It's quite easy to envisage entire arenas punching the air to songs like these and the pounding “You're Gonna Get It”, one of two tracks featuring Paul Weller.

Now, it appears to have been reduced to simply a checklist of familiar sounds and effects, harnessed to the dullest beats imaginable, and dependent on outside collaborators for interest.

Produced in understated manner by Tucker Martine, the songs' clean pop lines are revealed with the minimum of decorative detail.

London with the Lights On is pretty thin fare, with too many tracks collapsing under the weight of excess sass.

Tales of a Grasswidow is easily CocoRosie's most satisfying, fully realised work so far.

Throughout, there's a fresh impetus to Tricky's musical muse that enables his dark imaginings to connect again with beautiful simplicity.

Stephen McRobbie's wan vocals remain an acquired taste, but the way the music lightly folds in dark and light, innocence and experience, reserve and euphoria, lifts the likes of "Slow Summits" and "Summer Rain".

Once I Was an Eagle is a work that demands to be taken as a whole, another reminder of the peculiar power of the album form, despite frequent premature declarations of its redundancy.

It certainly goes beyond his retro-jazz comfort zone, with piercing electric organ and electric piano lending a vibrant, visceral edge to several songs.

Wilderness uses wildlife traits as jumping-off points for enigmatic tales in typical Handsome Family manner.

The warm but haunting Trouble Will Find Me will surely cement their accession to the rock mainstream.

"Irish" and "Jetplane" bring a late flicker of focus to the proceedings, but the band's resolute primitivism works to their detriment.

MS MR deal in a similar kind of blandly alienated, metrosexual pop to Hurts, with Lizzy Plapinger's sultry-soulful vocals allied to Max Hershenow's electronic pop arrangements.

The teaming of Mark Lanegan with multi-instrumentalist bluesman Duke Garwood is an alliance of congruent attitudes and approaches.

More Light is Primal Scream's best effort in some time.

It all goes wrong later on, in a limp succession of ersatz disco ("Sexual Religion"), routine raunch-rock ("Finest Woman") and empty sentiments like "Pure Love", yet another gloss on Pachelbel's Canon.

Experimentation is generally to be applauded, but too often here it works to the detriment of the songs.

Like their Discovery LP which laid fresh pathways for pop and dance in 2001, Random Access Memories breathes life into the safe music that dominates today’s charts, with its sheer ambition.

The follow-up to Let Them Talk follows a similar format of easy-rolling jazz arrangements and simpatico guest spots supporting Hugh Laurie's blues piano.

All very authentic and in the room.

Behind the rococo charm lurks a subtle emotional power.

Oddly appealing overall, when not tending too much toward the twisted.

While it's pleasantly effected for the most part, it's hard to get involved in someone else's nostalgia.

Hubcap Music finds Seasick Steve back on form, with an album steeped in gritty boogie and even grittier attitude.

In places, it's a disastrously over-egged pudding.

Virtually every piece is too leisurely extended beyond its natural span.

Just when you think it's done, it finds another gear through the ingenious addition of a subtle offbeat that kicks the groove up a notch--the kind of sly, brilliant touch that suggests Rudimental are worthy heirs to the likes of Soul II Soul and Basement Jaxx.

Sadly, the decision to tell Feltrinelli's story in the same period technopop music as Stainless Style sabotages its impact.

Throughout, he's supported by Stooges guitar riffing of brutal directness and simplicity, occasionally fattened by the horns that lend an apt touch of soul sleaze to the latter track.

The title track slips from minimalist cycling harpsichord to portentous organ and guitar arpeggios before fading mid-lyric, while the cod-oriental motif of “Entertainment” offers a fond memory of a time when such things didn't seem quite so patronising.

It's Bruni's intimacy that's the album's most alluring aspect.

#willpower is stuffed with sounds that, while in no sense as cutting-edge as he likes to make out, crest the wave of the popular.

This debut offering as Snoop Lion has much to recommend it, not least the infectious grooves devised by Diplo's Major Lazer production team.

On the excellent Wheelhouse, Brad Paisley tiptoes a fine line between satisfying his core country audience and encouraging them to more adventurous attitudes.

It's punk-folk pop with its heart on its sleeve and urgency overwhelming reflection, closer to Green Day than, say, Leonard Cohen.

It's an album as hard to pin down as fog, but redeemed by moments of transcendent beauty.

Inspiration Information [is] repackaged with an extra disc of pieces recorded since then, which show his abilities undiminished by age.

Way To Blue avoids the usual patchwork-quilt pitfalls of style and quality that afflict most tribute albums.

It's Springsteen territory, occupied with pride in songs like “21st Century Blues” and the elegiac closer “Remember Me”.

So long as you're not paying close attention, it's a beguiling enough experience.

It's dizzying psychedelic country in finest Meat Puppets tradition, full of slightly off-centre harmonies in Grateful Dead manner, and plenty of Kirkwood's swirling, trippy guitar.

State sees Todd Rundgren deliver his customary laconic commentaries on a world gone mad from behind a wall of rock, techno and dubstep riffs.

It's gimmicky, sure, but also pretty irresistible.

Sadly, WOAPD is devoid of the sly wit of Vile's early material, and consists of mid-paced alt rock, reminiscent of the Dandy Warhols in a coma.

At its best, Overgrown proves that James Blake doesn't need to listen to anyone's advice. He's doing fine already.

It's long (nearly 100 minutes), strange, disturbing, uncomfortable, challenging. But it never fails to fascinate.

Well-made mid-American roots-rock by a young Oklahoman, who may harbour legitimate Springsteen/Fogerty fantasies.

Nomad confirms Bombino's promise, but with a few added surprises.

