Ultimately, the list of collaborators on She Wolf may be an impressive roll call, but perhaps Shakira would do better in listening to her own instincts than that of others.

Whilst “Some Cities” has less radio-friendly singles than “The Last Broadcast”, it is perhaps a more cohesive piece of work.

It's New Order-lite.

Well, it's not 'Low Life' or 'Technique' but there's at least seven welcome additions to the New Order canon and in the thrilling 'Crystal' and poignant 'Run Wild', a brace of bona fide classics.

'Maladroit' is a more satisfying half an hour than the often-impersonal 'Green' album. Quick-fire melody-driven, riff-heavy pop songs that resurrect the gritty, edginess of 'Pinkerton'. The best of both worlds basically.

'Up!' is not without its little oddities and delights.

"Up At The Lake" may not be The Charlatans' finest effort, but it’s certainly good enough to suggest they could still be around for another 14 years.

Despite the wide range of musical styles used here, each one is absorbed into that unique Jellies sound, smoothed and polished almost beyond recognition into a sumptuous, unthreatening ambient groove with echoes of The Orb, Groove Armada and Zero 7.

Minor gripes aside, My Way is far better than anyone could have expected from a singer whose reputation is still judged by his musical contribution from 20 years ago.

The first half of the album as a whole is easy to forget....Cardinology takes a turn for the best around the midway point.

Penate has gutted his sound and replaced it with something expressive, warmly empathetic and, best of all, blindingly spangly.

Most artists are well-aware of the pitfalls of the difficult third album, of course, and try to disguise their on tour / hotel room songs - but when has Mike Skinner ever been most artists?

'Love & Life' suggests "the queen of hip-hop soul" is truly now at the top of her game.

A full-blooded, affectionate and occasionally very funny album.

This is so rich, so intelligent, so feeling, that most of us will throw our hands limply in the air and join voices with mum Kate McGarrigle who, according to the dedication on the back, "still whispers in my ear that I'm great".

For the lovers, this patchy album offering moderate advance on its immediate predecessors will probably suffice. But in truth it's an unmitigated failure to reconcile the sound of their past with a cohesive vision of their future.

Ultimately, Working On A Dream feels like Bruce Springsteen taking stock.

"Christ Illusion" for the most part consists of leaden, grinding sludge devoid of any urgency or malevolence.

The trouble is that while STP may have lived dangerously, they play safe musically. There's plenty here that's pleasant, but there's nothing startling, nothing challenging.

Anyone looking for some spicy R'n'B to follow up Pink's fantastic breakthrough hit, 'Most Girls', will be sorely disappointed.

'Love Is Here' - expansively, expensively produced, lavish yet aspiring to understatement (if such a contradiction can be accepted) and containing some affecting songs - is a pretty good record.

This time it's the cover of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' that grabs the headlines. The surprisingly credible version limbers into life with Britney chatting away to her pals on the phone.

Well, reports of the death of the old Coldplay have been much exaggerated.

How does such a rich soup of chromosomes and hired help come together? In a tinkly, whispery trinket that deserves a place on the stereo of every right-thinking beatnik.

While never as life-changing as these memories clearly were, Hurricane succeeds in its sheer force of conviction.

The fear was always that Dirty Pretty Things would resemble The Libertines with a vital ingredient missing, and that's surely what's transpired.

So, a grown-up EODM album, hardly serious, but certainly more complete than the half-cooked sketches that used to pass for their songs.

Overall, 'Don't Be Afraid...' is a tad frustrating. Everything ticks along funkily and proficiently, but nothing really wants to stick out.

Admittedly, this is bedroom indie, but it's bedroom indie with strong production and songs that are always self-deprecating enough to not be self-pitying.

Girls And Weather is so cloyingly cheerful and eager to please that it might as well be "Big Brother" audition tape.

The overriding impression is that “The Documentary” could be the biggest fanboy album of all time... and that The Game, as much as he thinks he’s a player, is being played by others far more powerful than himself.

Despite the overarching feel of having a bit of the early MGMT's about them (which, to be fair, is hardly a bad thing), there's enough variety within the New Zealanders' debut to prove they're more than just a one-trick, party-starting pony.

The quality is unmistakable and confirmation enough that she deserves to be remembered as more than just Biggie’s widow.

The Heavy's biggest selling point is that they exist almost completely outside of what is currently fashionable, meaning they sound fresh despite having quite classic roots.

'Baby I'm Bored' is the album Dando's fans hoped he would return with.

