Boyle's versions are professionally executed but phenomenally dreary.

It is, almost inevitably, charming.

He wisely sticks to the spoken word for much of the album, whether delivering the sinister inner monologue of a stalker or a robot-voiced attempt to advocate Transcendental Mediation.

His major-label follow-up wisely keeps the retro aesthetic.

They've brought touches of ska and Latin into the mix, but KD&L still don't do anything Imelda May can do better.

Bad As Me is as good as it gets.

It takes no chances. This is a record that browbeats and bullies you into submission with its sheer massiveness, courtesy of producer Brian Eno.

When he shuts up, and lets the shambling jangle and daydreamy exotica take over, it's great. When he sings, it's murder.

An unprecedented futuristic hybrid of dubstep, speedcore and math-rock, with lyrics which charge towards unexplored lexicographical horizons.

Revelation Road proves, though, that form may come and go, but class is permanent.

It sounds like a soundtrack for the end of the world, or the birth of new worlds. Extraordinary.

Loud guitars are everywhere, bucked by riffing horns, and the general vibe is testosteronal and sleeveless. He is a rippingly good player.

Impressive rather than engaging.

It finds the singer in meditative mood--this is, by some distance, the least playful Björk album--and, amid soundscapes made from tinkling harps and bells and deep electronic burps and farts, she's an uncharacteristically discreet presence, a humble narrator of the wider story she's trying to tell.

While it may, at times, sound a little too familiar--A&F is almost good enough to banish the memory of the dozen or so albums--influenced by grams not Parsons--since.

Apart from a lovely snare-drum loop on "Recat" (annoyingly, all the tracks are called Re-something or other), this is barely even a head-nodding experience.

Haunting and harrowing, the uncomprehending first reactions are combined with a score both alarming and consoling. Also here, Mallet Quartet (2009) and Dance Patterns (2002), but it is WTC 9/11 which packs the most powerful punch.

Reconvening after a four-year hiatus, the duo have carried on where they left off--meaning the Frankmusik-produced TW is gentle, blissful and devoid of the exuberant electro romps of yesteryear.

While nothing grates, all it really achieves is to make you want to hear Hank sing them.

Well, these things are relative, and this record is still jam-packed with purest filth and unrepentant excess.

Slinky, spooky, superb.

Black Rainbows isn't all-out kick-ass noise but, by turns, spindly and fuzzy, smooth and angular.

Danilova's commanding tones evoking nameless terrors over wonderful doom-laden synth-rock.

For the most part this is a glorious hymn to the art of playing together, of which Lennon would surely approve.

Baird's own rather fabulous acoustic is garnished with touches of dobro, pedal-steel or electric, over which her wisp of a voice, and words, hang in a vapour.

It may not be the best Wilco album ever, but with care and consideration it may well turn out to be your favourite.

The result is not, however, a revolution in his sound but a refinement.

Equal parts Byrds, Beatles and Burritos, this kicks away the cobwebs nicely.

Pretty lovable.

All of this adds up to something very special indeed.

The beats aren't always the best, but Wretch, who lives on the notorious Tiverton Estate and whose "mum's still living in the ends", has a self-awareness lacking in many of his peers.

As always, Ladytron make the world feel a more haunted, evocative, romantic place. Faultless.

CYHSY now sound more or less exactly like The Killers.

The music treads a gingerly path between the lighter textures of honky-tonk and a sort of indie lounge-pop. Charming.

The second Nixey solo album is a thing of subtle gorgeousness, with Nixey's none-more-English, sexy school-mistress diction dealing with topics as bleakly improbable as the Bridgend teenage suicides.

A potent shot in the arm for Afrobeat.

The effect is softly inclusive without being entirely bland, and even if Holland's poetry doesn't ring your bell as poetry, then it certain works in this context as sound-art.

Stephen Malkmus is back making amiable but unchallenging off-kilter country rock songs.

It's as close to a perfect Americana album as there's been this year--fans of the California sound from CS&N to the Jayhawks will find much to love.

This has more bounce and sees Lovefoxxx & co close to their best.

Their command of "neeeooow" noises suggests a schooling in retro rave, and their cover of the Jets' "Crush" turns the sugary original into something superbly sinister and stalker-ish.

None of it is clumsy but, equally, none of it truly escapes the originator's gravitational field.

In place of politics, or any kind of point, all this album offers is a parade of premium brands, from Grey Goose to Louboutin. The overriding sensation is akin to reading one of those luxury-shopping magazines you get on planes while a mediocre hip-hop station plays over the headphones.

It's pleasant enough, but on the whole feels like Hynes' sketches towards an album, rather than the finished item.

Gentle Spirit is impressively inert.

All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

Its main virtue: brevity. Most songs are sub-2 minutes, and the entire album is over in 20.

This is accessible, song-based contemporary jazz at its most earnest, ordered and empowering.

Great tunes, decent voice, scary attitude.

The most perfect suite of music recorded in my lifetime.

Simultaneously grounded and spiralling off into the stratosphere, this is urgent, epic stuff that doesn't let up for a moment.

Unless you have a natural predisposition towards the enjoyment of self-consciously nerdy vocals and jangling harmonic songs taking a 'sideways looks' at life, Sky Full Of Holes will leave you completely unmoved.

This debut is so lame, it makes the Beady Eye album sound like Let It Bleed.

From dancehall/nu-metal hybrids to dubstep-meets-Bond theme balladry, its bombastic stuff, but also finely tuned in its balance of sincerity and showmanship.