To the delicate folk of their earlier work has been added a robustness that takes the Brighton-based six-piece in the direction of Blur.

Wolf's mix of retro soul, moody synths and backwards beats doesn't add up to his masterpiece, but the fan-stalker narrative "Colossus/The Bridge of Love" is his own "Stan".

Beautiful, blissful melodies are buried in there.

Valhalla Dancehall found British Sea Power somewhat becalmed, but Machineries Of Joy gets them moving again, albeit in a variety of directions.

It features blues standards remodelled as reggae skanks, bland takes on the Great American Songbook, and too much acoustic guitar and dobro.

Roth fits Hunter like a glove, bringing out the warmth of his brass section and framing his raw voice in perfectly judged R&B arrangements that spark and bounce.

They're virtually unrecognisable as the band that made their game-changing debut, save perhaps for "All the Time."

It's ironic that soul music dominates, given Collins' lack of its most crucial element: a commanding vocal presence.

Depeche Mode's weakest album in some while.

Off the Record contains few surprises, with several tracks pleasantly echoing his time as co-composer of some of the group's most glorious pieces.

Producer Ed Buller has given the band a bigger sound that works well on the rolling U2-esque riff to “Barriers”, but parts of the album still sag under expectations.

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck augments his usual reedy Americana stylings with some unexpected developments on Muchacho.

This throws most of one's attention on the vocals, always the most engagingly evanescent aspect of their sound.

There's nothing too innovative about Timbaland's production, but it's probably as reliable a set of grooves as R&B will spawn this year, custom-tailored to carry the singer's gentle falsetto.

Only much later, in “There Will Be a Reckoning”, does the familiar Bragg anger kick in significantly.... it's outnumbered here by more sensitive songs about things like relationship difficulties and dying.

Kouyate's electrification of his ngoni lute is just as effective a sign of resistance: fed through a wah-wah pedal, his serpentine, fleet-fingered lead lines gain a fresh, assertive power on songs.

Olafur Arnalds' third album, For Now I Am Winter, is an exemplary suite of Icelandic music, blending American minimalist techniques with European sensibilities.

On his most rewarding release since The Beta Band, Steve Mason grapples with politics both public and personal, but in a warm, engaging manner that draws the listener in.

“Here We Are” and “Back When We Were Beautiful” treat ageing with wistful nobility, Harris's voice cracking poignantly on the latter, while Crowell delivers a trenchant version of Kris Kristofferson's self-lacerating drug song “Chase the Feeling.”

It shifts desultorily from style to style, with songs barely hanging around long enough to state their case.

Innovation, clearly, is not the highest of their priorities. In truth, everything comes a distant second to style.

It's all warmly wrought and pretty, if a trifle insubstantial at times.

While Graffiti on the Train is a significant improvement, it's still something of a patchwork affair.

Tracks such as the languid instrumental “Easy Blues”--which lives up to its name--and “Earth Blues”, a slippery sci-fi number, are worth the price of admission.

It ticks along unremarkably on smudges of synthesiser and shuffling drum programmes, augmented by acoustic guitar or synthetic brass stabs.

The folksy, pastel tints and subtly uncoiling emotional landscapes have been supplanted by cluttered arrangements and astringent timbres.

Saxophonist Lovano's third album with his two-drummer quintet is a very mixed affair.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

For all his personable self-deprecation, the blend of operatic pop on which his reputation is built seems strangely thin and insipid.

Large parts of Blak and Blu are spent crooning falsetto soul numbers or cranking out chunky rockers in the vein of the Stones and Bob Seger.

This follow-up builds on the feisty freshness of Caitlin Rose's Own Side Now, her debut from 2010.

This follow-up to the original 2006 Rogue's Gallery sea-shanty compilation is slightly less salty but just as broad-ranging musically.

It's all typically hard work to decipher, both lyrically and musically, but unlike Yorke's earlier endeavours with Radiohead, this time I'm rather less convinced that it's going to be worth the effort. It's certainly less fun.

Some of the riffs are winners, but it's just not enough to carry the album.

Heidi Talbot employs an engaging blend of ancient and modern on Angels Without Wings.

On their tribute to The Everly Brothers, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy avoid the obvious hits in favour of more unfamiliar items from the brothers' repertoire.

As ever, it's an eclectic mix of styles.

There's often a mismatch of temperament between the most brutally juddering of Lidell's quacking synth grooves and the floaty, unanchored manner of his vocal lines.

These are big themes, dealt with imaginatively by a singer and a band both operating at the peak of their powers. Album of the year?

It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.

It's a deeply satisfying album, steeped in mystery and enchantment.

Mark Lanegan's darkly knowing interpretation is one of the highlights of this compilation tribute.

[The first three] tracks follow fairly seamlessly on from MBV's previous work, but thereafter subtle changes are applied that tug the album into pastures new.

Electric finds Richard Thompson at his most stripped-down and potent.

It's a one-sided album: following the soulful “Late Night”, things plummet badly in the second half.

Ron Sexsmith writes with a similar emotional honesty to Mark Everett, but in a more classic style, akin to the moving simplicity of Tim Hardin.

The album features slow-burning grooves that build steadily from modestly minimal to euphorically exultant.

This UK quartet conjure a beguiling air of eternal youth in all its charming contradictions, a sunburst of yearning, tedium and expectation.

Eels songwriter Mark "E" Everett has always trod a peculiar, idiosyncratic path that runs parallel to most pop music, but here he collides with it in such a tender, open way that the emotional hit of some songs is quite shocking.

It's an unashamedly middle-aged affair, from the quietly moving affirmation of devotion in "Two Children" to the comforting reverie of "I Remember You".