Freighted deep with lugubrious rolls of oily bass, sandy inhalations of desert strings, holy intonations and salty lust, Push the Sky Away is the audio equivalent of bathing in the Dead Sea.

Dealing frankly with love, rejection, frustration, self-doubt and self-acceptance, almost every one of the 10 tracks is catchy and distinctive enough to become a hit.

Those same multilayered textures [in Loveless] are all here, and if anything there are more finely chiselled planes of fresh variation: there is a discipline as well as wildness behind the distortion.

If you're already a Biffy Clyro fan, Opposites might be your idea of a masterpiece. If you're new to Biffy, it'll just give you a headache.

While these songs are like discarded pub furniture, Bramwell sounds like a wiley old alley cat, sat on top of it and looking up.

As with previous Tarantino soundtracks, this is an enjoyable, carefully constructed set, throwing up more hits than misses--and the occasional gem--but ultimately its songs will be brought to life on the big screen.

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

This anthology provides a marvellous opportunity to revisit Mitchell in her glorious prime. Indispensable.

These soft shoe shuffles sway up and down the same few notes, with the affectionate embrace of mother of the groom dances.

Scrub away reputations and this album is so much stronger than the latter-day works of many of Fay's contemporaries.

Hegarty has mastered the art of turning performance into a kind of ritual ceremony and the magic of these symphonic concert recordings blows their previously released versions out of the water.

Overall the compilation makes its way towards a bigger story of many ideas, emotions and textures.

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

It is not unimpressive, with energy and attack and flashes of wit but there are too few of the kind of mad pop moments that make you stop in your tracks and not enough evidence that Williams is stretching and growing as a songwriting talent.

The central weakness is that, no matter how good the songs, you don't get swept away with the emotion of great (hit) lyrics.

She wants to deliver good, solid, heartfelt slabs of it. And on those terms, her fifth studio album is her best record in years.

It's a mixed bag.

While the Stones may not have struck oil with these songs, their energy remains undimmed, their back catalogue endlessly renewable.

This is an album of rare truth and grace.

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

It's a loose album, an indulgent album, and not all likeable but, unlike any other outfit of their tenure, they maintain a raw punch as if recording in a local bar for the sheer blast of it.

It's frustrating, then, when Swift reverts back to type. Too many of the songs on this bloated 16-track album revisit the gently strummed verses and characterless choruses of her previous work.

The highlight [of Mystic Pinball] is an affecting ballad called No Wicked Grin. It's Hiatt at his tender best.

ADespite occasionally drawing blood, The Haunted Man doesn't live up to its stripped and dangerous cover, often retreating to gambol about in the backwaters of Khan's imagination.

Muse's rather absurd spaceship may be welded together from bits of other acts--but it still flies.

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

The 13 songs, written between 1972 and 2001, show off the range and subtlety of Lowe's songwriting.

Her second album, however, belatedly delivers on all Goulding's latent promise.