This music declares war: face-punching, heart-stomping, no-holds-barred conflict for your ears and mind. It's an all-out assault on pop culture and its worldly accessories.

Throughout, CTE prove that they are an alternative act that's not scared of offending mainstream sensibilities. Time to break their locks.

Take a finger to your fast-forward button, however, and without Jones' handful of mediocre performances, Rome breezes past with all the tinkling, indefinable intent of a lost Michel Gondry film score.

From its start to the jazzy electro shuffle of You're Out that rounds it off, Ultraísta is consistently involving, even if it sags in the middle with Our Song. It's set to be a cult favourite rather than sell millions of copies, but this is because it contains fascinating ideas you won't hear on most pop records.

It's a consistently intriguing album and, in the long run, may even prove more enduring than its predecessor.

Despite this motley bunch, the album's sound hasn't become a random genre gumbo.

That voice, with its hint of Gene Pitney, is a piercing, precise tool which lifts him above the laddish milieu. Ubiquity may beckon.

Strange or otherwise, this is an intriguing but confused curate's egg of an album that will probably delight as many people as it repels.

So does the oddly titled Not Music hold any surprises? Yes and no: Stereolab's signature sound is very much present and correct, but this record doesn't sound like the last gasp of a long-lived and generally much-loved band.

He still swaggers with the best of them.

Almost everything is tight and controlled, returning time and again to the simple power of a pop song.

Some will call it noise, others a beautifully complicated symphony. In the end, you're not quite sure where you've landed, but you're glad you took the trip.

Lissie does not fully earn her an-artist-apart stripes with Catching a Tiger, but all the signs are here. Give the girl a second and she'll steal your heart; give her another album and she will, quite possibly, become untouchable.

This is a firecracker of an album, no doubt about that--but its longevity is appropriately limited, its stretch across the hardcore spectrum deliberately hamstrung.

This delicacy was always the logical progression, and fans growing with Orton will find much to love about Sugaring Season.

[I Bet On Sky] is arguably the equal of their 80s heyday.

Guitarist Stuart Braithwaite has certainly outstripped the generic post-rock style he helped to inspire, and does justice to some of his more direct influences--My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields and Robert Smith from The Cure, to name two. Extraneous touches, such as the occasional keyboard parts contributed by Barry Burns and the electronica-style glitches threaded through 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong, also ensure that Special Moves is a varied 75 minutes.

For all its battalions of writers and producers, Right Place Right Time is a surprisingly coherent affair.

It doubtlessly works better as a full performance, but as a stand-alone soundtrack has wonderful moments nonetheless.

Ultimately you have to admire the precision tooling, the cunningly-gauged parallel levels of bigness and blandness, the ruthlessness – the only-too-plausible machine.

Perhaps inevitably, the overall tone is reverent, verging on precious--everyone adheres faithfully to Williams' template of rugged three-chord structures, twanging guitars, weeping violins and keening pedal steel.

The broad, stuttering beats do fatigue the listening experience eventually, but music this animated and unrelenting demands a very specific ear in a very specific setting.

Originality niggles aside, the vitality and wit these Oregon upstarts display on this first LP is enough to recommend them to anyone interested in hearing a quality good-time band. Hockey seem to actually give a puck, and that’s reason enough to like ‘em for now.

Scissor Sisters have rediscovered a magic touch lacking slightly on Night Work. Their progress is marked by a developed sense of reflection, which balances their familiar flamboyance – surely to resurface with their Fraggle Rock soundtrack – quite wonderfully.

Although it’s not perfect, We Will Not Harm You is a significant advance on [his] previous efforts.

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.

[Blue Moon] could be classified as a highly advanced form of lounge music.

How Do You Do is another solid step in the right direction for Hawthorne, who shows that soul music is universal and devoid of colour, as we all can relate to difficulties and heartbreak.

It's like these songs have had their windows cleaned, a few crows' feet ironed out.

Wasted in Jackson ticks lots of stylistic boxes, and while that shouldn't usually cause problems, overall this is an album that doesn't seem to entirely know what it wants to be.

