In its own downbeat, understated way, Tinsel and Lights does more for festive good cheer than any number of more traditional Christmas albums that go straight for the razzle-dazzle.

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

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

The main duty of pop is to be catchy, and it's a duty which DNA mostly shirks miserably.

The orchestra's work is subtle and supportive rather than flashy, allowing free rein to that astonishing voice.

Based on his native London, its themes are hardly original but he handles them with likeability.

How you respond will depend on how you react to such gubbins being brought to bear on Merritt's A-to-B-and-back melodic sense. No doubting its realness, though.

The arrangements for a small rock band are rudimentary, leaving everything to depend on the song and the singer.

When he isn't sounding like a Police album track ("Locked Out of Heaven") or a Musical Youth album track ("Show Me"), he's mostly sounding like a Wham! album track (the disco-pop "Treasure" being a case in point).

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

"I Wanna Talk 2 U", [is] just one highlight of an album which manages to be sonically inventive, dense and complex and melodically accessible.

Like most pop albums, it's front-loaded. The banging club tunes, like the chart-topping "Young" are at the start, then it slumps into a series of obligatory ballads on which her unremarkable voice is somewhat stretched.

A surprising (if a little sad) return to form.

Walker is almost unique among his generation in continuing to provide mind-food instead of cosy nostalgia. If you go into Bish Bosch half-wishing he'd belt out a ballad, you leave it with absolutely no regrets.

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.

Carry Me Back ticks all the boxes: jaunty, soulful, nostalgic without being cloying.

It's tender, touching and not nearly as miserable as its subject matter suggests.

All elegantly arranged and written in self-consciously prosy style. He'd say wry. I'd say borderline sententious.

Not for the faint-hearted, nor those offended by religion. Often brilliant.

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

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.

An album which should win prizes (but won't), and hearts (and will).

Tthey run the gamut from cheesy to cheesier with Hucknall managing to make every song sound impressively dated.

An atmospheric yet danceable debut.

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

Her fifth studio album is dominated by navel-gazing auto-therapy sessions.

D&B&G is delicate and unaffected but clever and soulful--a balm and an inquisition.

Like most of Unapologetic, it's ["Nobody's Business" is] instantly forgettable.