A genuinely odd collaboration.

Bracing stuff.

A compelling experience.

In place of the suavité we associate with Songbook Rod, we get a whooping, sequenced modernisation of 1970s Guitar-Rock Rod.

This is a sweet, light confection, but insubstantial as whipped cream and too sugary for some tastes.

The majority of A (clever title, in the context of Faltskog's history) consists of dignified, age appropriate ballads.

It's seldom terrible. And seldom does much to persuade you that it wouldn't be a better idea to cut out the middle man and listen to Gillespie's old LPs instead.

Each song sounds much like the last but with hooks like this, who needs prizes for subtlety?

It happens to be their most cohesive and convincing effort yet.

This is a very capable attempt to update that swoonable sound, and the arrangements do offer a few contemporary touches.

This often sounds more like a BBC4 documentary than a pop record. And that's no bad thing.

Only the more straightforwardly poppy numbers disappoint, with power-ballad manqué “Crescendo” a particular anomaly.

Post-millennial indie boy-rock has taken a savage beating here. And it may prove the best it’s ever had.

Drawing on anything from Medieval plainsong to free jazz, she creates an extraordinary sensation of light, air, and space.

Most of LTHS consists of thumping soul-pop reminiscent of JoBoxers or high-energy Hives-like garage rock, and even if it errs on the side of sameyness, it's rarely dull.

A skittering collage of vocal drum'n'bass, garage, and funky house that parties, in the best way, like it's July 1999.

Gruff’s gorgeous voice helps humanise Feltrinelli. Never more so than on “Hoops With Fidel”, which, rather than demonising him and Castro, conveys the ideal of international revolution as a beautiful thing. As beautiful, in fact, as this album.

The result wears the weight of its history lightly, with the exception of "The Departed", a solemn tribute to lost Stooges.

If you replace the techno with ambient tones and piano noodles, he can sound a little reedy and exposed.

It's derivative and is a near hybrid of Mew, the Postal Service, M83 and Empire of the Sun, but it's perfectly likeable without ever inspiring outright love.

It can be plodding and takes a while to get going, but also occasionally reaches soaring, festival-fields-at-dusk heights.

Even without the unpleasant association of the Chris Brown guest slot here, #willpower (we're letting people hashtag their album titles now?) is a charmless listen.

The live stuff is consistently inventive.... Randomness dogs the remixes, but that's standard.

It's close to the best of all music I know.... A second CD of later, unreleased material with some genuine gold among the dross.

Classy pianos, minor chords and brushed drums back her ever-elegant, half-spoken syllables.

Rokia rocks, and it's a fine and bracing thing to hear.

A genuinely empathetic production, then, which does not pull up many trees.

Save Rock and Roll features unexpected excursions into rave-pop, and numerous celebrity cameos, but enough airbrushed pop-punk to prove they haven't forgotten which side their bread's buttered.

Ghost on Ghost is as dense stylistically as it is lyrically.

This rocks harder and faster than those fellow Tuareg bluesmen, partly due to the noticeable pop influence of another Malian act, Amadou & Mariam.

It's almost boring: yet another excellent British Sea Power album.

"Yes You Do", a 1950s rock'n'roll love song updated for the synth age, is the standout track, but "Bassline" is the most typical.

"What's Wrong with America" is the masterpiece, doo-wop and social protest mixed with God-bothering. Someone book them for a festival, quick.

It's difficult to tell, though, how much is sock and how much darn.

Throughout, we get a wounded and fragile man setting his hope-filled heart to music.

Comedown Machine is, essentially, The Strokes' 1980s album.

Surprises are few and what Delta Machine lacks is one big, arena-ready, fist-in-the-air synthpop stormer.

It's testament to his songcraft that it feels all of a piece.

Proper, stop-you-in-your-tracks talent with the occasional song to match.

Just like Levi Stubbs, he can't help himself.

Bloodsports is effortlessly superior to its predecessor A New Morning, and averages out roughly on a level with Head Music (though more consistent in quality).

It may not be as mind blowing as FutureSex. But, frankly, what is?

Give it time and the intensity of the music--the Hagar of the title is Lloyd's great-great grandmother, who was sold into slavery--comes through.

The end result is a tense, powerful and emotive piece of work.

Memphis is a late-night delight.

[Tales from Terra Firm] ought to be the one that separates the Oxford quartet from the indie-folk bandwagon and kicks them a few steps up the ladder to being Mumfords-sized.

The occasional familiar, Carpenters-esque track aside, it makes for an exhilarating musical progression--even as his lyrical style remains unchanged.

It's on close personal terms with magnificence.

If Mala wasn't conceived as Devendra Banhart's Europhile album, it's doing a damn fine impression of one.

