A quirky lo-fi wonder or the best album the '70s never had, "The Garden" feels like a lost gem, discovered in a box in the attic; a forgotten masterpiece full of tantalising sounds, odd voices and tingling ideas.

For the most part "No Need To Be Downhearted" is a gorgeous record - big music full of small touches.

Tonight is a resounding success, and the first essential pop record of 2009.

A real step forward - a challenging and melodic record.

It is not the Foo's finest moment, but for all its flaws and flab, this meandering record may just become one we all learn to love.

A return to core principles, which has produced a handful of pretty love songs and a solid overall, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel certainly isn't the disaster we were promised, but then nor is it a triumph.

"Howl" burns with just as much commitment and fervour [as the previous two albums]; it simply burns slower.

Like their debut, 'Start Something' is ultimately too long but where it occasionally flags the pace is soon picked up again.

'Demolition' may be a rare example of purely commercial dictates - namely, what was doubtless a label decision to downsize from a threatened four-CD boxed set - improving the art in question.

Even the lesser efforts are superior to typical chart fare.

Off With Their Heads is, thankfully, a subtler, cannier beast, even if it does suffer from some of the same problems as its predecessor.

Not sure what you'd file it under, but while that may worry some, for The Bees it's yet another triumph.

[It] firmly places her at the cutting edge of modern pop.

So far so daft but what prevents Gerard Way and co from descending into the po-faced seriousness that blighted Green Day and their preposterous "21st Century Breakdown" album is a sense of fun that has eluded the SoCal punks in their latter years.

It would be crazy to suggest that Roots And Echoes is anything less than consistently fine, but from a band whose initial forays promised so much 'fine' doesn't quite cut it.

It’s both an oddly comforting and exhilarating trip.

"Tha Blue Carpet Treatment" is quite the mesmerising sonic experience.

Not only an opportunity to look back, then, but a joyous reminder that, when at his lowest, Brian Wilson stepped up and did the unthinkable.

Despite the clichéd lyricism and patchy production in places, "Red Light District" contains enough strength and fun to remain an enjoyable and uplifting ride.

Deeper and darker takes longer to charm, which is bad for singles, but should see the album's shelf life extend to long after Mika's novelty has worn off.

For reasons of quality, as well as the inevitable loss of the shock of the new, 'Fatherf*cker' isn't quite the album its predecessor, 'The Teaches Of Peaches', was.

There's nothing on this record that has any danger of keeping you from your beer. There are two gears: fast and slow, shoutalong and sobalong.

Smoke pulls off the neat trick of seeming weightless and disassociated but never slight, playful, yet neither inconsequential nor silly.

All I Ever Wanted, which though always singable swings wildly from bruised to bubblegum, sounds like a team of hired hands writing hits to order. Still, the increased chorus count is welcome and will put a smile back on Clive Davis's face.

Sounds Of The Universe also happens to throb with sonic originality and dark, complex humanity, and is a fine addition to one of the richest, most intriguing back catalogues in pop.

But while "3121" might suggest that, at 47, Prince isn't looking to change the face of music anymore, he's clearly still more than capable of delivering classic Prince albums.

Gomez continue to make powerfully relevant music.

In the main they have done away with their more stodgy, pretentious material and distilled their sound into a stripped down rawness, and they sound all the better for it.

Bloodflowers' stands as a glorious, if contradcitory, body of work. It won't win new converts but lapsed Cure fans will find it a thrilling and rewarding hour.

A magnificent return to the band's brutal, almost hardcore punkish, roots.

Rushed it may have been, but here Bloc Party seem to accurately reflect post-relationship blues: confused, introspective and stung.

It's that sense of humbling, childlike wonder that defines what they do with their weathered hands. And they do it as brilliantly here as they always have done, which is high praise enough.

Scars is the strongest Basement Jaxx album since 2001's "Rooty".

"Puzzles Like You" may not stay the distance but there's certainly enough here to gain Mojave 3 the wider audience they deserve.

As a celebration of the b-side, this is such a charming set, despite its inconsistency.

And if the production is not as sumptuous as a Furry’s album – although it’s by no means lo-fi – thematically it’s business as usual.

If all that this still-decent album does is pique interest in what Dananananaykroyd are like live, then it will have done its job because that is where the magic lies.

Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon is a feel good record for what's left of this 'summer' and even though it's packed with second hand magic and joy, such charms probably won't wear past the depths of winter, unless you truly are a hippy at heart.

"Send Away The Tigers" is not only the most enjoyable Manics record in years, it's the most consistent.

There is as much to be embraced in this as in any of the Gorillaz material. If not more.

With the exception of the Joy Division influenced 'City', the final third of the album drops the ante somewhat. The idea, though, that this sophomore effort may be laying the foundations for something even mightier cannot be ignored.

'Stillmatic', as ever, is far from flawless but, at its best, it addresses the hip-hop landscape of 2002 as lucidly as 'Illmatic' did that of '94.

Thee More Shallows' pop fans might yearn for more mellifluous melodies - their hip hop heads for more doctored beats - but in this "Book Of Bad Breaks", they're clearly on the same page.

No doubt the album of her career.

Black Ice is far better than anyone could have hoped, played by people who by their age should know better.

So all-in-all, with every track practically a text book example of what great pop should sound like, even the ballads, Hanson’s return is a welcome one.

In fact, on the musical front blink-182 are more reminiscent of the Beach Boys than the Sex Pistols: a very, very fast and tasteless Beach Boys, admittedly, but those massed harmonies and that glossy production are the pop perfectionist's fantasy taken to its logical conclusion.

A dignified and enjoyable end to a frequently astonishing career.

With "Life In Slow Motion" he's delivered an album so rich and deft that it pushes beyond the realm of the humble singer-songwriter, to earn him a place alongside the likes of Springsteen and Van Morrison as one of music's revered elite. Without question, this is a classic album.

For the most part Fields are lazily picking their own way between the disparate pastures of folk, pop, post rock and shoegaze on a deliciously sun-dappled day.

2001 has been a tremendous year for hip-hop. At the last moment, the Wu-Tang Clan just made it even better.

With a distinct lack of pretension, some wholly infectious hooks and an insouciant sense of humour, this is the kind of project that will ultimately serve to keep Beenie’s rep as a professional entertainer and maestro of the dance deeply intact.

Perhaps Funhouse is a victim of its own excess: it may be inevitable that an album of 14 songs with more than a dozen credited writers will end up as hit and miss, as messy as this.

On paper it can seem a dark, depressing combination. But what Hope Of The States bring and what, in theory, they offer up for the lost and desperate to cling onto is... well, hope.

Marks a return to warm homespun acoustica.

Despite Brown's unquestionably limited vocal range, the minute pitch shifts of his voice are well suited to the stoned-wonder of tracks like 'Set My Baby Free', 'Neptune' and 'Dolphins Were Monkeys'. It's on these blissed out, chilled moments that the album really shines.

At last Ryan Adams has made a record every bit as good as his heroes.

It feels like a definite upgrade for her, Kate Nash deluxe, courtesy of producer Bernard Butler's expectedly lavish touches. But her standard style of outloud diary readings are not privy to the same overhaul. They prevent it from feeling like much of a progression.

"So Divided" sees …Trail Of Dead leaving their footprints in some intriguingly unlikely places. Whether the faithful choose to follow them or not, they deserve respect for that alone.

With filth, loose morals, anger, frustration, big guitars and even bigger choruses at every turn, it's got all the DNA of a pure-bred rock classic.

Their dark yet energetic, garage pop - all needling, pivot-on-a-penny riffs, eruptive noise and high tensile dynamics - borrows from Buzzcocks, Pixies and Nirvana/Foo Fighters but, for all its tautness and intensity, there's little on Nine Black Alps' debut LP likely to change the world.

There's a gleefully fluid rock'n'roll dynamic driving this whole record, more evocative of modern-day US psychedelic reprobates The Dandy Warhols or The Brain Jonestown Massacre, rather than students trying to be clever.

Flawlessly interesting is what we’ve come to expect from Williams and Hugo, but "Fly Or Die" is rather interestingly flawed.

It’s all rather marvellous.

Weird enough but familiar enough to spook the status quo without blowing it out of the water, they will, hopefully, continue to make music for a very long time.

Lyrically, Shotter's Nation brims with the insight and eloquence with which Doherty continually surprises you.

