Tears, Lies, and Alibis is an album worth buying mainly for two reasons. Firstly the opening track, Rains Came. It sits in what sounds like a familiar bed, but doesn't quite go where you expect it to, and is, this time, lyrically opaque. Secondly, you can drown in her voice. It is fabulous; not an in-your-face "listen to how many octaves I can leap" sort of way, but it effortlessly convinces you she's lived this stuff, and means every word.

What emerges from such silliness is the pleasing sense that the duo had a blast making this record. Listening to it is also fun at times, but just as often it's damned hard work.

There's artful variety; the band may have a particular approach, but they're no purists.

It's easy to hear that they spent upwards of two years putting this album together, because First Serve is all about the joy of sublime musicianship.

Provides a vital, authentic taste of the United States, one steeped in history but simultaneously bang up-to-date.

Ferry can only do jaded and glum nowadays – but when it works, he blissfully drags you under with him.

Big Echo is an immediate, inviting listen. It’s not breaking any boundaries of inspired expression, but for what it is it’s a fine set indeed.

It might not heave with originality, but it's run through with a faith and sincerity that just about overpowers reservations.

For sheer frazzled sonics and sci-fi future textures, Heady Fwends can't be beat. Actual songs are few and far between, and anyone looking for heart-stopping melodies will be disappointed. But if you're in the mood for a 70-minute aural assault, listen no further.

In short, then: another fantastically enjoyable album from an artist whose modus operandi, above anything else, seems to be ensuring his audience is having the best possible time. Many a self-absorbed peer should take note.

There's a real intelligence about the whole album that looks to old-school hip hop and late-model disco, which were never too far apart, to provide a platform springy enough and familiar enough for the singer to launch her vocals.

It's potent stuff.

Rise Ye Sunken Ships is the embodiment of that thought – the phoenix rising from the flames, scarred yet triumphant, sad and solemn but alive.

On most of these tracks, Minaj rises to the occasion.

Intimate, intense and up close with the openly flamboyant Wainwright as he offers up himself with no full band to hide behind. It works, too.

As it stands, cumbersome arrangements and a tendency to coast weigh heavy – diluting the finished article from one of real, enduring merit to a patchy, only sporadically wonderful album.

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.

Californian duo's first LP for five years is a downbeat delight.

You could justify that over-emphasis as evidence of a broad-ranging band flexing their options and chafing at their limits. But, in songs and career alike, you could also say The Naked and Famous might benefit from a sense of pacing.

It feels rushed, like it needed more time for its many ingredients to blend.

Mojo sees Petty steep himself in Americana again, adopt a live-in-the-studio feel, and generally rock out. The results are initially quite perky, as the band crash and charge through songs, but after a couple of plays everything becomes rather dull.

It's an inverted-commas proper long-player, which manifests a relaxed mood and maintains it marvellously.

There's the occasional meander and they'd surely revel in a bigger production budget, but there's nobody remotely like them and few who seem to actually enjoy being in a band more.

EE are wilfully eccentric, and endlessly entertaining, but they know more than most how to craft a song, how to make an album.

They sound like they don't just have a warmth for the genres they plunder here: they know them inside out.

As a tastefully populist exercise this set represents a job well done.

While sentimental on occasion, and certainly possessed by a lovelorn spirit that should connect with all but the hardest of hearts, The Law of Large Numbers never comes across cloyingly, its content ably handled and expressed with the same cliché-free purity The Delgados mastered.

So while an army of griping fans and sniping critics will argue that Heligoland doesn’t match their early triumphs, or break as much new ground, there will be younger listeners who hear it as something entirely new and recognize it for the gloomily, beguiling beauty it is.

Ultimately it's The Avett Brothers' innate ability to deliver killer tunes and present them in an engaging fashion that connects them to a vintage pedigree of classic Americana artists, from Crosby, Stills & Nash and Neil Young onwards, that seduces you from track one.

Ultimately it's so much less than it could have been, given the talent involved.

A slightly sinister brand of enigma is a key component of his shtick, but it's hard not to wonder what this leftfield pop talent might come up with if he were asked to produce something a bit more crisp and definite.