Its ambitions far exceed its ideas, and the record is sunk by the kind of sonic bloat normally reserved for self-regarding sophomore releases.

If it were anyone else, this record would be fine. Solid. Entertaining. But it's not anyone else--Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes. As such, you look for more and expect to tune in to find Julian doing the same.

And so it goes for a tidy ten tracks, all topped by a voice of gently boiling caramel--a style that channels the best aural qualities of Terence Trent D'Arby and Ray LaMontagne while side-stepping their cloying overearnestness.

None of the songs on "Yours to Keep" lack a naggingly memorable chorus; none is remotely inaccessible; and none is less than excellently crafted.

With personnel changes and a series of guest artists the names of which ever-increasingly overshadow whatever actual sounds they're making, Massive Attack have fought a continual struggle to surpass 1994's 'Protection'.

Any decent covers album should reveal its songs, not dress them up - but by Marshall's standards, Jukebox is an overly polite and frustratingly removed listening experience.

Minor gripes aside, however, Jose Gonzalez has crafted a fine album of rare beauty that seamlessly blends righteous indignation with delicate musical panache; a tough balancing act, to be sure, but one that negates the need of a safety net.

Either they've been taking too much heroin or not enough, but 'Black Rebel Motorcycle Club' is as limp as a soggy spliff the ragged morning after.

This is a great album, choc-a-bloc with great hooks, melodies and harmonies that evoke the great songwriting of the 70s.

Where 'Holy Wood' does come together and threaten to transcend its at times cliched parts is in its clarity of vision. This is a lean, visceral album that is as tripwire lithe as its maker. Manson's also remembered to write some great pop-goth tunes this time out, nowhere more so than with first single 'Disposable Teens'.

Furthermore, the way that 'Rulers Of Ruling Things', 'The Horn' and 'The Courage Of Others' arch effortlessly into trippier psych-rock inflected territory suggest a more expansive, weirder Midlake to come.

It’s a phenomenal album. And best of all, it’s unmistakably Prince.

"X & Y" is easily Coldplay's most consistent album, albeit one that operates within restrictive boundaries of creativity.

Imperfect and absurdly oversized it may be, but only OutKast could have pulled off a crazy creative coup like "Idlewild".

An album of class, depth and seriously hard grinding, it's a major transformation from pretty girl with potential to star turn.

Bellamy wriggles ever freer from the straitjacket of rock music, nearing the point where he can slide between genres as easily as his idols, Bowie, Queen and Prince.

The best songs on this cunning, efficient, frequently daft and fractionally disappointing album are the ones which sound most like the misty reveries of [their] debut.

The most inventive and exhilarating rock music Britain's producing right now.

Most of the tracks here could be Pavement, so those looking for a diversion will be disappointed. Those looking for another Pavement record for their collection will be less so, but ultimately this sounds like a hurried release and more of an extension of the past than an indication of the future.

A serious album, with huge potential and no weak points, Disc-Overy is the coming of age UK hip hop has long needed but been too timid to reach for.

Night Work, the Sisters third studio album, is both their filthiest and most musically downbeat effort to date.

For a handful of decent Morrissey songs – and, it must be said, some of his best ever vocal performances – we should be grateful. Ultimately though, for all these tantalising reminders of greatness, "You Are The Quarry" still feels like a man unnecessarily trapped by the limitations of his band and the extent of his loathing.

Its charms sink their teeth in fast and deep.

Elsewhere the album could be either too relaxed or too eccentric for many. But it's a fine, rich and extremely likeable record, nonetheless, and it deserves to find its audience even without that famous surname.

He's got an exceptionally stylish and more importantly, sellable album to back it up.

It's a smart, self-aware and consciously direct album.

The Black And White Album feels less like a fresh start than the end of something.

With Flock, their third album but only the second to get a British release, Ireland's Bell X1 have unearthed the missing musical link - and it's marvellous.

Flamboyant, excessive and more Mikado than Micachu, you get the feeling that 'Life Is Sweet...' is an album that'll polarise people. But hey - if you don't like this one, Dev will be onto the next project tomorrow anyway.

A dignified and engaging record.

Svanangen reverts to a simpler, sadder approach. His initial cheer unexpectedly falls away into an introspective trance. Dear John is no worse for it. Sometimes you have to clear the air. It's liberating, if done right.

This still isn’t the kind of music that you’ll hear looped on adverts or behind sporting highlights, but instead simple, affecting songs that use the human heart as an instrument as surely as acoustic guitars.

'Quixotic' can't fail to mesmerise even those who thought Tricky too clever for his own good.

