smoothest of melodies and a haunting cornet solo from Wyatt against the most world-weary of lyrics.

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.

Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.

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.

At times it feels like someone's watered down the acid Kool-Aid, but with shining technicolour romps such as 'Bullets,' the sun is an optional extra this summer.

Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein.

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.