The Sword have stepped up a gear with this release, and ought to crumble the defences of more than a few cynics.

Nineteen years later the band are in robust health, and Skins makes for an impressive, graceful addition to their catalogue.

She sings prettily enough, but lacks the punch that the very best artists in this very crowded market possess.

It's frequently beautiful, but perhaps too ephemeral an experience to establish a hold on anyone with more than music on their mind.

Perhaps finding mass appeal has given Tim Smith and his band-mates the confidence to take their ideas into darker, brooding waters, and further harness the influence of classic British prog-folk. But whatever the motivation, it's a mood that suits.

Coconut’s acid-fried eclecticism occasionally strains for effect and lacks the brutish vigour of its predecessor. A commendably outré listen on any other terms, it’s still a sideways-shuffle that never fully convinces.

Yet despite the melancholy mood, We’re On Your Side is far from depressing. Slaraffenland possess a wistfully melodic knack akin to The Beach Boys if they’d never managed to get off the Sloop John B, and there is much to admire in the multi-faceted arrangements.

Oh No I Love You is a warm affair and a slightly more together reflection of Tim than I Believe was, and the accompanying remix album with cosmic re-works by the likes of Seahawks is a bonus too. This deserves to find itself in as many homes as possible.

Straddling the line between art and commerce, between arena rock and cult devotion, for the first time in quite a while Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins sound energised and alive.

Lacks the otherworldly impact of their 1990s releases, but well worth listening to.

This debut album deserves to take them to a new height of recognition: it's a superbly mainstream-accessible set, and distinctive of design too.

This is an airy (but not aerated) blend of ambience, indie pop and 80s synth music, delivered with a grace that ensures they're miles from lo-fi territory.

This is a vivid selection of songs underscored by a bittersweet poetry.

Trans-Love Energies is a fine return and a worthy addition to the catalogue of a band whose path has become more of a fantastic voyage than a standard career.

The ideal album to soundtrack wistful contemplation on balmy summer days.

Small Craft... isn't an album that's going to change the world forever, but listened to in the right environment it sometimes does just that for a few minutes at a time.

It will surprise no one but the most uptight and partisan fans of either group to learn that Gilmour's honeyed, chiming and unchallenging guitar work is a sensual fit for The Orb's expansive, uplifting and soporific electronica.

The fabric of the songs seems imbued with joy, and it's testament to the quality of the songwriting that you don't feel alienated by what are incredibly personal lyrics. It's an all-inclusive love in, basically, and all the better for it.

It's a super-confident debut breadth-wise, but a misfire in terms of depth--it stretches too far and ends up light on substance and personality.

The Gate is an impeccably stylish album that coaxes jazz from unusual sources.

It's an album of perfect modern psychedelia, pristine in content but ramshackle in style.

Night Work is a far livelier and more enjoyable record than Ta-Dah, which was a modest album with much to be modest about. But the nagging sense that Scissor Sisters aren't living up to the promise of their multifaceted, emotionally rich debut is slowly being replaced by the suspicion that they never will.

This is a full-on, joyous, positive album that makes you feel like celebrating.

It sounds like all involved had fun putting this one together, and the listening experience is a pretty fun one too.

Bastards' crew turns in a commendably original 13 tracks.

He has created a work of insidious beauty: creeping, pervasive and better for it.

These four tracks--perhaps movements would be a more appropriate term--feel entirely alive, a spontaneous weld of anxious beats, the odd squirl of guitar and distortion, corrupted vocals and deep, chasmic bass.

King of the Beach offers a fascinating insight into the slightly skew-whiff mind of this talented young artist, now well on the way to mastering what could turn out to be an incredibly inventive career.

It's come late, but Basic Instinct is one of the best RnB albums of the year.

But subtle though it is, Tarwater's Bernd Jestram--who mixed the album--ensures that the imaginative details sparkle, so while Nes' world may at times sound familiar, it's still very much her own, a comforting and alluring one into which to retreat.

Forget austere, bleak, slavishly traditional renditions – this is Roberts and Morrison we're talking about. These love and 'waulking' songs – one of them originally sung by women weaving tweed – are expansive, joyful, mysterious things.

