Around the world in 60 minutes, then, Mos embraces both the jet-setting film star lifestyle and a re-found love for the game, making for the Deffest jam since that label gave Jay-Z the keys.

Largely acoustic, the album showcases a beautifully brutal collection of warped love songs; pristine and jagged, abrasive and tender and always devastatingly honest.

The one-time Best Unsigned Band In The Country have come up trumps with a debut album brimming with whip-smart, post-riot-grrl attitude.

"Damaged" is as nuanced, temperate and contemplative as its predecessor.

There isn't a second's worth of music here that doesn't come mink-swathed in note-perfect retro sound, or a song that isn't worthy of it.

Cox is evidently a songwriter and sound sculptor of incredible skill and though the inclusion of the two collaborations--both a little too in thrall to their guests perhaps--means Logos lacks the wholly immersive quality of its predecessor, there is little else to contest; truly, this is pop music at its most weird and wonderful.

For some, the excursions into god-bothering territory ("Create Me", "Man Of God") will be too mawkish, but few could deny that we're now in the full swing of a fascinating new era - a place where rock'n'roll, formerly the preserve of the doomed teenager with nothing to lose, has grown old.

Everything is that much thicker, more weathered, generously exaggerated and significantly less innocent. It pays increasing attention to composition and classy song structures and yet more to pulling them apart and lassoing passing listeners with the strands.

It's not all brilliant, but there's enough of brilliance here to convince.

With this majestic and multifarious new album, he has surely struck sonic gold once again.

On a couple of tracks, on this their fifth and finest studio album, singer Stuart Staples doesn't actually sound like he's mumbling through the pain of all too recent root canal treatment.

Essentially, 'It's A Wonderful Life', is an equally brilliant and perhaps more cohesive album, mixing an arcane guitar, string and keyboard based atmospheric tilt, with more fast-action, barrelling moments.

Engineers here prove capable both of emotive songwriting and of virtuoso studio craft.... Yet it falls shorts of true brilliance, for the simple reason that the band steadfastly refuse to rock-out.

Both artists have stepped outside their regular roles to make what feels like a genuinely instinctive, love-fuelled record that zings with an enthusiasm for all spectrums of music.

With their grand orchestrations, love of idiosyncratic detail and self-consciously old-school dynamics, Guillemots sound refreshingly out of temper with the times.

For some, the absence of human warmth may prove the album's ultimate flaw. Still, until there are humans out there making music like this robot, we'll settle for it.

Reflecting their influences without becoming burdened under them, their self-titled debut is an impressively varied beast.

It's quite brilliant, the one thing we have come to expect from this band.

Yes, there are a lot of reasons to hate Scissor Sisters. But this brilliant debut is not one of them.

There's no denying Sway's dazzling verbal chops and it's not just the speed and flow of his delivery that impresses.... His musical backdrops, however, are very much less adventurous and anyone looking to "This Is My Demo" for grime's trademark, darkly paranoid, tacheometric beats will be disappointed.

That rare thing in modern music, you feel Deerhunter grow with each second of song that passes, a band who delight in running under their own graceful steam rather than gasping at the airs of others.

'Insignificance' is an album fraught with contradictions: tightly funky guitars sit alongside angelic piano and crunching 70s rock riffs shoulder belligerently up to honeyed pop harmonies. These are fascinating contradictions glued together with a binding harmonic honesty.

A more disparate and yet strangely coherent collection of moods and styles you will not hear this year outside a supremely eclectic compilation.

With such brilliantly explicit expositions of death, loneliness and faith in his words, there's more than enough here to soften the blow about that other thing he was supposed to do.

Offend Maggie revels in that tease between balls-out western rock and Matsuzaki's playful but resolutely coy vocal patterns.

Make no mistake, this album sounds incredible: cascading orchestrations, pulsating and instantly memorable tunes, an atmosphere that's both accessible and palpably psychedelic.

"Icky Thump" is really a very odd record indeed, but then, oddness of a particularly bravura nature comes naturally to them.

A cryptic but brilliant record, radically stripped of Radiohead's supposed musical strengths and charged throughout with a feverish desire to subvert and, perhaps, alienate.

Generally an upbeat dancey album which finds Madonna still ahead of the game sixteen years into her career, 'Music' takes an occasional breather with some more grown-up, reflective balladry.

Out of these two good albums, a great single album is fighting to break out. [combined review of both discs]

The suspicion lingers that Band Of Joy will be remembered more fondly than its wonderful predecessor.

