Producer Hal Willner has surrounded Marianne Faithfull with some great New Orleans musicians, and got her covering a few Crescent City soul numbers. But it's not territory she occupies comfortably: she doesn't have the abandon to animate Joe & Ann's "Gee Baby", and her delivery of Allen Toussaint's "Back in Baby's Arms" is painfully stilted.

F.A.M.E. is equal parts bubblebath boudoir soul and more bullish beat-driven floor-fillers, tricked out with familiar guests like Timbaland and Justin Bieber, the most lively of which is Busta Rhymes's babble-rap over the Clangers-style bleeps of "Look at Me Now".

Comeback albums, it seems, are not just for other bands to do.

The Kentucky combo Cage the Elephant manage to find a new wrinkle on the face of US indie-punk, thanks to an enthusiasm for yoking catchy melodies to abrasive guitar riffs that recalls the Pixies.

But it's Alex Glasgow's lament "Close the Coalhouse Door" that packs the most powerful punch, the cyclical piano like a minimalist murmur behind Becky's poignant delivery.

It lacks both unity and quality.

This is a guitarists' mutual appreciation society affair that ought to be unbearable, but is actually gorgeous, thanks to the modest brilliance of those involved.

The air of exultant expectation recollected in tranquility pervades the entire album, with Garvey confiding memories and misgivings to the natural world in "The River" and "The Birds", the latter appointed "the keepers of our secrets", while the former ultimately washes them out to the west-facing sea.

This 2CD set features one disc of early rarities, and one of sundry items from Cash's Columbia catalogue--not the most comfortable combination, but not without interest.

Overall, a confident, clear-headed quantum leap beyond their previous work.

There are moments on Degeneration Street that suggest Dears' creative mainspring Murray Lightburn is hoping to effect an Arcade Fire-style vault from indie saltmines to popularity; but it's all too little, and at five albums into their career, too late for that.

The fingering and virtuoso touches, the deft harmonics, the subtle string-bends are all delivered with minimal fuss throughout, whether it's a solo piece like the wistful "Dery Miss Grsk", the Bach transposition "Cello Prelude In G", which works so well with his instrument or the jaunty ragtime of "Ugly James".

Now it's here, and it's a bit of a letdown.

Certainly, the recurrent themes of conclusion, starting over and rebuilding do lend it a muscular sense of purpose.

It's their most cohesive album in some time.

The only mis-step on the album is "Boeing 737", a pounding, splashy stomp whose brash incoherence perhaps disguises a commentary on the twin towers attacks. It seems brutish and crude set alongside the rest of the album, which otherwise has the kind of stylistic and atmospheric unity that reminds one of what albums can offer that no other format can match.

Todd Snider has the kind of audience rapport that comes only through years of one-night stands and the confidence that builds in one's character – even if that character is of an inveterate ne'er-do-well peacenik, wryly proud of his inability to grow old gracefully.

Wagner's hesitant delivery is poignantly underscored by Tidwell's more emotive phrasing, while the arrangements of neat picking and weeping fiddle are applied with customary understatement.

Blessed improves upon 2008's lacklustre Little Honey simply because it boasts a better set of songs, most of which are treated to Williams's signature style of soul-tinged country-blues, using organ and pedal-steel guitar to light her sandpaper vocal rasp.

Beady Eye may be just Oasis minus Noel, but this debut is rather better than the past few Oasis albums, if sadly no more innovative.

Yet as wretched as his characters often are, Cornog always affords them the dignity of their own volition.

It has everything the Adele album lacks: real emotional insight, couched in genuinely soulful arrangements bristling with imagination.

The simpler arrangements allow more room for Rhys's sleek harmonies to drive his whimsical wordplay: accordingly, the album has the lush, beguiling charm of a sun-kissed soft-rock album by The Beach Boys or The Young Rascals.

Arbouretum deal in an odd blend of folk and heavy rock, these seven tracks trudging along like a deep-sea diver traversing the sea bed in ten-league boots.

Like Picasso, he acknowledges that the chief enemy of creativity is good taste--which is just as well, since it's not a quality with which he seems over-burdened on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. For which we should all be thankful.

The King of Limbs sounds like the bastard offspring of dubstep and Nico Muhly, the brilliant composer whose string and choral arrangements inhabit the open spaces between contemporary classical and art-rock.

It's a dub reimagining that takes the material further out, into a soundscape whose fractured dubstep tones, sped-up samples and drum'n'bass beats only occasionally work in its favour.

The secret is their infallible way with a tune: tracks such as "Get Away" and the single "Georgia" possess a beguiling melodic charm that illuminates the lo-fi boy/girl vocal delivery of Blumberg and his sister Ilana, bringing uplift where once all might have been gloom.