Even when it sounds routine – Simple Song sounds exactly like a Shins song written to order – it works, simultaneously mixing zippy and plangent, joy and resignation.

Each track is certainly jam-packed with ideas, but they are woven tight and worked to perfection with the help of producer and mixer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) who has clearly done a sterling job of making sense of Hynes’ ridiculously overactive imagination.

The criticisms are minor--a couple of tracks slide back into familiar Americana, but even then there's no sense of the band coasting.

By evolving their formula without losing sight of the elements that it’s founded upon, they have delivered their most satisfyingly ferocious set to date.

It might sound like a cavalcade of cliches on paper, but with punchy couplets and shimmering production, Trey Songz here furthers his reputation an artist head and shoulders above many a lover-man peer.

Not a bad album, but not one for the ages.

Like many a "supergroup" before them, this one doesn't quite meet the expectations that their combined reputations create.

It’s a breath of air... and, mostly, that air is crystalline fresh.

The resulting album is an intriguing mixture of the ancient and contemporary, with every track sounding different: electronica mixes with traditional African styles, reggae with funk and more.

He sings with such soulful conviction, fitting the wizened candour of these strong, memorable songs like a battered leather glove.

It's a tight 40 minutes of compacted, runaway virtuosity.

[A] likeable, if light, follow-up.

A record, then, that says nothing, beautifully. When Burrows develops a lyrical accuracy as keen as his musical one, these Arrows will truly burst hearts.

While not quite the amazing leap that Cut Copy made from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours, Zonoscope is by no means a bad album. But it is one that will probably sound better when wafting across a field during festival season.

Longstanding fans of the band will no doubt be able to immediately fall in line with Giants' odd and unique groove. But for the uninitiated, the overall sound seems crude, even amateurish... Give this album a day or two, though, and its 10 songs begin to slip into context.

There's nothing vague or routine about this elegant, charming and quietly profound record.

It's the comedown after Power's other lot are done with their sensory assault, a perfect after-hours accompaniment for contemplation and restoration.

Outside is a celebration of his recovery--a great album on its own terms, and truly remarkable given how close it presumably came to never being made.

It's coarse, awkward and at times lacks air; but the stubborn nature of Splazsh's development leaves you parched for more.

Collapse into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event.

The reason that such a potentially pointless enterprise in trash retro works lies entirely in Lidell’s extraordinary talents as musician and producer.

Mercer's gently off-beam pop songs are lit up colourfully by the duo's choice of arrangements.

The scattered approach showcased on this set needs polish and original thought to develop.

Social Distortion are clearly unhurried by the passage of time and passing trends. And it shows, as this is a fine addition to their canon and proves they're full of a very important quality: life.

It may be time to tinker next time around, but right now he's redeemed an awful lot of himself.

Although not musically revolutionary, Tron: Legacy suggests the adrenaline rush of a black panther roaming nearby in the darkness, heard but not yet seen.

As such it is an understated and subtlety magnificent pleasure.

Just like its predecessor, Constellations’ unfussy panoramas may initially seem a little too polite, just a tad too restrained for some, but repeated listening will unravel hidden seams of loveliness.

The Dark Crawler shows just how varied a grime album can actually be.

Peggy Sue have firmly moved from kooky and wonky soul-smith-stresses to blazing a path through fully realised songs waging war with life.

Hope is their third studio album and touted as their step up. In truth, it comes on in leaps and bounds as much as it trips and stumbles along the way.

While diehard converts won't feel short-changed, others might wonder whether the duo could have sprung more surprises similar to the appearance of the Harlem String Quartet on the classical fantasia Mozart Goes Dancing.

The Bloom and the Blight builds on the band's strengths and successfully maintains their idiosyncrasies, offering persuasive evidence that they are more than ready to step up a level themselves.

Haley is not attempting anything revolutionary on Galactic Melt, but he demonstrates a sight more depth than a lot of stuff that's been tagged as chillwave.

With O, Markus Pop has reinvented Oval using new techniques to produce a challenging sound world that's simultaneously exhausting and fascinating.

It's full of fascinating, stirring moments, but overall, Year of the Black Rainbow suffers just a little too much from its own grand, sprawling ambition.