The impeccably hip credentials of HN's Roberto Carlos Lange are rather at odds with the wonderfully gloopy Latin-cheese of this Spanish language, old school synth-session's best tracks.

The writing is generic, the studio-craft impressive. Enjoyment will depend on how you get on with the voice and its hooting cannonade of mannerisms.

The danger is that they might spread themselves too thin, but on this evidence they've kept their best ideas close to their chests.

This one feels much more like a group searching for a sound together, even if the sound once belonged in a Venn diagram linking Led Zep, Deep Purple and Dio-era Sabbath. And it rocks most periodly.

Taken in individual portions, they're a refreshing jolt to the system, but a whole album's worth feels like being force-fed a gallon of Sunny Delight.

It's much more fun than the Brandon Flowers album. Which, admittedly, isn't very big talk at all.

It recalls MGMT before the wheels came off. Which is no bad thing.

The treatments range from Schifrin/Morricone atmospherics to full on Prokofiev/Tchaikovsky bombast, with results which are variable, but the scary choral, Omen-style version of "Where's Your Head At" is a hoot.

Each to their own. For me, there's nothing here not to like, but even less to love.

The main signifier is Peyroux's sound, now as downhome as a chicken shack and artfully haunted as a Cassandra Wilson session. Tasteful.

It's an album you can hear without ever really noticing. Radox for the ears.

This is an album that's ostentatiously overloaded on melody, and on all-round sonic luxury. This is the one.

Scratch beneath the surface sheen of It's All True and all kinds of depths emerge.

Holland sings songs of discombobulation and wonder, and all is mannered but also naturalistic.

Finn's second album continues the project he undertook with his first – namely to shake off the shackles of being "Neil Finn's son" by swamping his dreamy, Beatles-esque pop songs with moments of electronic and percussive madness.

Daves is a guitarist, Thile a genius of the mandolin. Both sing. Together they hammer and tongs the songs like smiths.

They unapologetically rip into this album with a pulsating and mangled electro-pop opener called "D-Day", and rarely, if ever, lapse into giving people a poor photocopy of Parallel Lines.

A close to fine debut.

It doesn't always hit the spot, but at least he's firing at more interesting targets than the usual renta-rapper.

It's a brilliant record; probably her best.

Beyoncé's strident triumphalism is displaced by muted heartbreak and the cookie-cutter R&B of her mega-sellers ditched for a subtle, stripped-down sound that suggests someone's been listening to Janelle Monae.

The caprine warble of solo Steve Nicks has broken its silence after 10 years to explore the idea that nothing lasts forever, especially in affairs of the heart.

Fusion fans might be confused but as a sentimental affirmation of melody it's Metheny to the core.

The mood of uplifting-melancholia survives and this time out Vernon needs no dramatic backstory. Clearly, his is a talent that loves company as much as it loves misery.

The perfect soundtrack for early summer, and all the possibilities it holds.

She's good when not covering Mary Margaret O'Hara. But you'll need to hear through the still-life mannerisms to get to the good stuff.

The worldy influence remains but never overwhelms and the album contains at least half a dozen songs that are as simple and profound as anything Simon has ever written.

It's rather fine.

The Glaswegian band's chosen style this time around, namely dark vintage synth pop (early Human League) and scratchy, spindly post-punk (Wire, the Cure), matches the mood and subject matter perfectly.

Just when the world is no longer particularly bothered about a new Arctic Monkeys record, they've finally released one worth being bothered about – at least in parts.

while D contains strange time signatures, proggy flute solos and syncopation aplenty, it soon reveals itself to be a work for the heart as well as the mind.

The sixth album by these Kentucky alt-country types sees them risk destroying forever the aura of existential gravitas they've accrued with the previous five.

The second studio album from the experimental New York trio oozes colour.

Here are a dozen more such, all beautifully crafted and conceived with poetic flair, arranged nicely for restrainedly plucked instruments, sung in a thin soprano which strains into a yelp.

It's about time he delivered something of substance. YCTAODNT fits the bill, kinda. It's long on heartbreak and short on yee-haw affectations.

By Ben Gibbard's own admission "a much less guitar-centric" record than usual, it is therefore, if only by default, the closest thing yet to a follow-up to Give Up by Gibbard's other concern, the Postal Service, although it's more about pretty pianos than effervescent synths.

The vibe is convivial. And though the great man can't put his cancer-strangled voice to every number, he can still swing the nuts off a Slingerland kit in between chesting a nifty mandolin.

Over 13 tunes, Akinmusire and his very hot quintet (featuring Walter Smith III on tenor sax and a great drummer, Justin Brown) take the basic format of post-bop straightahead jazz and tease it around with absolute authority.

There are standouts aplenty and, as song rolls seamlessly into song.

She's on the cover, smirking in front of an old map: a naughty sea god(dess) in a Cruikshank cartoon. Which somehow suits the discursive post-folk rompery of the music: highly arranged, wordy as an Elvis Costello song with larks taking the place of bitterness.

Not easy. Not pleasant. But touching in parts, if only because of Martyn's honest gaze.

Her first UK release is a polished, bluegrassy thing of no small wonder.

Taken on its own merits, however, there's plenty to enjoy, as Bush sings new vocals over remixed and re-edited backing tracks in a deeper, more weathered voice.

From dancefloor tracks such as "Shake It" to a lover's rock vibe on "Only Thing Missing Was You", Franti has made an eclectic, conscious album