There is nostalgia by the truckload, lamenting of times past, talk of lessons learnt. Frankly there's a lot of looking back, but it doesn't feel weighed down by it all.

'A Little Deeper' is a lyrical bombshell and its only downfall is that the production has a tendency to sound flat and mundane by comparison.

This is smart, thought-provoking material for the twisted.

Favours The Song over ambient abstraction and real-time playing over rejigged samples.

It's not as far out wild as 'Kaleidoscope' but it is a consistently inventive and brilliant record.

Will’s work has seldom had a stronger sonic setting.

Anyone expecting "Revolver" or "Hunky Dory" will soon find their patience sorely tested, though those hoping for a modest collection of whimsical indie melodies, some Beatlesy orchestral flourishes and some cleverly off-kilter rhythms may find much to enjoy in these brief 11 songs.

This is Gold Panda's own record, an album of proper emotional heft that'll be enjoyed with a box of tissues, during tingling comedowns and on more discerning dancefloors.

For all the moments of heart-stopping splendour, the backing tracks sometimes sound as creaky as a "Prisoner Cell Block H" film set.

Despite its essentially downbeat lyrical thrust, 'Us' has joy written all over it and repeat-play etched into its grooves.

'God Hates Us All' signals a return to the marked aggression of their earlier selves.... The only thing that inhibits this album is its one-dimensional pace, as one too many tracks features grinding verse leading into charging chorus, repeat to fade.

Like a feral Arcade Fire making whoopee in the Third Republic, The Flying Cup Club is an often magical listen and deserving of a wider audience than it will probably reach.

The monotony that blighted 1997's 'Wu-Tang Forever' and the sluggish complacency of some of the Clan's myriad solo projects in the past three years is notably absent. There's a born-again urgency here, with the RZA reclaiming control of the mixing desk from his disciples and trying out a few new tricks to spike the usual routine of cinematic string stabs and virtuoso raps.

Despite some great tunes, his high-pitched, duck-on-helium vocals start wearing thin, becoming the detraction, rather than the attraction, of this album. Had it been 15 minutes shorter, The Lady Killer could have been this year's top pop album.

Take those hats off and launch them into the air for one of the most uplifting, career-topping albums anyone could have released, regardless of age.

Spoon have created an album that will not only satisfy long-time observers but will also act as a gateway for those yet to discover their charms.

My Maudlin Career offers soul and sophistication in abundance.

A confident and accomplished debut, and a pleasant, agreeable diversion.

Prepare to be beguiled.

There's barely a dull moment on this album.

What makes these songs really special is their ability to maintain a pop coherency, whilst being genuinely quirky and experimental.

The Dallas native has created a womb of an album. It's a warm, soft, retreat from the outside world. Reading between the lines, this means no hits.... [but] reading the printed lyrics shows what a wonderful poet she is.

Older rap fans will probably feel the album's subtler pulsings more, but anyone will be able to appreciate the raw talent required to keep such an epic and sprawling project buoyant, without resorting to boring braggadocio and bawdy bling.

It's an easier listen than its wildly imaginative predecessor.

If [some]songs catch a magical intangible by pairing Marshall's naked vocal with a ghost of Memphis passion, others fail to turn the same trick.

Indisputably one of the best projects Gruff Rhys has ever been involved with.

This yet again reveals PJ Harvey to be one of the UK's greatest contemporary songwriters.

This is a lovingly crafted record which has the same misty fug and aura as The Soulsavers and Lanegan indulged in recently.

The key to 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' is to be found not in Martin's presence, but in the intensity, dynamism, verve and style that Coldplay have now nailed, when comparisons to Radiohead, Echo and The Bunnymen and, perhaps most pertinently, U2's 'Unforgettable Fire', manifest themselves in a series of killer strides.

Super Taranta! is an album of such sweaty vigour, spittle-flecked passion, wide-eyed curiosity and a keen sense of the ridiculous it deserves a big fat plug on primetime telly.

Everywhere you look on this record there is a sense of magic escaped, accompanied by the ever-tantalising presence of a great band just beneath the surface.

An emotive, atmospheric dreamworld that sounds like an echo from history.

It’s Manuva’s startling honesty which first impresses.

The four Von Bondies remain terrific players, and Stollsteimer's sustained indignation is always good for a laugh. But at times, the calculated nature of it all is distracting, and you long for the harebrained rawness which made "Lack Of Communication" the best record (besides those by The White Stripes) that the Detroit revival has produced.

