A thoroughly engaging exercise in uneasy listening.

Finally, it seems the venerable Iggy has realised that his own brand of nasty, brutish, reductive rock'n'roll is superior to practically any nasty, brutish, reductive rock'n'roll that has tried to supersede it.

This is a valuable record from a troubling and potentially vital new voice.

Eagles Of Death Metal have crafted a soundtrack to hedonism, a series of paeans to earthly and earthy pleasures and deliciously illicit behaviour. It's enormous fun all right but it's a long way from being a joke.

More vintage sound than classic album, All You Need Is Now won't revive any careers, theirs or Ronson's.

A skull-numbingly dull record, utterly bereft of the anti-establishment rhetoric these boring fakers aspire to.

Another riotously entertaining record.

It's an intelligent, beguiling and charming record, from a man who has often seemed to lack all but the first of these qualities, and the first thing he's done since The Libertines' debut to make you feel genuine hope for his future.

Despite the overbearing subject matter of war, morality and protest "Trampin'" doesn't feel like a particularly heavy album.

An album of patchy brilliance but with far too many freewheeling moments.

It's a gut punch of a debut, and one that makes you believe Glasvegas are one of those rare, rare bands who might just have that perfect record in them.

Gallows are the sound of this country's rising fury. And people in power need to listen, because if it spills over, there'll be trouble.

For the most part, however, this is a gentle hybrid that, while not reaching the heights of either artists' best work, like Eno and Byrne's recent "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today", succeeds on its own terms, creating a new world without sounding too cloyingly contemporary, or too much like the work of ageing pioneers proving they can hang with modern times.

Little Death may well resemble stolen kisses behind the bike shed rather than an evening of prolonged love making with the object of your desire, but that is still preferable to a night in with just a box of Kleenex for company.

While other albums may have been more groundbreaking, none have been as excitable or infectious.

There is strong instrumental feeling - sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholic and sometimes alluring and seductive - in every single track.

Unfortunately, none of it's even remotely memorable.

As ballsy as anything you'll hear all year.

This is the sound of an emboldened, beefier Beta Band, certainly, the new songs sounding fuller, freer and more confident than ever before.

Antidotes is frequently exhilarating, challenging but immediate, cryptic and catchy, calm then frantic, as intricate, itchy fret-webs are weaved around Afrobeat drums and far-out sonics.

An album so engaging it is impossible to pick one best track.

Instead of pushing any boundaries The Soft Pack have made a vigorous, enjoyable and high-energy record with a bundle of opportunities for jerky dancefloor foot stomping.

The triumphant "Star's Of CCTV" will be to guitar bands what The Street's "Original Pirate Material" was to the UK urban music: essential listening.

This CD will sell solely on Eminem's four contributions, which include the uncommonly restrained current single 'Lose Yourself'.

It's the sound of a man who's worked out how to be good again, who finally understands his own strengths and limitations.

"Making Dens" is an immensely graceful, charming record that does a flawless job of capturing the air of good-natured abandon that defines the Jets' live shows.

If Hvarf is a mixed bag of treats and curios, then Heim represents something rather more thrilling: the future (perhaps).

What remains... is a jerky, cocksure indie group striving to be accepted as a proper grown-up Southern Rock band, without the guts, depth or tunes to carry it off.

Frankly it makes our blood run cold with images of Sunday supplement purgatory, Spektor trading soft-focus licks with Katie Meluah from out of suburban glove compartments for decades to come. Thankfully the reality is nowhere near as bad as that.

There are no huge surprises on this album - it sounds and feels exactly how you'd expect - but somehow "Mr Beast" still seems vital and forward thinking.

Disappointingly, there's little here to startle the natives.

Full of heat haze lethargy and sun scorched sing-alongs, it’s a resolutely romantic vision of the all American singer-songwriter as viewed through unmistakably French eyes.

You could get lost for days in the depths of these arrangements, and still find something moving and transcendental at every gilded turn. It's a towering achievement...

We're all for experimentation, but please: Nashville?

If relationships were straightforward they’d be no need for albums like this. Thank god they aren’t.

Nguyen has created what will probably be one of 2003's best albums. 'Again' is a dark and sexy record that reveals itself seductively over time.