It's an album for well-mannered emotional crises in front of log fires, a soundtrack for quivering bottom lips.

Brilliantly sequenced, the album reaches a euphoric climax with the "Yes, we can change the world" hook of 'Black President,' a close cousin of Lupe Fiasco's 'Superstar.'

And while at first it feels like an unholy, unhummable mess, the same solid gold charm which powered lead single "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" to Number One, lurks at the heart of every track, and by listen five it's refocused "Ta-Dah" into a strangely enticing nether world, where it's forever 1974 and a cheap thrill or soaring pop high lurks round every corner.

For all the one-paced nature of its songwriting, wilfully lo-fi production values, inevitable Lily Allen comparisons and grating larynx, Panic Prevention is still an enthralling debut, and one that says infinitely more about the life of young Londoners than any amount of Bloc Party seriousness.

There is much to enjoy on this consistently rewarding album; brazen, bonkers and really quite brilliant.

Collapse Into Now isn't a bad album but crucially it isn't a classic.

The album finishes almost as well as it started with 'The Mall & Misery' (a bit of country, a bit of disco, lightening bolts of new wave guitar, harmonies to intoxicate), proving the album's effective inevitability is not tedious and the quality is clear whichever direction you approach from.

A check-your-pants rollercoaster, Tentacles isn't a critique of the times by any stretch of the imagination but it captures the feeling, the mood and the sheer abject terror.

Much of It's Not Me's bummed-out vibes seem rooted in sound artistic sense, but musically a sunken-eyed pallor has replaced the rosy-cheeked flush and, you know what, it all gets a bit...draggy.

The thundering beats, subdued vocals of indecipherable lyrics, and power packed riffs are all still there, but they've mellowed and everything is a bit softer around the edges.

Overall the duo have given us a much braver and stronger album than their last, but as far as anything truly revolutionary goes it’s merely a step in the right direction.

Daft Punk have done their homework, and there's enough here to suggest that, with a bit of debugging, they'll have no problem hitting all the right buttons next time.

With their abilities to self-censure and decide at what's fundamentally good gone seriously awry, the results are more likely to induce a rolling of eyeballs and suppressed sniggers rather than gasps of admiration.

There's a good, possibly even a great, album in here somewhere, but Kid Cudi doesn't get very close to finding it.

Herein lies the beauty of this band: geeky record collectors they may be, but they're quick to impose their feral energy and fierce individuality on proceedings.

An energised and impassioned, justly confident debut.

The most relevant reference points for "Loose" are Gwen Stefani's "Love Angel Music Baby" and Justin Timberlake's "Justified" - producer-defined albums that reinvented their performers as stand-alone solo artists with a wide, hip remit.

Maclean is clearly a scholar of electro/disco and each number is exquisitely arranged and executed, every synth sound modulates just so as it fades, every reference point lovingly rendered and the whole thing is buffed with a contemporary polish that eschews none of the off-kilter humanity that keeps disco delightfully distinct from its explicitly mechanised dancefloor cousins.

Ultimately there's something very 80s about Pink. Something very kitsch and plastic; something very 'Breakfast Club'.

While not much of a departure from the honed formula of 'White Ladder', much of 'A New Day At Midnight' opts to pare down that winning mix of gentle dance beats and piano even further, leaving Gray's gorgeous gutsy vocal to do more of the talking on his melancholy tales of love and loss.

With this eclectic, eccentric approach comes a lack of cohesion and quality control.

It's a record to get lost in, one that constantly surprises with its apparently infinite number of hidden harmonies and wry asides.

In a time when the music is either dominated by commercial personas or the proteges of the new breed of super producers, 'Expansion Team' is an essential shot in the arm for the increasingly stagnant underground.

So carefully paced is this record, weighed and measured for the correct balance of what's put in and what's taken away, that it never offers emotional triggers which bypass cerebral process.

There could be a better band in there than the production lets them be.

With lead single "Yeah!" being a genuine cyber funk masterpiece, and a lot of other perfectly respectable tunes backing it up, "Confessions" isn’t hard to like. But with the overall impression being of nice Usher making another nice album, it’s impossible to get excited about.

These songs don't sound anxious, or troubled, just lacklustre.

That it is a beautifully realised set of textures and sounds certainly helps, as does the fact that its keenly abstract, exploratory bent makes any attempted comparisons with his debut album practically meaningless.

Laetitia Sadier's vocal melodies soar, so that even when you get two hints of classical minimalist Steve Reich in the first two tracks, there are still tunes to hum.