Filled with beguiling close-harmony tunes which wouldn't feel out of place on the Wicker Man soundtrack and sound like venerable trad-arrs but are actually originals.

Overlong at 19 tracks, it has its moments.

Unrefined, unresigned, occasionally clunky, frequently obtuse but always, always fit to bust.

Slipstream is welcome, despite large portions of it sounding generic to the point of self-parody: funky, strolling, sunny California blues-rock with lashings of soul.

For once all that languorous muck is refreshing.

Wonderful.

Suggests and afternoon in Ikea. Snorbital.

Both gently gripping and strangely sinister.

It's great.

They've enlisted non-dance musos such as Robert Fripp, Barry Adamson, Nick Zinner and Josh Homme, as well as relative young 'uns Cat's Eyes and Factory Floor, with often delicious results

The songwriting has come into focus and the hooks get under your skin.

Delicious.

Spalding tries to breathe new life into the dead form of smooth jazz-fusion. And nearly succeeds.

Restlessness and drive applauded, but oh for the sound of those demons.

It's broodingly impactful stuff, only hampered by the kind of self-parodically indie-kid vocals that remain in a permanent state of posturing ennui.

Madonna may have done this stuff first, but nowadays Lady Gaga does it better. MDNA? Meh-DNA.

This is a band for fans of Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker and Nick Cave who wondered where their next great love was coming from...it's already here.

It's the very definition of "not bad", but surely there's some urgent paint you need to watch drying instead?

His most enjoyable LP since Our Favourite Shop.

It does just enough to bring "happy" to you, and you've gotta love the black humour of any band who'd call a song "God Help This Divorce".

[An] exceptionally artful debut.

The material is all Mehldau's and quality varies from the standing ovations of the opening and closing tunes to lesser tricked-up vamps, but bass and drums groove superbly throughout.

It's nevertheless a hugely enjoyable ride, Clarke and Gore's duelling synths creating an entirely instrumental soundtrack to the sci-fi movie playing inside your own head.

It's mostly a thing of pleasing lonesome grooves--but there are moments where it sounds like the Mahavishnu Orchestra tuning up.

Home Again is sweet, inoffensive, well-intentioned and gently, grainily melancholic, and it operates most fluently at the slow temperature which offends some while delighting others.

Touching and strangely beautiful.

Gimmicks aside, any version of TFIM with a core of "Little Shocks", "Start with Nothing", "When all is Quiet", "Man on Mars" and "Heard it Break" won't go far wrong. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

It's a shame the God-bothering pomp of John Legend collaboration "The Believer" spoils it all at the end.

It is a glossy thing that entwines her Californian folky yin around his Southern gothic yang.

Songs typically travel from the spindly to the epic, and extol the virtues of living life to the full.

High on saccharine and low on fidelity, LATBOTS has one foot in the recent 8-bit scene, the other in Merritt's own back catalogue.

If you like smart pop and are not familiar, hearing Bird for the first time will feel like discovering a new planet.

Wrecking Ball is as surgical as a ball of pig-iron on a swinging chain.

As is conventional with contract filler, this is not going to be a go-to album in the canon.

Tracks such as "Epilogue to a Marriage" here, serve as a reminder that there's always room for the real thing, and you'll know it when it hits you.

Pianist Matthew Bourne goes all English-pastoral in this largely lovely solo suite.

Always may well be the Californians' finest yet.

This is an album that deserves at least to reacquaint the Ting Tings with the outskirts of Somewheresville.

An album which merely proves that the Cranberries haven't lost their knack of saying nothing in a grating way.

At its best on the quasi-techno anthem "Low Times", it's claustrophobically compelling, if too formulaic to be truly super-natural.

You can almost hear the chickens out in the yard and see the dust mites dancing in the sunlit air.

It's all pretty good, but you want to see them live more than replay the album, though "504" needs downloading.

Porter has made the best vocal album in an age.

Stuart Staples and his band delivering nine pieces of beautiful bossa-nova noir, daydreamy reverie and existential easy listening.

But where Learning drifted into the ether, this captivating follow-up thrives off harnessing his fragile sensibility to fulsome melodies.

It is a near-total triumph.

The most vibrant, organic and energy infused African hip-hop debut since K'naan's The Dusty Foot Philosopher.

Chris Thile is the most remarkable mandolinist in the world; fluent, articulate and sometimes just a little too clever to be truly engaging.

Smart, thoughtful lyrics about everything from iPods to the Arab Spring.

Marvellous.

The wan vocals and listless melodies conspire to render such eclecticism [on this album] as flavourless as a Cup-a-Soup variety pack.

