The British producer’s fifth full-length is a worthy successor to his celebrated 2010 set Black Sands.

A genuine great leap forward, Defamation is a cracker.

Despite these weaker moments of Is Your Love Big Enough?, it's La Havas' gorgeous voice and gifted string fingers that'll make the biggest impressions. This might not be a home run straight out of the gate, but it's an extremely promising first swing of the bat.

Despite the anthems being on a tight leash, repeated listens reveal this to be one of their best albums.

Rock like rock shouldn't be: a rock that your parents wouldn't just love, given a chance, but one that they'd ask you to play again, louder. It ain't right, obviously. But it rocks brilliantly.

The creepy, icy elements of Black Heart's music here underpin the warmer atmospherics of Pinback's electronic indie aesthetic, meeting in the middle to create an album that constantly shifts--or even merges--seasons yet which is, at the same time, entirely cohesive.

Although Stronger with Each Tear may not be one of her greatest works, it ensures that Blige remains as relevant as any of her more recent contemporaries.

On its own terms, it's a lean, mean success – and questions about longevity can probably wait until the follow-up.

Few records in 2010 will contain songs quite so mind-bogglingly broad, playful, beguilingly pretty and intense as these slowly unfurling ensemble pieces.

Such lofty posturing could have easily ended up sounding like the ill-informed scribblings of a sixth-form politics student, but H-p1 is more about mood, feel and texture than lyrical conceit.

Between the bounce of the lighter numbers and the ache of the sweet ones, there's all manner of winningly realistic insights veiled underneath the music. This debut is a joy from beginning to end.

The players here use that joyful experience to forge exciting new traditions.

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.

They’ll soon become enraptured by what accompanies these highest-of-profile pieces: music that embraces the listener with a silken touch and seduces them with a beguiling beauty that, still, sits prettily beyond the clamour of convenient categorisation.

Essentially, this is some of the most consistent songwriting to come from Australia since the loss of The Go-Betweens, and some of the most arcane performing available anywhere outside of Arcade Fire.

White Rabbits concoct something both contemporary, cultish and catchy as a cod net.

She's full of vim and vigour, mixing tender character studies with doe-eyed love songs and impassioned protest pieces.

The group's melding together of dance music, metal riffs, punk energy and vocals that sound English rather than Californian make A Flash Flood of Colour not only a compelling effort, but an appropriately named one to boot.

More serious but still jittery, and not without detritus, this is the album that will decide the longevity of Los Campesinos!.

He knows great stories can be found in even the smallest moment, and that is something worth cherishing.

Meat + Bone operates with the same lean, restless energy JSBX always display in concert: at their best, no band sounds this alive, unable to sit still for a second.

On much of The Old Magic, he's Richard Hawley unplugged.

It's tastefully done, and possesses many hidden textures and contours; the more you get of it, the more you like it.

For any bootlegging rappers with cerebral ambitions, this could represent the greatest thinking man's beat tape of all time. To mere listeners, it's an enveloping temporary distraction, more than fulfilling its purpose of whetting anticipation for El-P's mic-wielding return.

Despite the bounty of overdubs, however, there’s little self-indulgence to There Is No Enemy; Martsch’s overloaded approach might scream ‘prog’, but he also possesses a perfectly-disciplined, ‘pop’ songwriting sensibility, with every lengthy instrumental coda married to contagious choruses and melodic barbs that lodge in the mind.

This is a pop dance album par excellence bristling with positivity, tunes and ideas.

101 blends the quirky, the audacious and the touching to confident effect, emerging as a fine listen for all seasons.

If there's a weakness here, it's in the lack of variety to Smalhans' structures and sounds, the emphasis on arpeggios and keyboard lines that arc ever higher.

The performances are terrific, and although the songs are from the more obscure end of the Western Swing repertoire, with the exception of Corrine Corrina and Right or Wrong, it’s an excellent introduction to this music--a delightful blend of country, swing and jazz.

It's not an album fans of Prekop's signature drowsy vocals and woozy choruses are going to warm to instantly. Not that it's entirely unapproachable--far from it, there are luminous passages and lulling, almost cartoonish refrains to be found among the synthetic scree--merely unexpected.