It's a record that benefits from the homogenous, warm feeling such an intimate set-up can make for, the tracks setting up Stone's remarkable voice rather than intentionally distracting from the singer's limitations.

This second album from rappers Will.I.Am, Apl.D.Ap and Taboo is served with a hefty helping of soul sensibility and there are pinches of jazz and calypso thrown in for good measure.

It's a case of too many beats failing to earn their keep.

Overall, Machine Dreams is bristling with invention and teeming with variety, a fantasy world you won't wish to quickly wake from.

Certainly, "Plat De Jour" is one of the most ambitious records that will be released this year.

A beginning to end enchanting and addictive album.

An album that will satisfy everyone who enjoyed his debut.

Ruthlessly, relentlessly refined, the surprise is that you don't get sick of what is, despite its surface changes, a fairly predictable formula. Rather, you want to hear it again. And again. And again.

An album of two halves, 'Green' has its pop, counterbalanced with its noise-outs but above all, it's a very traditional, straightforward tunesome half hour which slots in effortlessly with its predecessors. A welcome return? Oh yes.

"Crazy Itch Radio"... is the sound of an act running out of steam as it settles for the lowest common denominator with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders.

It's mixed-up, mashed-up and flagrantly, unapologetically odd. It's everything we want The Go! Team to be. But with added extras.

What is certain is "Astronomy For Dogs" is a magic-dusted delight and that Anderson is a wizard and a true star.

Attempting such an ambitious concept in an age of diminished attention spans should no doubt be applauded, but overstretching itself in a stab at immortality, "Stadium Arcadium" marks a step backwards from 2002's "By The Way".

Sometimes it's almost too much "classic Springsteen"; too many songs seem like retreads.

A harsh, almost hollow collection of songs, that are as darkly unsettling and violently disaffected as anything our rather self-absorbed Chicago-based outcast has committed to tape thus far.

Mostly though this is bland Hollywood fodder masquerading as something more.

Not quite what we might have hoped for from such historically important innovators. But not quite as bad as it appears, either.

G.O.A.T.' is depressingly bereft of considered content. There's nothing outrageous or offensive, just plenty of the unthinking and inarticulate sex talk that L's been spouting between the brags for years.

Essentially, it's "Lovers" part two.

For the most part, it sounds like the most joyous exploration of death and madness since, perhaps, "They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!"

Not a bad record by a long stretch but a disappointment nonetheless.

Even as the band grow tighter, their insecurity deepens. That's not prevented them from making a fine record which is loaded with instantly memorable hooks.

Trouble is, despite the band's concerted efforts to beef up and broaden their schtick with a radio-friendly production, too many aspects scream "novelty act".

Given that Sigur Ros seem to be going to increasing lengths with each record to seem less abstract and more human, a collection that unbinds itself from those constraints is, it turns out, a justifiable and often awe-inspiring exercise.

A return to quieter, more familiar Eels territory.

The most obvious comparison for 'Tomorrow Right Now' is Roots Manuva's 'Run Come Save Me' and the UK's bouncement brigade. And the comparison is a favourable one all round.

50 Cent's skills are better suited to the nagging digi-loops of inevitable smash single 'In Da Club', the steel drum roll-out of 'P.I.M.P.' and '21 Questions' - perhaps the track most like something that you might have found Tupac or Biggie at work on in their prime.

Greater things may well be in the pipeline for The Kooks, but this is sadly lacking in anything to fall - or indeed remain - in love with.

Where she was once a gutsy folk-pop mature-student, tailor-made for the modern-day Radio 2, she now has the power and arrangements to begin approximating the diva she tried to sell us when collecting Brit Awards for her debut album mid-decade, punching the air for women in pop and attempting to align herself with Kate Bush.

Folie A Deux is entertaining in moderate doses, like its predecessor "Infinity On High", where the band gleefully abandoned any last pretence to edginess.

Crucially, CSS skilfully weave references not only to our OK magazine neurosis but the last few decades of music too, with a sophisticated mash of indie, '80s pop, disco and electro.

The overall impression is of an album that you’d never be ashamed to own but wouldn’t necessarily feel the need to play all that often, either.

