It's a feisty, assertive affair, but let down by weak production and a lack of musical focus.

White's own voice lacks the character to drive his songs, but Big Inner is a hugely impressive debut nonetheless.

It's a virtually faultless set, with plenty of neat touches personalising familiar material.

Centralia is by far the most satisfying release to date by the Brooklyn-based minimalist post-rock duo Mountains.

Let It All In is stylishly rendered in simple instrumental colours, but it's not the cheeriest of experiences.

The Lost Sirens actually bests its parent album, which was not New Order's finest hour.

With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.

An album that perhaps skips too easily from one style to another for its own good, though there are other sublime moments.

It's all delivered with customary warmth and swing from Miller's home studio.

It's an absorbing, sometimes harrowing ride.

The Menahan Street Band have proven a fertile sampling source for such as Jay-Z, Kid Cudi and 50 Cent, and it's not hard to tell why listening to the grooves on this latest album.

It's presented as 39 miniature sonic studies in the vein of European "library music" fragments, interspersed with dialogue clips from the movie and sound effects to evoke the protagonist's deteriorating mindset.

Stockport quartet 10cc were, in this regard, the British equivalent of Steely Dan, applying advanced musical and lyrical skills initially to the humble task of sardonic pop pastiches like "Donna" and, as they developed, to the socio-political satires ("The Wall Street Shuffle", "Clockwork Creep") that made up their second album, Sheet Music.

The 10 albums that comprise this box set depict one of the most extraordinary career arcs in all of pop music, testament to the questing intelligence with which Joni Mitchell approached music.

The erosion of control is palpable as the show progresses, though it's hard to tell whether it's due to damage or just boredom.

Tracey Thorn takes a wider brief than usual for her Christmas Album Tinsel & Lights, mostly avoiding the routine carols and standards in favour of left-field choices.

Part of its success is due to Stevens' uniquely ambivalent position, at once ingenious and ingenuous.

[Title track "Mars" is] a rare misstep on an album that looks to both East and West, and reaches simultaneously into the past and the future.

Traveling Alone sounds like her best album yet.

Van Morrison's best album in some while is a set of songs that, despite the relaxed tone of their jazz-blues settings, foam with indignation about the venality of capitalist adventurism.

Truly, the album of a lifetime.

Elsewhere, these grand new performances with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra serve to pinion some songs too fixedly.

The result is an engaging, softly sensuous air of desolation, emotion recollected in tranquility.

The big Brill concept doesn't work, Cahn, Cooke and Ellington not being song-factory writers.

Wu Block suffers from the absence of a few vital presences, in particular Wu Tang producer the RZA.

This third album sounds exhausted, worn out rather than careworn.

Bruno Mars is a talented chap, he's forced to demean his abilities by echoing other artists' former glories on Unorthodox Jukebox, whose title all but gives the game away.

His songs may reference antiquities like Ernest Hemingway, but the drum programmes, autotuned vocals and synth sequences are more modern than the usual country-rock favoured by septuagenarian troubadours.

His quest to bring sexy back to Britain founders amid gauche come-ons ("Your aura/ It's so shiny") and strained emoting.

Too much of the album is drably formulaic, a series of gambits shuffled into passable shapes rather than memorable songs.

When she sticks to the disco-pop staples of celebrating youth and dancing and fun, in tracks like "Young", "Live It Up" and "Live Your Life", once the energy dissipates, so do the songs, evaporating as if they never existed.

The Zolas are a Canadian indie band whose outsider-pop songs evoke a keen sense of disjunction with the modern world.

There is a strangely addictive quality to hearing something quite so aggressively sui generis as this.

An extra eight-track CD of new material, which is our primary concern here. [It does not] adds much to the Minaj experience.

The results evoke the fellowship of the emotionally bruised in a variety of ways.

The folksy settings are tinted with brooding strings and tearful pedal steel, adding colour to well-turned lines.

They've certainly lost much of their vocal character to the dreaded auto-tune, without gaining much by recompense.

While Take The Crown undoubtedly contains many individual tracks sure to tickle the mainstream pop palate, that doesn't in itself make for a great album.

Example's obvious delight in sensory experience shines through in his intricate play of syllables and the warmth of his singing voice. His best yet.

There's an assured balance of passion and restraint in his takes on "I'd Rather Go Blind" and "I Only Have Eyes For You", though his "Lonely Avenue" lacks Ray Charles' relaxed slouch.

It's a surprisingly enjoyable transformation for some of the tunes.

["When It's All Over"] itself is one of the worst here, mercifully outnumbered by the merely adequate and the few standout songs.

The Staves are like a distillation of all that's best about the folk heritages of England and America.

Though less ambitious than 2009's The Liberty of Norton Folgate, Madness's Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da confirms the benefits of spreading songwriting chores among the entire band.

The poorest served is hapless Ellie Goulding, struggling against the hurtling momentum of "I Need Your Love"; more successful is Florence Welch on "Sweet Nothing".

In some cases, that sugary voice which works so well as a pop vehicle lacks the full-bodied character to carry a big ballad.

The Weeknd weasels his way queasily into unprotected affections under cover of arrangements whose dark, miasmic synth tones and itchy, sludgy rhythms blend the apparently conflicting worlds of R&B and industrial new-wave.

Whereas most 75-minute albums of short songs swiftly pall, Lux never bores because it's never making foreground demands on your attention.

Hands of Glory is a smaller, more intimate work than Andrew Bird's recent albums.