It is modest, lucid and tender.

Epic, exciting, strange and unexpected, it's exactly what pop needed, but surely not quite what Gary Barlow had in mind.

They lack, for example, the ribald ugliness of Suicide, another big influence--but they deserve acclaim for sculpting the work of so many doomy forebears into something that, in their field, has rare pop purpose.

While those seeking a quick fix of cheap thrills hip hop will be disappointed, anyone who likes their music lush, multi-layered and lyrical should pick this up without delay.

"Songs For Christmas" is a(nother) labour of love, gently glowing with hope and humanity and is thus guaranteed to prize cynicism's barnacles from the heart of even the most dedicated Scrooge.

The truth is, however much or little you enjoy them, Radiohead are one of the few mainstream bands who try not to retrace their steps.

As challenging and glorious as rock can go when filtered to it's basic elements, but not without a whiff of indulgence.

As they expose the fragility of love and ultimately humanity, and mourn evolution's victims, they pitch themselves somewhere between Neil Young's heart-rending "Needle And The Damage Done" and a hard-bitten Dylan going electric, all the while retracing traditional folk's footsteps with a wonderfully homespun flourish.

The sound that [Price] has created for "Confessions On A Dancefloor" is simultaneously stylish, fun, hip and camp; all things a Madonna record should be.

Like all of Boards Of Canada's wonderful records, the whole seems to add up to far more than the sum of its parts.

Overall, it’s a suppler record than its older brother, largely avoiding the skittish tempos of "Turn On..." tracks like "Roland" in favour of elegant curves and harmonies... though the road-honed likes of "Slow Hands" and "Not Even Jail" still hit bruisingly hard.

It's heartening to see Smith mainly producing effortless gems in a genre that often sees men half his age struggling to do anything of interest in.

The Dears stamp enough of their own personality to make this one of the best and most vital alternative US albums of 2006.

An emotive, often sorrowful work that features his most personal lyrics to date.

While its thoughtfulness prevents it from getting carried away with itself--he's not exactly doing the can-can here--there is a definite sense of optimism and personal brightness radiating from all four corners of this record. It will be a difficult one to top.

There is a feeling of carefully constructed, mellow folk simplicity running through all these songs.

What makes 'No More...' Cave's best album since 'Henry's Dream' (which it most clearly resembles), is a return to melodrama (or rather the juxtaposition of melodrama with the album's ballads) where Cave crafts a deliciously potent mix of the visionary, the bizarre and the everyday...

It's Shaffer's writing, rather than Ne-Yo's singing (and the distinction between the personas is one he's made himself), which elevates this collection beyond those of his peers.

Nas's insight, erudition and poetic intensity override all other concerns.

It's that time of year when critics are desperate to anoint the first "great" record of the year. Distortion is too tricksy and knowing to be that, but it's a thoroughly entertaining also-ran nonetheless.

The pair have opted for unfiltered analogue over cleaned-up digital, too, achieving a lush density with loops and textures and a warm wooziness overall that's a million miles removed from their last effort, 2002's dark and almost mathematically complex "Geogaddi".

Okay, so it suffers from repetition in places and the last pair of songs are arguably disposable, but this collection shines and sparkles as an impressive debut.

'Youth and Young Manhood' is nothing more than a great rock'n'roll album.

You may need to spend a little more time getting to know the Fanclub these days, but without any clutter you get closer, deeper, right to the very heart of it all - emotionally and musically.

Perfectly lovely to listen to, undoubtedly, but curiously difficult to digest. [combined review of both discs]

Through the course of "Drums Not Dead", you'll endure an unsettling, slightly terrifying experience, the likes of which is rarely committed to record.

It's flawed, but applause for adding vulnerability to their game plan, at the very least.

If Lungs fails to make as much impact as those other debuts, it may be because Welch puts a little too much emphasis on singer and not enough on songwriter.

In terms of wide-ranging savvy, fizzing enthusiasm and the sheer brilliance of its dance-pop tunes, "The Warning" is shaping-up to be the "Demon Days" of 2006.

This is what she does, really: talk clever, talk dirty, talk funny and, with Timbaland's dedicated assistance, annually expand the possibilities of what pop music can sound like.

It's an album that feels like a watershed somehow, a significant step onwards.

An elemental tour-de-force, "The Reminder" could be her Eureka record - an album where almost everything turns to gold.