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".