It is beautiful, uplifting stuff.

Musically it is by far and away his most complete offering but some cracks do show.

Before descending without hope of return into the treacle swamp of R&B ballad hell that beckons at the halfway point, 'Dangerously In Love' offers a few passable moments.

Importantly, while The Stands’ obvious musical loves cannot be faulted, it’s their own inimitable style that makes them more than just another retro outfit.

So despite the new outlook and lofty declarations, why does 'Falcon' fail to take off? The fault lies partly in Fray's parochial outlook.

Despite the rousing music and the earnestness of Tom Chaplin's voice, Keane still sing passionately about not very much in particular.

Like a new friend who turns out to be a bit of a bore when you let them dominate the conversation, repeat listenings reveal an album bravely attempting to be a monumental statement on the state of life and love but falls short.

Britney Spears, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce and Leanne Rimes are all artists Sparks' music evokes, but very little of it could be said to be distinctly hers.

An intoxicating record from a re-energised Moby, for the first time in years he isn't struggling to work out how to follow "Play" and "Last Night" is all the more convincing for it.

What we are given this time round is a rather boring queue of unmemorable songs.

As is so often the case though all it takes is a fall to flush away fanciful tendencies and with All The Plans they revisit wholesale what it was that made them a draw in the first place (other than sounding a bit like Coldplay).

Over 11 tracks she fails to pull in a single noteworthy vocal, that's if you can even locate it beneath the waves of effects designed to disguise how very little is actually there.

Everything about Complete Me suggests a pop star of rare originality, charm and talent, and one who will win the world over person by person if he has to.

Contrary to the way he's been perceived, Shadow has never been anything other than passionate about hip hop, and "The Outsider" is his love letter to the genre, revelling in all its myriad excesses.

A rather more satisfying record than their second.

An energetic, intelligent and fairly modern rock album - not exactly cutting-edge, but not entirely anachronistic either.

Ultimately it makes you feel the loss of Pavement all the more.

Sometimes it works - notably with Gorecki's and Ravel's work - but it frequently misses the mark, with his reinterpretation of Handel's 'Xerxes' sounding something like incidental muzak from a low-budget US soap.

By third song, "Faded Beauty Queens", the recipe is already stalling, and the harmonies begin to sound flimsy.

"The Looks" throws up more sure-fire dance starters than anything [we've] heard in a while.

Our suggestion: embrace the bizarreness of it all. It's all good fun, and let's face it, even though Christmas In The Heart is unlikely to invoke a last minute panic in Best Of The Decade list makers, it's way better than Slade.

A supreme return to form.

A cold and unengaging collection.

It's not, in the final reckoning, a terribly important and wildly impressive record.

She's got an album which for all its sing-along moments is neither catchy nor extreme enough to be exceptional.

There are a couple of songs so overfamiliar that Boyle can do little to revitalise them, including a predictable trudge through 'Auld Lang Syne' and the saccharine overdose of 'Away In A Manger', but Boyle herself once again emerges from trashy circumstances with class intact.

A short, sharp blast of snotty fun that suggests the party is not over yet.

Miraculously, given the similarity of the design, 'Meteora' avoids being a stagnant retread of 'Hybrid Theory'.

Warm and welcoming.

There is, however, nothing that remotely touches the pop genius of 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' and, by the halfway mark, the album's sagging badly.

The latest in a long line of frustratingly hit and miss solo efforts.

"Sexor" is one of the more diverting and consistent dance records of recent times, and certainly one of the most fun.

It's more a rescinded lesson in demographics, with disc one seemingly aimed at airbrushing out the last vestiges of Knowles' credibility in favour of a procession of lame pop ballads in a Shakira or even Shania Twain-ish mould.

Three albums in, their belief that success and integrity don’t have to be mutually exclusive, is finally starting to pay off.

A great straight-down-the-line rock 'n' roll album.

When you don't have the fun of playing spot-the-steal, all you're left with are wishy washy pastiches and a sense of growing fatigue.

Throughout most of Untitled, Kelly seems to have taken the worst aspects of "Trapped In The Closet"--it's over-the-head relentless melodies and lyrics--and decided that they'll work in a song until the repetition instead relegates it to wallpaper.