Former Lives shares similarities with Gibbard's Postal Service work; elsewhere his scattershot stylistic approach weakens songs.

The Coup [has a] breadth of musical settings, which range from indie guitar riffs to itchy techno pulses to a string quartet and French horns.

Save for the opening "The Once and Future Carpenter", about a woodworker who abandons his trade to wander, this second album is pretty dismal fare.

It's all sounding terribly tired now.

Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.

Actor Maxine Peake delivers the combination of historical narrative and polemic in her blackest-pudding accent, over a gamelan tinkle of synth tones and string synths that evoke the blend of grit and gentrification now surrounding these events.

It's maritime in mood.

Young's best album in some while.

It's a gently moving meditation on the effects of solitude and nature on the soul, set to Lytle's characteristic blend of chugging guitar grooves aerated by bubbling synths and soothed by high harmonies.

This solo album is stuffed with aloof, adolescent apocalyptism and self-regard set to lumpy, mechanistic beats and cluttered arrangements.

The result is an album that in one swoop restores contemporary significance to the Presley brand.

T-Bone Burnett renders mostly old jazz numbers with a blend of period feel and modern fidelity, so they're "in the tradition" without sounding antique.

Sometimes the recurrent mood of ecstatic affirmation of life that's evident in her singing can be short-changed by arrangements that fuss to no great purpose, dissipating their impact in brittle beats and pointless detail.

Martha Wainwright's latest songs characteristically zigzag about the emotional spectrum.

This year's version features the usual relaxed jazz-pop grooves, sophisticated horn arrangements and tinder-dry ironic tone.

There's a world-weariness to some of his songs that's as attractive now as ever.

The more languid, erotic performances are balanced by ones on which Deantoni Parks' drums dictate the mood through their rattling, martial bustle.

Jeff Lynne's musical memoir of youthful influences, old songs are recast in new lights.

It's a well-crafted, stylish piece of work. But it's hard to love songs that try to hide.

In some cases, as in "Cloud on My Tongue", the orchestrations serve as little more than swaddling blankets. But the more thoughtful rearrangements can be transformative.

Most B-sides compilations seem to have been thrown together to fulfill contracts but Dead In The Boot has a form and substance beyond that.

No Doubt makes only the most tentative divergences from previously tried and tested strategies, which gives Push and Shove a character that could be described as either dated or timeless.

Some of the dullest music released all year.

Babel bowls along with the ebullient energy one expects of Mumford & Sons, like a cider-soused hoedown at an after-hours lock-in. But while this works to the advantage of their more rousing sentiments, it tends to iron out the subtler creases in some of the songs.

The music Kanye West reserves for his own albums is so much more ambitious than that apportioned to the collaborations on this compilation from his new label, Good Music. Which isn't to say it's not effective.

It's a perfunctory affair, further fragmented on my download version by the muting of Wayne's stream of expletives, which renders large parts of it unintelligible.

Not bad, and nice for Nick. But for every good 'un, there's a dull 'un too.

Elysium is bookended by two of the best songs the Pet Shop Boys have written in years, but flags badly in between.

There's a danger of art-rock overload in this alliance of two cerebral music talents, but Love This Giant succeeds remarkably well.

It's on "Early Roman Kings" that the various strains come together most effectively, with Hidalgo's organ added to another Muddy Waters blues-stomp groove, and Dylan blurring history again in his depiction of the titular Romans "in their sharkskin suits, bowties and buttons, with their high-top shoes" – neatly underlining the gangsterism of imperial invaders of all eras.

Deceptively uneasy listening at times, but worth the effort.

Thanks to her faithful for enabling the rest of us to enjoy Correa's gauzy, melodic dream-pop.

[Lead singer] Justin Young assert[s] that he's "too self-absorbed" to be the voice of a generation. This wouldn't be so bad if the music didn't follow suit, with lumpen punk-rock grinds and spartan guitar-rock trudges.

Bouger Le Monde offers a celebration of life.

On their sixth album, Calexico finally sound more like a band with memorable, individual songs, than a project dedicated to creating audio soundscapes evocative of the American southwest.

While there's some interesting moments to be found here, for the most part Centipede Hz is a fatiguing experience.

This alliance with The Orb is positive for both parties, Perry providing a tighter rein on their tendency to meander, while they furnish him with a different terrain to his usual dub skanks.

On [Cat Power] Marshall has changed direction yet again, abandoning her soul charm for something much less appealing.... But her natural grace shines through on "3, 6, 9"... and "Ruin."

The results are simply irritating, in so many ways.

Bloc Party's touchstones remain firmly rooted in their indie upbringing.

The result is a sort of mannered, formalist rusticity that only occasionally develops a convincing momentum.

Few musicians ever achieve such complete dominance and superiority on their instrument as Jerry Douglas: not a single voice is raised in challenge to Douglas's mastery of the dobro. This latest, guest-laden album shows why.

The tone here is more robust than [Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down's] thoughtful reflections on history and poverty, taking its cue rather from the ribald pillorying of conservatives in tracks like "No Banker Left Behind" and "I Want My Crown".

A frustrating experience overall.

The resulting extended instrumental palette has brought a new depth to the arrangements but has added little transparency to Yorkston's often bewildering lyrics.

This is actually one of the Lips' more coherent efforts, despite its wild diversity and devil-may-care attitude.

Overall: must try harder. Or appear to.

Plan B acquits himself remarkably well here.