Between the pub and the high seas, Elbow reset their mission statement here: to navigate the heart’s tides with their art intact.

It's that rare commodity: an album to immerse yourself in and spend time with, both things no one does any more.

Their most consistent and accomplished album to date.

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.

Ageing is a war they can’t win, but by facing it head-on, the Manics have found the spur to move forwards.

It's testament to his songcraft that it feels all of a piece.

One Breath draws on choppy emotions--grief, depression, anxiety--but Calvi commands the tides with the imperious authority of Barbara Stanwyck leading her posse in Sam Fuller's wild western Forty Guns.

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

It may not be for everyone, but it's evidence that there are still some restless minds out there.

Ten out of 14 tracks are outstanding, especially considering Bugg's only 18.

There's no progression or narrative, it's immersive rather than engrossing. Slow Focus is an album to steep yourself in.

She has ... created a sound which is almost absurdly ill-matched to her songs.

The Instagram of albums, which is to say a source of instant nostalgia, its 70s- and 80s-inspired cocktail of disco, house, lounge, samba et al, could be merely kitsch but is elevated both by the meticulousness of its production and the sinuous seductiveness of its melodies.

It's a rather beautiful thing.

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.

The world adored the xx's Mercury Prize-winning debut album xx. Coexist is, if anything, an even finer piece of work.

It is absolutely beautiful.

These songs bounce, buzz and bubble along with timeless life.

From the self-mockingly banal title onwards, it confirms them as that rare thing: a band able to combine grandiosity and groundedness.

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.

It's all very gladsome, technically fine and will lift your day. But, as with all such heritaged musics, it won't make your day over. Pleasant though.

Stuart Staples and his band delivering nine pieces of beautiful bossa-nova noir, daydreamy reverie and existential easy listening.

The songs are mostly shaped in her traditional chord-to-chord method, their melodies looping behind the tempo of the guitars and, for once, in a spirit of uplift.

Even if [Psychedelic Pill is not essential], it's by some way the best non-essential album Neil Young has ever made.

A dance album that spins the decks back to the turn of the millennium.

Their music which, as it happens, is a thrilling mix of raw vocal harmonies, rattling homemade guitars and handclaps.

There are enough album tracks and B-sides to make the case that what we actually had in 10cc was a British Steely Dan: clever, funny and funky as hell when they wanted to be.

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.