There's that genuinely disappointing sense of having heard this before, whether it be on 2007's Some Loud Thunder, their debut, or in countless other bands. Yet there's still a spark here that holds interest for a few listens.

This is a strong record, there's no doubting that--but it still feels like the best is yet to come from Danilova.

The title-track is a prime example of the album's dominant pace: downbeat and sluggish.

The tunes, riffs and words might not be as impressive as those from the days of yore, but this is still a very arresting example of sonic art: tense and deranged, savage and serrated.

Serves it purpose as a ready-made playlist for your next party, but perhaps the band's oversimplifying of its sound has stripped away some of its mystique in the process.

Sleep Mountain has the emotional weight of a Boxer or a Turn on the Bright Lights, but it doesn’t quite have the tunes. That said, there’s still plenty to fall in love with here.

God Forgives' best moments... are fine examples of how big-budget rap can skilfully avoid crass clichés, and even convey no little emotion.

This is an odd thing to say, given the dumbness of so many contemporary rap songs--is that Kweli tries to cram too much awareness into his lines at the expense of rhymes and flow. But trying a little too hard to find enlightenment can be forgiven when it comes from within a genre that often tips bravado ahead of insight.

The pace is slow, the mood is solemn verging on the sepulchral.

Angelides may not make good on the initial promise of Cloudlight's fearless boundary pushing across the album's entirety, then. There is, though, sufficient mind-melting invention here.

Boy-girl group pop-rock that's polished and pleasing.

Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could.

It's good to hear a new album that brims both with strong opinions and great pop songs, often at the same time.

In producing a focussed follow-up that completely transcends its litigious backstory, Chairlift have summoned a watertight case for the defence with Something.

Overall this is a shiny penny of a debut, and it would be a terrible shame if Columbia's mishandling of this band resulted in it being forgotten.

Despite the lyrics failing to improve upon previous efforts, elsewhere Fever represents a significant step forward, and practically guarantees that BFMV will fulfil the expectations preceding its release.

It's hard not to declare the record an admittedly limited success.

Sharp, disciplined, and seriously compelling.

Whether you could go so far as to call Guetta an auteur might be pushing it, but it's a cohesive effort, if not quite a work of art.

Mathambo leaps about on a hotplate of styles, rarely dwelling on a groove for long. Move with him, though, because it's worth the breakneck effort.

This laidback attitude--and the audacious quality of the songs that seem to find him with such ease--is the key to much of his abundant charm, and even working at half-speed he delivers.

While Lopez has claimed that her new public image showcases the real her, she never could pull off the idea of being a real human being with actual emotions on record.

Jónsi is on form.

The problem with having so many different voices writing and performing is that Record Collection sounds like just that – a lot of different things plonked on a shelf that have their time and place but sound distractingly disparate when grouped together.

It is Rihanna's vocal--at once commanding, soulful and vulnerable--that anchors the song, and Loud itself, elevating it from a hit-and-miss collection into something oddly arresting.

Black Is Beautiful is their most immediately accessible album, but its 15 tracks (14 of which are untitled) don't sound much like hits. Like its predecessors, this set works best taken as a whole, when its unstable collage has time to establish what turns out to be a powerful atmosphere.

In fashioning it so lovingly and with such care, Bowerbirds have come up with their best to date.

Downbeat words are buoyed up by light pop textures, leaning heavily for character on the fragile virtues of a voice that, while full of expression, is not designed for pop.

If you know how Rod Stewart sounds, and are aware of these songs' traditional arrangements (sole new number aside), then you already know what Merry Christmas, Baby has in store. And whether or not you're going to want to pick it up from one.

Their aim isn’t always true: Armonica ladles effects onto Buttery’s vocal to cover up the paucity of its tune. But elsewhere, things come together quite beautifully.

Sometimes this build-up can establish a cocktail lounge atmosphere, but in most cases its emotional resonances hover on the right side of poignant.

