Brilliantly melds the aural imagery of Andrew Hill's '60s Blue Note classic Judgment! with contemporary electronica effects.

Just a Little Lovin' achieves the unlikely: a tribute to an immortal artist which both glorifies its subject and elevates the worshipper kneeling at her altar.

With results that transcend category, Willis sounds like an artist renewed.

More skilled than the debut, Lunatico is no sophomore slump, though hardcore house music fans may want to wait for remixes.

Each [song] is epic (and not in the bad Creed "arms-spread-on-the-mountaintop" way): packing in more drama, billowing guitar solos and stealth pop hooks than the Strokes' entire back catalog.

Working Man's Cafe feels like exactly the album a 60-something rocker would craft--assured and direct yet searching and restless, a glimpse into the head of a man who's comfortable in his skin but still wonders how he fits into a world that seems to be turning faster and stranger as the years pass by.

Even when he turns down the volume, he never tones down the creative intensity.

Although this isn't the masterpiece that the self-titled Black Mountain disc was, it certainly gives devotees lots more music to listen to until their next disc comes around.

I Can’t Stop blows away the dust and finds more life and gutbucket flash in a seemingly inexhaustible vein.

Corralling such a large cast into anything like a coherent vision is no easy task, but it's one that the Concretes manage with some aplomb on a consistently spectacular album. [Amazon UK]

Stirrat and Sansone revisit the immaculate production of their previous work, but with greater cohesion and broader instrumentation.

Pay the Devil reiterates Morrison's own musical diversity and flair for making any song his own.

The freshness of the arrangements appeals throughout.

Like so many all-star bands before them, The Raconteurs could be one and done. But don't place the blame on this fertile and genuine debut.

Amiina enchant like a peek inside an elven gathering under the roots of Yggdrasil.

There's not a groan-worthy song on this standout rock/pop/folk/blues album.

Here he shows more quirky imagination and inventive musicianship than on any of his earlier efforts.

On their third album, a major-label debut with one of rock's great titles, the trio wears a newly polished sound proudly, while not coming close to straddling the sell-out ledge.

It's what Sigur Ros might sound like if they came from Arizona, and it's truly excellent.

Hersh has also masterfully tamed her potent vocal quirks here, using them to tease one moment and hypnotize the next.

Ozomatli serve up a rhythmically seething musical mélange that serves as virtual mirror to the dizzying cultural contradictions at the heart of their Los Angeles hometown.

Oral Fixation Vol. 2 finds Shakira reclaiming some of the bite she showcased on 1998's smashing Donde Estan Los Ladrones?

The band socks away the adventurous experimentation that dogged some of its most recent records to investigate a post-September 11, war-ravaged world overflowing with urgency and significance.

A tight disc that skitters from track to shiny track with imagination and a renewed sense of rap's widened boundaries.

His most consistently compelling release in decades.

Hersh has made great personal strides since branching off on her own.

Most songs keep well away from a standard verse-chorus structure, with lyric and instrumental passages stitched together like some indie rock Frankenstein, but Minus the Bear keeps the melodies potent and the emotion high enough to prevent Planet of Ice from drifting into impenetrable shoe-gazer territory.

His performance throughout is solidly heartfelt.