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

WTR is a classy bit of radio-friendly Mercury-bait which highlights Dangerfield's development as a songwriter.

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

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.

“Bitter Virtue” pursues a familiar James theme--condemnation of repressive moralities--but elsewhere, things are more ineffectual.

Like the latter’s Random Access Memories, it’s an enjoyable dance-pop album lacking a central focus. But one whose diffident charm makes a pleasant change from the overwrought wailing that routinely afflicts R&B.

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

Charmless kiss-offs (“Don’t”) and sappy sentiments (“People Fall in Love in Mysterious Ways”) dominate otherwise, landing with the thud of the authentically uninspiring.

Though there's no smash hit leaping out, with its consistent unity of atmosphere, The Fall is the most cohesive Gorillaz album yet.

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.

Presumably not this unremittingly OK collection of hazy pop-rock singalongs paying anodyne homage to the Ramones, Jesus and Mary Chain and, er, Interpol.

A mature, reflective, intelligent, Americana-inflected [album].

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

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

Rizzle Kicks are best when brisk and larky--more heartfelt musings on love and being true to yourself are banal.

With new recruit Earl Slick on guitar they've made a third reunion album filled with ramshackle glam and girl-group trash, reverberating with street-corner romanticism and hard-won wisdom.

If Elysium has a weakness, it is the absolute absence of thumping disco-pop monsters. Once you accept that, and surrender to the tranquil beauty of Chris Lowe's synth textures, you quickly realise that Neil Tennant is on top lyrical form.

Even if it's a joke, it's a joke you don't wanna hear.

Max Martin, Mr "Baby One More Time", has been roped in again along with scores of interchangeable Scandinavians to create an album of autotuned landfill chartpop which you will scour in vain for anything on a par with "Womanizer".

Even looking backwards, Springsteen finds ways to light the road ahead.

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

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

Good songs, largely, if songs broadly governed by the imperative to “heal”: a worthy intention, for sure, but fluffed up massively in a compressed space like this, also a rather stifling one.

With a little luck, and the careful choice of singles, there might be life in this party yet.

Desperately, painfully arty but worthy of your recollection.

It's a Gary Barlow idea of what indie music sounds like.

Darwin Deez, a New York-based artist for whom the word "offbeat" seems to have been invented. Not that there are any in his music--all straight 4/4 and po-mo lyrics--but there are plenty of tunes, not a little charm and a fair old sense of humour.

Uno! starts promisingly, but it's soon obvious that the Clash of "Tommy Gun" is still their template.

Apart from a bit of pedal steel and some gospel backing vocals, it sounds a lot like a Snow Patrol record, rendering the whole exercise somewhat redundant.

Hot Cakes is a rock-solid home win from the band who still do feelgood hard rock better than anyone alive.

The results have a tendency to make you look at the ceiling.

Dazzling songs, dismally sung.

There are too many plodding ballads, sentimental on the piano and heavy on the cymbals.

There’s nothing here to quite match his finest moments, but nothing stinks and that, I suppose, is the best you can expect.

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

There’s less barn-floor stomp than on previous albums, but Country Mile is still rousing, with trumpet, fiddle and much--occasionally dicey--harmonising.

An aural Waltzer, exhilarating and nauseous. On the plus side, there's oompah brass, jaunty jigs and a song channelling Fraggle Rock for vocal inspiration; and on the minus, oompah brass [and] jaunty jigs.

An unexpectedly enjoyable late addition to a formidable body of work.

There's an undercurrent of sentimentalism running through Come of Age....But originality is hard to come by.

In the main, she remains stylistically faithful to the originals.

It shows a musical maturity way beyond its creator's years.

The Origin of Love is an autotuned, multitracked meringue whose ingredients include 10cc and Buggles, and whose only weakness is the absence of a killer single.

As an exercise in expanded range, Shangri La is too diverse and distinct to dismiss.

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

The duo often leave any sense of taste with their gumboots outside on the doorstep.

Not one for Bon Iver fans, but the kid's got something.

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

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

Sadly for the listener, this is mostly a collection of one-paced songs more heartbroken than heartbreaking.

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."

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.

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

It's charming enough, but it's as well mannered as a picnic with Cath Kidston accoutrements.

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.

If you loved Williams the way he was, rejoice. If you didn't, it may be time to switch off the radio and television for a few months, and bury your head in a bucket of calamine lotion.

Oasis minus the organ-grinder needn't be an entirely horrific prospect.

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.

Her voice hangs inertly among racks of lustrous guitars like a worn shirt.

In most cases, the cupboard seems its best home.

A cloudless orgy of nostalgia.

This is a production in search of an album, a massive empty shell, a big expensive nothing.

Throughout the exquisitely mournful Violet Cries, Rachel Davies issues Cassandra-like predictions of woe and mayhem, while Thomas Fisher's filigree guitars shimmer like sunset on a lake.

Winehouse's progression from fresh-faced ingénue to agonised diva is operatic stuff.

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

It is mainly charming.

This is Green Day doing what Green Day have always done.

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

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".

White Lies have just enough elegance and intrigue beneath the bluster to carry it off.

Blacc proves he’s more than capable of stepping into the spotlight for his first major-label album which features 60s soul, folk, retro pop, R’n’B and even country.

A patchy affair which too often fails to transcend its blatant P-funk influences.

The rest of Kiss is like opening a tweenager's diary (titles include "Tonight I'm Getting Over You") and setting it to synthy, house beats, but nothing has the crossover appeal of that debut single.

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

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

Through the Night aims for Dusty in Memphis, but it lands closer to Petula Clark.

With its unrelenting positivity, Yes, It's True sounds like the Flaming Lips fronted by Deepak Chopra, and valiantly courts the daytime radio play that will inevitably elude it.

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

Very few of them add anything much at all to the original versions, which may be out of reverence or it may be a testament to the fierce identities of the songs themselves.

This comeback album suggests a hiatus spent in a cryogenic freezer. Which is to say that they sound the same ... only rather less vital.

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

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

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

It sometimes meanders like a wasted hipster at an Animal Collective after-show. Yet it preserves enough presence of mind to yield gems such as the sing-song "Alien Days" or the deliquescent "Mystery Disease."

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.

A delicious hybrid of Portishead and Nancy Sinatra.

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

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

It's nice that Shaddix is still alive, but Papa Roach remain irretrievably atrocious.

Songwriter/producer Sergio Pizzorno opted for a more slimmed-down sound, stripping away layers of sound to allow the ideas to speak more clearly.... It’s a brave but largely successful move, as is the shift from mainly guitar-riff-based songs to ones predominantly fuelled by synthesisers.

Here, the North-east new-wave revivalists refresh their default angular moves with nervy propulsion (“Give, Get, Take”), elegant synth-pop (“Brain Cells”) and electro-glide reflections (“Is it True?”).

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

Balminess, after all, is the chief asset of this second album's slow-rolling, harmonic country-gospel jams.

This critic cannot in all honesty say, with a clear conscience, that their second album is absolutely terrible. Because it plain isn't.

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

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.

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.

There's such a belt-and-braces approach that the array of sounds (strings, choirs, tubular bells, beats and synths, dubby blurbs and squeaks) can come across as overbearing.

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