Graffiti on the Train is clearly the work of a man and an outfit that's done the rock'n'roll thing and is now easing into the next step. This is a solid enough start.

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

They sometimes feel as second-hand as The Black Crowes, but The Heavy's capacity for rabble-rousing is a potent strength, which in music – if not always politics – isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's easier to forgive the tracks that meander, ponder and lament. In fact, for better or worse, that's sort of the point.

Lynne doesn't try to break any moulds here, but respectfully doffs a cap at those that shaped him.

He does the classics to an accomplished standard – some perfunctory and forgettable, some bubbling deliciously – and everything is professionally packaged.

Proof positive that Tripper is, fittingly, Hella more focused than its spaced-out title or the duo's hippy slacker personal demeanours might suggest.

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.

Syracuse art-poppers need to let their instincts do the thinking.

The band either demonstrates a glorious and steadfast refusal to grow up, or become possessed by yelps that no amount of Auto-Tune could ever fix.

No moulds are broken here, but the occasional breeze drummed up by the couple's galloping minds is in many ways cool.

If there are discernible musical differences, it’s that there’s a little more clarity and slightly less reliance on the fuzz pedals.

With some judicious – let's have it then – tailoring, this is a sparky and affecting record, moving Swift on at a stately and assured pace.

A genuinely enjoyable find.

[A] fine and adventurous release, which finds depth and nuance in the often tryingly two-dimensional world of garage revivalism.

Opting to produce themselves on this latest studio album happily hasn't dimmed their offbeat charm; it's a tuneful, diverse and often witty addition to their discography.

The accompanying music is folk-pop with just enough quirky edginess to keep it sounding fresh.

Come Down With Me, while never plumbing peculiarly clichéd depths of introspective immersion, does stall its rapid step on occasion to allow both actors and audience a little breather.

While Major plays up to the strengths of its predecessor, it also showcases vocal development and keeps the familiar listener guessing.

Let It Break is a fine achievement, certainly, and only faulty due to some of the more by-numbers pieces within.

This is an album nostalgic for a time when soul, circa Watergate/Vietnam, had an upbeat message and a positivist agenda. Here, though, Crow puts aside politics for pure fun.

While White Denim have a tendency to enthusiastically overcook things, ultimately it's their sheer audacity--allied to some strong tunes--that makes D hard to resist.

Tatum has nevertheless produced an album that, despite its obvious glances back at the past, is smart, sophisticated and of its own pop moment.

A great fifth album from the Wu-Tang rapper, but not quite another catalogue classic.

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.

Yet if Lonerism's epic psych-gasm has a weak spot, it's how it rarely slows down to take in the extraordinary view whizzing by.

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

Ultimately, Looking 4 Myself reveals Usher as lost within the genre pick 'n' mix as he ever was; but inbetween its shortcomings, this seventh album sees him beaming proudly through a new and exciting sound.

Bastards' crew turns in a commendably original 13 tracks.

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

Baloji is interested in an involved fusion that is at once nostalgic and innovative, quickly establishing its own musical identity.

While the reins of pomp have certainly been reined in somewhat, it's hard to shake the suspicion that Suck It and See is further evidence that Arctic Monkeys are still Britain's best guitar band--albeit one that'd be even better if they ever decide to truly lunge into the unknown.

The Less You Know, the Better isn't a bad album at all, and will likely grow into something far more impressive, something that isn't quite evident on first play.

Taken as a whole, this is another surprisingly enjoyable album from a pop singer who has managed to broaden her approach without losing her USP.

Despite an all-pervading gloom that dominates tonally, and pacing that rarely gets the pulse racing, this is certainly the best Raveonettes record since 2007's keyboards-dominated left-turn LP, Lust Lust Lust..

This chilled-out collection is an easy, pleasant listen, but it is far from an essential purchase for anyone except Florence completists.

Formulaic it may be, but it is a formula Pitbull knows his way around – and though this aesthetic can't hope to match the boundless energy that the combination of his vocal with a Lil Jon production used to bring, there's enough of it here to satisfy once you turn your mind off.