He's turned his gaze back on himself and created a record that brilliantly summarises and even critiques his own past.

Lighter, brighter and yes, more colourful than its predecessor.

Not tonally consistent enough to work as an ambient record, not sufficiently solidly written to really grab your attention as a suite of songs, Leila's comeback nonetheless numbers some arresting moments worthy of your attention.

LFO's gift is an ability to strip Detroit's electronic music of its soul, punishing any soft southern edges with a brutal attack of noise, while still managing moments of subtlety and consistently adventurous beat programming.

Here's the '80s revival long plotted by style journalists given an accessible alt-rock face, a deftness missing from most of the arid purveyors of sexy robot music.

Harping on in their own innocuous, oblivious manner, like the shy cousin of Squarepusher the four music makers have succeeded in creating a selfishly inviting album of great beauty and delicacy.

If the hardcore fanbase feel a blanch coming on, this isn't all wilful eclecticism gone mad. King's work is The Fall's unifying factor that keeps it cohesive.

The viscous, darkly choppy, sexily fulsome and ferociously hard-driving blend of post-punk and country noir that distinguished their long-playing debut, "The Repulsion Box" is still evident, but it's matched with a bracing new breadth, dynamic diversity and myriad light/shade variations.

The Stones in 2005 sound fresh and re-invigorated.

This is a much more satisfying album than 'The Velvet Rope', even if most of the songs are overlong and a few juggle satin sheet-cliches with self-help ones to numbing effect.

Couples is simply a successful attempt to sound both different and better.

Don't be fooled into thinking it's the big American names that are carrying this record, because her lyrical wit, seductive soul vocals and Brit charm offensive prove she is strong enough to punch above her weight.

Certainly, it's by far the best album of his career to date--proof that going it alone was a decision that most certainly paid off.

The result is the best end-to-end Wu-Tang Clan album since their debut, 15 years ago.

It's just not ambitious enough, lacking the impact to draw new fans in while just about satisfying those already captivated by the band’s admirable class.

Dog In The Sand' is unquestionably Frank Black's finest solo album.

Such a ratio of misses to hits was not expected but, all things considered, this is still one of the best electronic-based albums you're going to hear this year.

All told, it's pleasant to actually have a buzz album that lives up to expectations; long after people stop talking about them, this album will still be a surprising and compelling listen.

It's a wonderful, kaleidoscopic groove-fest that has nothing at all to do with a world in which Oasis still hold sway.

On paper then, Finding Forever has the dubious distinction of being the equal of "Be". In practice, its jaded formula falls someway short of the genuine energy of its predecessor's finer moments.

The melodies are mostly jaunty and the stoner harmonies solar-powered enough to lull around your brain but there’s no disguising the fact it’s a disappointingly one-dimensional record stuffed with half-baked ideas (“The Start”) and devoid of a single original thought.

Underpinning the entire record is a delightful pop sensibility that holds this rag-bag of ideas together.

Taking the death penalty as the central theme for an album -the sleevenotes feature anti-death penalty quotes from the like of Bono, Chuck D and Nirvana's Krist Novoselic- may not sound like much of a party, but there's a human warmth and gentle humour in Franti's delivery, hitched to hugely danceable and uplifting music.

"Afrodisiac" is Brandy’s most personally revealing album to date and her least lyrically fluffy, but its intimacy is hamstrung by the MTV-flavoured, formulaic gloop with which most contemporary, American R&B now seems to be contaminated.

It's big, it's shiny, it's unashamedly happy and we wouldn't want it any other way.

But the failures are the exception, and what's remarkable about Velocifero is how convincing and cohesive it is.

Eclectic, electric and at times rather hectic, 'Souljacker' is without doubt the Eels finest release to date.

Tweet has the kind of voice that doesn't overpower her music but lets it breathe.

'Riot Act' may be neither 'the-best-album-since' nor 'a-brilliant-return-to-form', but neither is it more-of-the-same-but-less-so.

At times, 'Nocturama' feels like he's trying too hard. Some of the ballads suffer this way, as if Cave's straining to recapture the gravitas of 'The Boatman's Call' without excessive revelations or dramatic contrivance.