It's difficult to tell, though, how much is sock and how much darn.

Yes, it sounds like you imagine: slightly artificial, pop-inflected chunk-rock, with dustbin-lid drums, loads of guitars and even a hint of voice box/Auto Tune.

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.

It's coated in a layer of pseudo-authenticity, but ultimately it's a record which aims for Bo Diddley or Johnny Cash and merely attains Dire Straits.

Given its sudden sharp downward turn, it’s hard to unreservedly recommend Another Country. But there are enough decent moments to justify a bit of iTunes cherry-picking, at least.

A charming companion piece to The Best of...

A rapid sugar rush, followed by a gradual crash.

Electra Heart is too professional to be truly terrible, but it's never clever enough to be more than merely toytown.

Boyle's versions are professionally executed but phenomenally dreary.

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

Its best moments are its electro-pop numbers.

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

It's deeply engrossing and rings resoundingly with cultural and historical truth.

"Yes You Do", a 1950s rock'n'roll love song updated for the synth age, is the standout track, but "Bassline" is the most typical.

Tuneful enough, his debut is an MOR bricolage of prevailing musical styles.

Morissette is the sort of woman who does yoga to ensure she can still gaze at her navel... Self-obsessed.

What’s inside? Nothing. Which is, coincidentally, what this album adds to the treasury of human art.

[Since I Saw You Last] falls below Barlow’s best--“Patience”, “Rule the World”--at just the point when he needed to up his game.

The sooner this bunch of plums fade back into obscurity, the better.

Marcus Mumford leaves his Irish-folk years behind and adopts a transatlantic burr for “The Wolf”, whose chugging riff and sappy lyrics (“You are all I’ve ever longed for”) pinpoint the album’s core failings: absences of both lateral intrigue and the elemental oomph its track-titles (“Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, indeed) hint at.

Evolution is a perfect Frankenstorm of over-produced American R&B.

Planta feels lightweight; not much really catches the ear or imagination.

MFAD! finds them sounding like exactly what they are, namely an airbrushed, Massachusetts version of the Stones.

Humbugness aside, though, it's a serviceable collection of jazzy covers and duets.

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

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

His breathless, this-really-matters delivery is ill-served by lines such as "Ain't a fan of vegetables/ It ain't about the peas".

It plays like a very conventional, early-90s pop record.