Rarely lifting itself above mere mediocrity the album is no doubt destined to provide background music at thirty-something dinner parties and sedate wine bars.

The first truly great rock band of the 21st century.

As much as Nelly likes to portray himself as everybody’s favourite fun-filled club star, “Suit” suggests that writing thoughtful, intelligent and enduring R&B is where his heart really lies.

Their third, Happiness Ltd, is a sulky teenager, and about as attractive and engaging as that suggests.

Before I Self Destruct needs as many bells and whistles as it can muster, because the music isn't going to cut it on its own.

Although it is an immensely enjoyable experience featuring often breathtaking dexterity and turntable trickery, it rarely deviates from a strictly old school template.

In drawing on rock, hip hop, electro, drum 'n' bass and early electronic artists, Van Helden mirrors the developments dance acts have been making in the UK and Europe, rather than US artists.

It's when Diddy adopts the role he's really good at, the executive producer - bringing together and overseeing the real talent - for the closing stages, that "Press Play" moves from being another chaotic and bloated stab at a rap career to being something approaching a great album.

Sweet, vibrant and sunny songs with just as much invention and passion as 2000's buzz-building early EPs.

R.O.O.T.S. is so crushingly flat that it should waft between the cracks unnoticed.

Way more consistent than your average over-long US R&B release, whilst still being stuffed with just as many potential singles.

The Sun And The Moon", The Bravery's down-to-earth approach ought win them a second chance.

There's something about the determinedly primal recording techniques and clunky, 'we-just-learnt-this-today!' instrumentation that doesn't ring true.

David Gray might not fit most people's definitions of a revolutionary artist, but he's effected his own startling transformation here.

Beginning with the juddering monstrosity that is the live version of 'Third Eye', there is no doubt that the band want to be judged as an epic attraction. It's unfortunate that they've chosen to lengthen some of the tracks to the point of monotony.

They've turned into Morcheeba. A blunt appraisal, yes, but them's the facts.

Unfortunately, over a third of the songs on this album are ballads, and most of them are fillers at that.

If anything the songs might be less hungry than on their debut and less nimble than its follow-up, but it is sure-footed and firmly directional and they have no trouble reaching the benchmark they'd previously set themselves.

Although Bombay Bicycle Club can't quite hold a torch to the all-conquering returning Maccabees, they're an armful short of effortless anthems for that, but they prove themselves worthy of operating in their shadow.

Walk it Off is certainly not for everyone; but if you tire of quick fix indie and are craving something a little more cerebral to get your teeth into, it requires immediate investigation.

Alanis is back on course and heading in the right direction.

At its heart there is a beautiful record in there for anyone with the time and patience to find it.

The Frat pack are back with the impressive, Here We Stand, a confident, storming, guitar-driven rollercoaster of an album with more hooks than the North Sea fishing fleet, all bobbing along on a blitzkreig of overdriven, pop guitars.

Aside from the odd pervy foray however, Doo-Wops & Hooligans is a fairly impressive pop record; packed full of guaranteed arena fillers, it's an album that's literally born to be big.

Overall, 'Road Rock Vol 1' is a tad sloppy and definitely no match for 'Live Rust', still Young's finest live album. That said, it's crudely compelling and with the exception of disappointing newie 'Fool For Your Love', further affirmation that this grizzled vet remains at the pinnacle of his considerable powers.

Still, if not perfect, there's plenty to like on Discipline, and while none of it is exactly vintage Janet, there's enough here to keep the Jackson name on pop's A-list for a little while longer.

The follow-up to 'Play' is, essentially, 'Re-Play', a cynical rehash of the melancholic-yet-strangely-uplifting schtick which sold ten million albums and soundtracked every single advert of the last three years.

As exhilarating as it all may seem on the surface, there's little here that we haven't heard before.

Yet another endearingly eccentric document: one that will largely support his growing reputation as a talented, contrary, and mischievously erratic artiste.

Blackout is business as usual. Courting publicity more shamelessly than that infamous kiss with Madonna, Britney writhes, moans and generally gives good pillow talk for the duration of an album where crunk, glitches, squeaks and clubbed-up beats dominate.

