He's a pop artist of substance, and as such brings a touch of class and sufficient flavour of another genre to the mainstream to make music that's interesting and lasting.

Luck in the Valley finds him totally at home on the ranch, sat in his rocking chair and surrounded by friends gathered around the porch deck. It’s a fitting last hurrah from a true American primitive.

The duo has followed through admirably with Invariable Heartache, a record that seeps with clear-eyed hope, regret and wisdom.

A bewildering but fun bedlam seems to be their default setting, if the first half-dozen or so tracks are anything to go by.

Clearly, the reduction in volume and scale has lead to fantastic musical growth--a fine, accomplished and emotional album that ranks among his very best.

A compact and incredibly gratifying introduction to a new lo-fi talent.

Parton's 41st studio LP sparkles with the enthusiasm of a debut.

There’s no better way to shut out the din than by putting this record on.

It's just one eye-opening surge of splendour, like the first gasp of a newborn baby taking in the world for the very first time. The difference with this album: that sense of wonder never fades.

[An] impressive debut album.

La Voyage Dans La Lune is the 'most Air' thing this duo may ever craft, a perfect set with which to remind audiences of their continuing excellence.

Where that album [2008’s Supreme Balloon] over-extended a limited palette, this set bridles with impish imagination.

Psychedelic, kaleidoscopic pop... heady and brilliant.

There are many arguments for and against Tyler's mouth and mind, but once the language barrier is crossed and ears become numb, the real brilliance of Goblin can be heard.

Ambitious, and brilliant, fourth LP from the New York MC.

They continue to make music that sounds like it cares how you are.

This is the sound of pigeonhole-free ambition slowly being realised, and it's sounding great.

The pleasure in Beirut's music has always largely been in what it evokes – a kind of melancholy tempered with optimism and sometimes celebration. And it evokes marvellously here: whatever current Condon found himself caught up in that led to the creation of these songs, it's one you feel he's happy to coast a while yet.

Their most adventurous, confident and engaging record in years.

Remind[s] you just what a good singer the rocking knight can be. And after years of personal and professional earnestness, he sounds like he's having fun.

Hercules and Love Affair have vaulted over any second album worries with a jubilant and celebratory collection of large tunes.

So sublime are these ten spectral soundtracks to the minutiae of a modern lover's tribulations that their sorrow is translated into something more uplifting than unsettling.

Fly Zone is streamlined, its production consistently excellent despite numerous contributors.

Sure enough, complicated, esoteric and, yes, really quite bonkers, it turns out to be. By the same token, Tomorrow, In a Year is also a work of vaulting ambition whose ‘seriousness’ is written on its metaphorical sleeve and whose sense of gravity and ascetic rigour give Scott Walker’s Tilt or The Drift a run for their artily uncompromising money.

Her songs fall easily on the ear, her rhyming schemes are adroit and she writes intelligently on serious subjects.

If only all bands had the guts and honesty of The Maccabees, maybe they'd get round to making third records as good as this.

This is electro-pop with palpable emotion possessing its fizzing keys, guided by a vocal performance that underplays the fraught feelings found on the lyric sheet.

There are impressive experimental excursions here, too: take Never Say Never, a whirl of backwards beats, twinkling harps and discombobulated vocals that’s both utterly disorientating and quite delightful.