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.

A classy, well-made record.

Gentle Spirit is impressively inert.

When these three Liverpool lasses let their freak-folk flag fly their abandon is contagious. Their voices are great, which helps, but it's the unexpected instrumentation that really seals the deal.

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.

Morning Phase is an often gorgeous sequel to Sea Change, but it’s also more than that: it’s cheering proof that Beck isn’t ready to start repeating himself just yet.

Simultaneously the most and the least pop record of the autumn.

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

The music is softly strummed, and Bird’s voice is a high, lonesome thing like the wind on a prairie. Sort of.

Michigan auteur Hawthorne has synthesised his influences into perfect power pop, with the help of producers including Pharrell Williams.

Very enjoyable package.

Truth is, the release of Tin Star should set Ortega’s adopted home town alight.

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

Crain’s third album has proved something of a breakthrough in the US.

Maybe now he can sleep a little less on floors and spend more time making gorgeous albums like this. Please.

This is an instantly engaging showcase of the 23-year-old Aussie’s talents--poppy without diluting her fierce-flowing charisma.

Everett’s earlier, fearless accounts of family tragedy have refined his ability to explore extreme states of emotional disrepair.

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

There is no shortage of shimmery songcraft here.

They are awfully thoughtful, though the thoughtfulness does frequently give way--sometimes you feel with a sigh of relief--to the technical liberation of jig and reel.

The repertoire leaves room for instrumental chops from saxophonist Ernie Watts, while Haden's big bass fiddle thumps out the time with authority.

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

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

A natural wonder.

Just simple, old-fashioned talent and charm.

It's touching, witty, and like everything else the Bostonian ever does, brilliant.

James's voice is slightly diminished but not so as to sound like anything other than itself. She's the real deal.

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