The melodies feel functional at best, surprisingly charmless affairs that push all the right buttons with little passion or joy, while the lyrics are that depressing rock cliche: woe-is-me deliberations on the pressures of fame.

It's a well-made, well-polished piece of material. But she ruins it by painting a wacky overcoat over something that was probably fine in the first place.

Overlong and oversexed, Futuristically Speaking... stumbles where you will it to stride; something surprisingly staid and mediocre from extraordinary circumstances.

Airplay or not, however, he's also sounding seriously dated.

Much of the album bathes radio-friendly funk-rock in a kind of Balearic after-glow--it conjures that feeling of bittersweet triumph many will have felt as last night becomes this morning, the conquering of a dark that is now needed if sleep and recovery from such an act is to be possible.

There's little in The Departure to justify the trip.

Red Carpet Massacre is largely just a ham-fisted example of what happens when fame, ego and squandered major label cash equate to a sad, missed opportunity.

"Dynamite" may be his most consistent long player yet, which is not to say there aren't some lows.

These pop-centric cuts are, however, where Snoop seems most comfortable, if not most talented.

Aficionados may balk at an actor trespassing on sacred ground, but even they'd have to admit, that for a white, middle-class Englishman, Hugh Laurie plays a surprisingly convincing bluesman.

[Their] apathy really detracts from the heartfelt nature of the music, which, produced by the anthemic hand of Youth, is mostly of the passionate, chest-thumping variety.

For the most part, however, this is an ultra-sugary album which leaves a strangely sour aftertaste - not a flavour the public seems too fond of.

You can forgive Cruz for wondering who he's meant to be for his second album, but we're less indulgent of such wishy-washy nonsense that "Rokstarr" puts across in the name of heartfelt R&B.

At 70 minutes, it could've done with a pruning.

Possibly the band's best album yet, destined to be loved by fans and loathed by critics, 'Mechanical Wonder' will be the soundtrack of spliffed up barbecues and boozed up afternoons with your mates for this summer and beyond.

A product so meticulously calculated, so shamelessly designed for the widest possible demographic, so wholeheartedly shallow, you suspect Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell must be dumbstruck in admiration.

So, once again UNKLE have produced another good rather than great album that sounds ahead of the curve.

Very much Tricky business as usual, the sound of a staggering talent laid-up with the longest case of musical flu in history.

This is much more than a retrenchment, and it certainly isn't a retreat.

The production is lame, and the album as a whole is unconvincing in it's pretences as hi-energy, bouncy and above all youthful punk. And Dexter Holland's vocals simply grate after a while. Die-hard Offspring fans will find nothing which deviates from the original plot, so they won't lose any long-term believers from this offering.

A smart, exuberant and very real record, whose reach has nothing to do with "authenticity".

Perhaps it's just that the rest of the songs aren't up to scratch, but this album is a simple case of diminishing returns--what appeared carefree and sparkly-eyed to begin with feels more and more calculated as you go on, what first seemed endearing ends up feeling a little irritating.

It's an inferior re-run of the Marilyn Manson hammer horror panto that's been showing since '96.

This album is nowhere near as imaginative or as interesting as its maker thinks it is.

If the "Energy Never Dies", as Black Eyed Peas' acronymically-titled fifth album has us believe, why do they continually sound like the most tired, idea-less group on the block?

Ultimately, it's not that XX Teens throw everything including the kitchen sink at it, but rather that they drink everything under the sink and wait to see what happens. Welcome To Good Island is that kind of experience.

A nudge in the wrong direction and this would be too saccharine for comfort.

One meandering ballad follows another, each one overlong and labouring under the illusion that emotional profundity is more important than a decent tune.

It's not the best thing he's ever done, but it's up there with it.

They seem afraid to risk a good old-fashioned jungle break-out, the likes of which would be genuinely invigorating.

The dominant sound is of flickering sequencers and heavy-handed synth-pomp which showcases Linkin Park's keen interest in the work of Depeche Mode, but also often leaves them sounding about as cutting-edge and dangerous as Jesus Jones.