It's half George Harrison, half Keith West.

The King Of Limbs, named after a famous oak in the Savernake forest near the studio where In Rainbows was made, is good but not great.

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

Not really "folk" at all but a programme of music for solo guitar (and occasional clarinet) drawing on three centuries of complex harmony; or at least the harmony which appeals to the gruff old Pentangle picker.

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

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.

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

Fragrant Word has killer synthpop tunes buried within it, but too often you wonder how much better a record this would have been if they quit dicking around and just gave you the song.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

It is, almost inevitably, charming.

It's essentially 1980s indie jangle with hints of Afro-pop and Northern Soul, carrying echoes of Orange Juice.

A close to fine debut.

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

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

“Organic moonshine music” she calls it, and no one could argue with that.

Great tunes, decent voice, scary attitude.

There’s singing going on, all right, it sounds lovely, but little is conveyed other than loveliness. However, there’s no arguing with their authenticity or technical excellence.

As an 19-track collection of rarities from the period 2003-present, TTEC is necessarily a mixed bag of styles and qualities.

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

Almost every track sounds like a potential single in an indie rock/Americana kind of way.

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

With guests such as Jack White and a surprisingly bearable Norah Jones, Rome makes a fine fist of recreating the elegance of prime 1960s Euro-pop. All good, no bad, and never ugly.

Brilliant, frustrating, thrilling and irritating. In other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from an Edward Sharpe album.