With his languid, prolific philosophising, twisting humour and consistent melodic achievements, its tempting to see Benji Hughes as a kind of cartoon successor to Stephen Merrit and The Magnetic Fields (though it's more "25 Songs About Women 'N' Stuff" than "69 Love Songs"), but either way he's just snuck in from the back of the field with one of the most endearing albums of 2008.

And though the influences/peers - Stooges, Velvet Underground, Krautrock, Spiritualized, Primal Scream - remain the same, this exceptional collection of visionary psychedelia is more ethereal and somewhat bereft of the cloaked fug of death threats, serial killers or "eggs bearing insects hatching in my mind" that made 'Contino' such a brain-damaged future Goth classic.

'Deep Down & Dirty' just reminds you how influential and important the Stereos were, and continue to be.

Yet cartoon and divorced from reality as it is, his vision is so vivid that it never fails to seduce and fill you with the uneasy sense that maybe, just maybe, somewhere his disturbing dimension of bums and misfits really does exist.

She might be mouthy, trendy, shallow and opinionated without having all of the facts, but MIA creates terrific pop moments.

As is to be expected given Adele's tender years, thematically things are a bit monochrome.... All this, however, is forgiven with a listen to the highlights, such as the sweet acoustic guitar-led 'Daydreamer.'

Let's be clear about this: Head First is by no means a bad record, with its lush pop gloss and flickers of melodic loveliness. But it is a bad Goldfrapp record, their flimsiest and least adventurous yet.

There's little not to love.

It's almost all too familiar, so much so that it's hard to hear the tender songs and mesmerising instrumentals in their own right.

This is a relentlessly exciting album--it's just that sometimes you feel it would be more rewarding to turn off the boosters, slow to a float, and take in the view with awe.

In many ways, 'Evil Heat' comes across as something of an amalgam of the Scream's many phases and, because of that, it doesn't necessarily take them forward as their work in the past has done.

By far Kylie's best album to date.

As a debut album, 'Highly Evolved', for all its faults, can be an energising proposition.

A collection of rootsy yet sophisticated, summery soul grooves, with the usual nods to past masters like Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Glady Knight, "Stone Love" is equally at home alongside the sultry, sassy R&B of contemporaries like Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Erykah Badu.

Hands is both exciting and inconsistent, an uncertain step in very much the right direction.

Though there are still moments of eyeball rolling twee, the darker undertones are enough to more than keep us interested.

The feeling persists that The Century Of Self marks an important moment for ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead--one in which they began to weave together their diverging paths and one that, after all, should be hailed as a victory.

Hurley's feet are firmly rooted in the present but this collection is, without doubt, the closest the band have come to recapturing their glory days.

Marina & The Diamonds convincingly fight off the encroaching talons of expectation by embarking on a rampant, stomping adventure, letting no idea lie when it can be crashed into another loudly and a microphone placed nearby to collect the resulting sparks.

An underwhelming end to a sly, bitter, rocking album it maybe, but at least it makes plain the point that being polite does nothing for her and a bit of passion and rock'n'roll attitude goes a long way.

The fact she's delivered an album which is vivacious and entertaining despite its obvious flaws means this cat probably has at least one more showbiz life left.

A tremendously odd hour of music.

The Stereophonics are trying to say something, expressing something more than the exuberant rock songs with which they made their name. Only time will tell whether their fans will lap up an album almost entirely starved of the big guitar sounds and sweeping choruses they've grown accustomed to.

Every genre needs its defining record, its high watermark, and this 66-minute tantrum is nu-metal's gift to history. A classic, terrifyingly.

This is far from being a bad album - Jay has never made one of those, nor given the impression he is capable of doing so - but it rarely rises to the levels he has consistently reached.

A frequently astonishing album that combines bruising rock and limp-wristed flourish in almost equal measure.

No, it isn't as good as that, but getting anywhere close is proof that Damon Albarn remains a musical alchemist, turning what could easily have been crude and leaden into something that often gleams like gold.

A great lost album in the making.

If not musically the most creative thing to ever have been called hip-hop, “Sweat” has more than its share of head nodding struts and hands-in-the-air moments.

Tender and loving it might not be, but one of the albums of the year? Definitely.

"Once Again" remains Legend's best record. But Evolver, in all its modernity and timeliness, may well become his biggest.

Far from Noah & The Whale lagging behind their popular folk peers, with Last Night On Earth the band are finally punching above their weight to create a sound that's altogether new and wholly theirs.