One minute it's like listening to early Genesis, the next Smile-era Beach Boys, the next XTC and the next, um, 1980s Genesis.

Dazzling songs, dismally sung.

Recorded in Hollywood, which figures - there is a near-visual sense of overstatement to the bleakness.

It is, as you'd expect, spacious, gentle, reachy, euphonious and, for Air, fairly organic sounding.

Suggests that McCartney lacks anyone to tell him when he's had a terrible idea.

She has ... created a sound which is almost absurdly ill-matched to her songs.

A charming companion piece to The Best of...

A dance album that spins the decks back to the turn of the millennium.

Not to say Cohen is not an artist to be treasured, just that Old Ideas may not be entirely essential.

Somewhere between Ladyhawke and M83, it's 1980's fetishism all the better for the apparent lack of irony.

A delicious hybrid of Portishead and Nancy Sinatra.

Their unadorned, effects-free music remains simple and straightforward, like a rock equivalent of the Dogme school of cinema.

With its flutes, xylophones, mandolins, a truly incongruous mention of Superman III and, not least, Martin's own lilting delivery, it also has a fair quantity of charm.

BTS is a covers album recorded at and paying tribute to Memphis's Sun Studios, deploying tumbleweed guitar twang, and occasionally, the falsetto.

Very enjoyable package.

First Aid Kit sing harmonies so close you couldn't run a Band Aid between them.

Occasionally the listener is carried away on the soulful cusp of Gonjasufi's scraggly voice, but more often than not they are simply overwhelmed.

A seething, soundtracky, high-gloss, high-energy orchestral Latin "fusion", full of licks and stabs and twiddly bits.

Glowing Mouth is so subtly soaring it could restore words such as "atmospheric" and "portentious" to the rock lexicon.

A loose-limbed, spacious, American indie-folk-rock. Political, challenging, dissatisfied and, naturally, righteous.

Their festival-friendly rap-rave-metal goes "the-generation-that-are-going-to-change-the-world" political.

Over rudimentary backing beats, in that "ya feel me?" accent, his humour often hits the spot. However, the going-through-Customs skit, followed by a track about having his urine tested at the airport, is as tedious as it is righteous.

Very musical, it is, if ever so slightly coffee table.

There are no standout songs but that's kind of the point: GTTW washes over you like a cooling stream on a hot day.

Watson packaged up the month that he spent riding the train, using his original recordings, adding his own narration, throwing in some interviews, and creating something magical.

This is Cash at his rawest and most riveting, singing his soul out to platoons, prisoners and presidents alike. Hard to describe in terms that are adequate.

Singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss and Ash frontman Tim Wheeler, a couple in real life, join musical forces and attempt, valiantly and with not inconsiderable success, to breathe new life into that stalest of stale old genres: the Christmas song.

Two tracks truly warm the cockles. And if the rest is merely pleasant, hey, season of goodwill and all that.

Consists entirely of tasteful campfire-folk covers of seasonal classics.

There's a childlike sense of adventure and fun about his sampladelic approach.

A feast of vulnerable balladry with a political heart and, audibly, much surrounding air.

Too late for those album of the year polls?

"Lioness" reinforces what we already knew: Winehouse was, in every sense, wasted.

It starts nervily and there's some creative recycling of motifs, but once he builds up a head of steam the force is truly with him.

All Syco needed to do was reprise her staggering first TV audition. Astonishingly, they've dropped the ball.

Believers is made of a darker, spookier Americana than its predecessor: full of small-g gothic, anti-Chris Isaak-ish songs that submerge you deeper and deeper in their dark charms.

On the evidence of this [album] one can safely say that the Dø are the best French/Finnish duo in pop.

Interesting to see that a few of the unused songs from the period (1978) push the released material for quality.

It's half George Harrison, half Keith West.

It's a jukebox-jumpin' take on straight-up Dolly with a smile behind its eyes and a rockabillyish skip in its step.

To the relief of anyone who carries a torch for the reclusive genius, it's a beauty.

As off-the-peg as Primark, the Rihan-droid returns with more dancefloor fodder which has all the right bleeps in all the right places, but nothing to make you go "wow".

[In French] it's beguiling and sexy. When she crosses the Channel and sings in English, she's a ten-a-penny kook-merchant.

This darkly amusing, awkward yet oddly graceful return of the ostensibly dead, more than measures up.

Ersatz GB is a fine addition to an excellent recent salvo.

Any good songs sound like demos awaiting their final form.

This covers album maybe a joyous blast of buzzsaw pop, but you just know that the live shows will be even better.