Effortlessly mixing traditional instrumentation with samples, this varied yet cohesive album has an angular funkiness and a soulful pop edge.

It is a lush thing that, were we writing for a certain type of women’s mag, might have us reaching for words such as "candles" and "bubble bath."

He sets his bruised but unbowed soul against a stark musical backing and rediscovers the power of keeping it simple. Beautiful.

Some might call it Kylie for hipsters, but it's quite lovely for that.

The result is an album of solid country virtue.

David Bowie's perpetual predicament is that he can't escape David Bowie's past. In that respect, he's just like the rest of us: we can't escape David Bowie's past either. The Next Day leaves you wondering why you'd ever want to.

It induces a heady sense of perpetual forward motion, whether graceful or full pelt. Stunning.

It's a bright, optimistic, emotive world, Heidi's, and well suited to the neutral "roots" pop sound which frames it.

Though some of the good-girl-gone-bad shtick has been sacrificed on the altar of go-for-it jangly pop, she's still as good as it gets when she finally opens her pipes on "Dallas".

As long as you don't ask too much of it, it's good knockabout rowdy fun.

He's not breaking any moulds--it's solid, guitar led, pop-rock--but then Marr is the man for that job.

Yorke's lyrics, consisting mainly of repeated aphorisms and clichés ("A penny for your thoughts", "I've made my bed, I'll lie in it"), don't suggest any great depth.... But the sounds, bringing in elements of tropicalia, Afro-funk and laptronica, with glitches, rainforest sounds and superb analogue-synth squelches (if anyone steals the show here, it's Godrich), mean you hardly notice.

They have now cracked out the synths, ramped up the drum machines, and found their calling in giddy, lovelorn electro-pop.

There are 36 performances, most of them evincing a spumey "aaaargh, Jim-lad" recreational vibe.

This is heartfelt, sweetly sincere and as good an album as BPB has made for some time.

Squelchy synths, down-and-dirty basslines, and vocodered vocals stay just the right side of Jamiroquai.

PTSA may never stare you in the face, but you'd be a fool to turn your back on it. It's carrying a knife.

It is absolutely beautiful.

Everything is great.

For the most part it works well, provided you can live with Dawn's butter-wouldn't-melt ingenue phrasing and tone.

Whether this Blue Note debut featuring Robert Glasper is better than his two albums with Brownswood is moot, but the best tracks--"Trouble", "Heaven on the Ground", "Do You Feel"--are very good indeed.

Flitting between 1980s soul-pop and jerky indie, it has its big, brash, pop-rock moments.

Redemption by plucked string. Buddy Miller produces analogically.

In spite of the self-conscious effort to create something "beautiful", the songs slowly reveal themselves to be things of real beauty.

If this isn't Foals' pop classic or their art masterpiece, they're having a huge amount of fun squaring that circle.

MBV leaves all other post-rock experimentalists looking like trivial dilettantes. If jet engines could sing, these would be their hymns.

They're back now, all troubles set aside, and the results are good.

His breathless, this-really-matters delivery is ill-served by lines such as "Ain't a fan of vegetables/ It ain't about the peas".

It's nothing that Best Coast and the Magic Numbers don't do better.

From the self-mockingly banal title onwards, it confirms them as that rare thing: a band able to combine grandiosity and groundedness.

Wonderful Glorious alternates between distorted rock and freewheeling country-pop interludes.

The Village largely whispers rather than shouts, and it's all the more powerful for it.

There's a modicum of standard Teenage-Fanclub-meets-Mekons indie jangle. Far more interesting, however, are the dreamy, dazed disco tunes.

Collections constitutes a fairly sharp decline.

Most of disc one consists of ponderous, blustering nonsense, with a black chandelier used as a metaphor for depression. Disc two shows more promise.

There is no shortage of shimmery songcraft here.

Nice is the word.

Rocky's rhymes are believable when reminiscing about growing up poor.

A genuine classic, in fact.

It's sprawling, overdue and not for everyone, but at least it's not a play-it-safe comeback with the hot producer of the day.

Neville almost levitates through doo-wop, soul and R&B standards.

It marries a downbeat songcraft to an expansive sound courtesy of producers Guy Garvey and Craig Potter.

With A Wonder Working Stone, Alasdair Roberts continues to blur the borders between ancient and modern, between heady myth and harsh reality, and between folk and whatever sounds right in context.

It might be more accurate to say that nearly all of the songs on Whispering Trees aim for "Satellite of Love" but come closer to achieving Sky dish of desire.

In most cases, the cupboard seems its best home.

She's an oblique writer and arranger, though, often interesting, never predictable.

It's that rare commodity: an album to immerse yourself in and spend time with, both things no one does any more.

Arc is built with daytime radio in mind as much as the indie disco.

As a soundtrack, sure; as a record, one for the completist.