Each thoughtful sonic soundscape washes elegantly into the next, toward the long, lush finale.

It is a dream of an album. I’m just not sure it will make any sense when you wake up.

This is an uplifting concert--and here's to the next 50 years of The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

From the headlong punk-meets-acid-house charge of Ill Ray (The King) to the stadium campfire singalong of Put Your Life on It, Kasabian deliver hooks, headshots and upper cuts in a barrage of punchy sounds and aggressive attitude.

This is music that is following its own agenda, whose funky energy is innate. It’s been absorbing external influences for centuries and is keeping on doing so in today’s crazy, accelerated postmodern world.

This is a hugely impressive introduction to a dynamic, arresting talent.

Though her career has been occasional, momentum from a recent Spex reunion has resulted in this terrific solo record, which channels her kitschy style into a synthy pop sound.

Following 2009's hookup with Drive-By Truckers, Potato Hole, his latest record finds him backed by hip hop combo The Roots, who nudge the 66-year-old organist towards his funkiest excursion in years.

Nelson’s bravura title track had a defiant vigour when Sinatra delivered it as a mid-life crisis anthem in 1966, but it takes on a different pathos when gently sung in the weathered tones of an octogenarian. ... Nelson’s jazzy combo and luscious string arrangements are more faithful to the old swing style. These versions are not intended to replace, reinvent or even rival the originals, simply to bring them back into the light.

Twenty-six years after their last album, 58-year-old Rowland and his roughly reassembled crew have made a record that manages to combine fresh new stories with the heart and nervous energy of classic Dexys.

Rizzle Kicks are evidently clever, well-mannered fellows. Refreshingly, they don’t pretend to be anything else.

The Thrill of It All is stripped back to bare emotional bones, shot through with vulnerability and sensitivity, not so much wearing its heart on its sleeve as proffering an open vein.

Cee Lo openly parades his retro tastes, but his outrageous personality invests them with a contemporary edge.

All 12 are of a consistently high standard and sung with feeling.

It may be interesting to hear what Flowers would do if he could resist the urge to turn the dial up to 11 every time, but you really can’t fault his ambition when he delivers another album that is all killer, no filler.

Over 13 songs, it’s almost impossible not to fidget and move to glitchy drum’n’bass (Kammy), dreamy dub-step (Bleu) or echoey R’n’B-meets-soulful house (Kelly). Fred has done it…(dare we say?) again.

They don’t quite sound like the finished article, but there is a virtuous sense of their trying to make music in service of something profound.

Forster all too humbly paints himself as a modest talent next to his late foil’s melodic genius, yet this eighth solo outing is packed as ever with minimal, carefully chiselled, acoustic-thrumming arrangements, topped by extraordinary lyric writing.

Formentera is a gratifying record stuffed with perfectly crafted songs by a band completely at ease in their own skin.

This whole album sounds like an attempt to seize and memorialise the giddy freedoms of youth. Like the best indie bands, the Big Moon sound like a gang you would want to belong to--whatever your gender.

His sound has matured considerably: he's less intent on blowing your ears off with dancehall's battery, than offering his own, still highly piquant take on slow-grind R&B.

The Dream is sensuous and seductive, but it often lingers on the borderline of turning into a nightmare.

A chamber piece that spills blood all over the hotel carpet, Room 29 is an understated triumph.

It may be resolutely old-fashioned and, for sure, we’ve heard it all before, but the sheer pleasure in Porter’s singing is all but impossible to resist.

Full of tunes and pizzazz, it's unexpectedly good fun.

The way their voices swoop and bend together is a delight.

It is another gem in an already glittering canon.

She elegantly smudges the borders of a brass and banjo-driven sound with sophisticated little experiments in rhythm, production and arrangement.