As a standalone listen this is an interesting development of the stylistic restlessness that's driven Rose's progress so far.

As methods go it can be messy, but it also throws up some interesting hybrids.

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.

It's remarkable how purist a reenactment of three-decades-old LA hardcore this record is.

It's a sturdy set of mostly new material mixing Afrobeat and funk with traditional influences.

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.

It is one which doesn't so much shine, but glimmer with subtle brilliance all the way through.

On Shangri-La YACHT have proven that no matter what the concept is, it always comes down to the music.

A record that doesn't deviate from what the listener might have already expected from an artist might not sound like an engaging one, but Fields most certainly is.

An outstanding debut album that's been a long time coming.

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

Black Light, their sixth album, finds them enlarging their repertoire to relax into wider influences. In the absence of a frontman they are aging well.

Truly impressive, The Dø gracefully pull off the kind of intriguing "oddness" the likes of Florence Welch strain and wheeze for, and with better tunes.

Cole World reveals its maker to be a technically superb rapper with great production skills, albeit currently exploring rags-to-riches tales lacking in consistent vigour.

With its high-minded lyrical concerns, its family-sized choruses and its authors' buoyant pursuit of what, in lesser hands, could be a restrictive musical form, True North is a superior addition to Bad Religion's already towering body of work.

The resultant pieces feel so alive that you can almost sense the pressure of Frahm’s fingers alighting on each key as these solemn improvisations begin to weave their magic.

He’s come close to his aim of making this album more than a curiosity, but the real impact can surely only come from seeing his orchestrion in action.

Propellor Time is, in short, another fine Robyn Hitchcock album, proving that, almost 35 years into his recording career, his gift for crafting such perfectly-imperfect, winningly-askew pop as strong as ever.

Despite the array of producers lined up--Including Danja, Darkchild, Polow da Don and Swizz Beatz--Diddy has corralled their work into a tight, coherent whole that's absolutely packed with ideas and creativity.

With so much good here, it's foolish to dwell upon a few relative missteps.

It's deceptively powerful stuff.

With The Killer, Shed hasn't reinvented the wheel, but he has captivated us with his sonic mottle, daubed onto the classic edifice of techno's irresistible structures.

Stuck in a time warp they may be, but singer-guitarist Craig Fox, drummer Patrick Keeler and bassist Jack Lawrence (the latter pair better known as the rhythm section in Jack White's Raconteurs – Lawrence also plays with White in The Dead Weather), revel in their chosen genre with such mellifluous joie de vivre that it's hard to deny them their retrospective orientation.

On Old Yellow Moon, in that hokiest of country traditions--the boy/girl duet--an old alliance triumphs with charm.

To further the point, the album's 10 tracks total just 34 minutes, so listeners will snap out of the dream rather than disappear with it down a wormhole. But the blissful summery mood hangs around for ages. If you don't want summer to end, or you're a SAD sufferer, then consider Skit I Allt the best and cheapest antidote on the market.

Stelmanis, bassist Dorian Wolf and drummer Maya Postepski have created something that plays as a carefully balanced, organic whole, like an inadvertent concept album. That's more a testament to the skill with which it's been put together than because it lacks standout moments; in fact, half the songs here could be released as singles, as Austra are as melodic as they are melodramatic.

It's a union that just keeps on giving, with the steelier, more focused Hawk the best they've given yet.

It's a pleasant, head-nodding mood record which deftly pieces together a wash of sound; but the best moments are when there's a defining thread to follow.

An album to relax into, over weeks and months, this is one many will be coming back to whenever stress levels flit into the red.

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.

Five swoony songs, sung beautifully, no duffers, and plenty of knotty lyrics to try and unravel. Another job well done.

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

While slightly more subdued than before, the pint-sized sparkplug proves she can still churn a stimulating groove, and doesn't need cartoonish gimmicks to do so.

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.

He merges his raw lyrical roots with No I.D.'s voluminous soundtrack, resulting in a decent album far more celebratory than his previous work.

It’s Thomas’s guilt-free love of mavericks past that lends such evocative warmth and unusual spontaneity to a fascinating album that could have been pure self-indulgence.

Consequently and unlike most covers records, If I Had a Hi-Fi (which, rather neatly, is a palindrome) sounds wonderfully fresh and easy, but also yields some unexpected pop trinkets.

Flash, brash and brimming with an irrepressible anarchic vigour, more than anything, Bring Your Own is a thing of unfettered joy.

The album demands to be heard in a single sitting, in a contradiction of the digitally shuffling age.

The Shape of Things is, by some margin, Foxx's best album since Metamatic, the 1980 solo debut that has become one of modern electronica's sacred touchstones.

Intensely individual without being overly self-indulgent, TOTEM offers an at-times madcap, at others beautiful but always-rewarding insight into Ryat's mystical and eccentric world.

It’s an album whose ingenuous, often nakedly honest songwriting offers an emotional fist gloved in arrangements of seductive velvet.

Nobody would expect an eighth album by a band 20-plus years into its career to sound this fantastic, but time away has obviously helped re-energise the brothers into crafting this triumphantly grand return.

It has the feeling of a band progressing in their own rights, under their own terms.

For all its capricious cherry-picking of the historic benchmarks of sensuality and synthetics, there's still a sense of genuine invention that permeates the whole album.

Delivering on that precocious promise, Rose's debut long-player actually reins in her EP's feistier extremes somewhat to deliver 10 tracks of timeless, simply adorned (albeit by some dextrously restrained Music Row stalwarts) song-craft which, while they certainly doff a 10-gallon hat to the country canon, never seem constrained by Nashville tropes, old or new.

There are around 20,000 records like this released every year by female troubadours. But there's something just very right, and really quite splendid, about Get Well Soon. It could well prove to be a timeless little wonder.

Instead of shadowing the pack, this album puts them right up the front.

You wouldn't expect soul from a Glen Campbell record, but it takes many forms. A veteran who needs help to express his memories of a life less ordinary, but ironically sounds on the top of his game, is clearly one of them.

Explores the dark, suburban-gothic shades always loitering beneath their surface glimmer.

If this were an EP, it would be captivating--Everdell's voice is certainly commanding--but, spread out over 11 songs, it loses some of its hold.

Goodman casts a spell on the listener with Sees the Light.

With high-concept sounds and an ace sleeve, Again Into Eyes is a bold debut, and an extremely rewarding experience.

Terrifying yet magnificent horror from a group getting doom metal so very right.

Whatever the treatment of his songs, Holly's knack of pairing of simplistic, catchy melodies with understated--almost flippant--melancholy always shines through. As such, over 50 years since his death, this is a wonderful testament to his songwriting prowess, longevity and legacy.

It's a bewitching album that gives pause for thought throughout.

He clearly relishes the heightened emotion of his source material, the album wisely avoiding cheap campiness in favour of respecting the music's rich sense of drama.

In some ways, this is one of their most beautiful releases in a career that has never been short of elegance.

It's when the ceaseless forward momentum of old hijacks Pop Negro's new structural nous that the most rewarding moments arrive here, the aforementioned Soca Del Eclipse, Ghetto Facil and Muerte Midi highlights of an album that's among the year's best, and that, while immediately enchanting, will take years to unravel.

This album, Mark Ronson's "imaginary follow up to Rio that never was", is their best for 18 years.

Seventy-four years on, he has recorded what is surely the blues album of the year.

Bones is a fiery yet melodious modern rock album made by a band who may come to regret their name should they survive to become old hands.

Gracious Tide, Take Me Home is a luminous, lilting, lovely debut album, and a perfect mood piece as the nights begin to draw in.

Dear God… is as engagingly weird as anything before, but flows so much better by incorporating the customary sonic terrorism into verse-chorus-verse songs, rather than breaking off for performance poetry about living in the shadow of suicide, or (say) war as legitimate barbarism for jocks.

It ["Getting Rest"], like much of this fine and not at all "difficult" second album, is undeniably impressive, but it leaves you with the ineffable impression that the best of Wes Gonzalez is yet to come.

His evocative, heartfelt, pin-sharp lines hit compelling grooves, all twists and turns, grin-inducing couplets and weirdness.

This latest collection offers a tantalising glimpse of how Hendrix's genius might have progressed.

One mighty fine rock'n'roll record.