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

Soulsavers shove the mic in Mark Lanegan's hand and tell him to growl as loud as he can. He brings his friends, they all join in, and they make a lot of sense.

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.

Gomez continue to make powerfully relevant music.

Everything, you suspect, that people hate about Björk is multiplied a thousandfold here. But by the same measure, to her fans, “Medulla” is an intimate, ecstatic wonder.

TV On The Radio sound wise beyond their years, youthful stars whose mouthpiece contorts itself into funk shapes and whups without sounding like an out-of-depth chancer.

Like listening to DJ Shadow after vast amounts of Angel Dust, 'Out Of Nowhere' is a sonic Hall Of Mirrors that bulges and bristles with restless inventiveness and illustrates an impressive attention to detail.

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

'Love And Theft' is a much tricksier, elusive and - important, this - entertaining beast, one that mingles reflections on ageing with a host of jokes, both good and bad, and some wickedly limber music.

Ultimately, Grinderman is just a way for Cave to release more music.

However maudlin Noah & The Whale begin, then, there's a wonderful narrative here that sees them move from first-love blues, through resentment to healing and finally to acceptance.

'Post-rock', which Sigur Rós most assuredly are, may be little more than the shoegazing of a decade ago in an ironic T-shirt, but that's no reason to dismiss it outright. For a start, much of it is very lovely.

Andorra feels free and fresh, comfortable exploring its own sonic identity.

It's truly intriguing in the way PJ albums haven't been since the commanding "To Bring You My Love" back in 1995.

Essentially a homage to The Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and fellow Minnesotan Prince, "The Handler" proves that Har Mar possesses a fine R&B baritone, is an able rapper and pens exceedingly funky, party-primed tunes with a perfect pop core.

It’s not as remarkable a transformation as the one Rick Rubin performed on Johnny Cash, but this is a fine collection and as pleasurable a listen as it undoubtedly was to record.

If you're not a fan of their weighty retro riffs, Into The Future is not going to sway you; but those who loved their self-titled debut will thrill to the darker, more convincing sounds of former single 'Stormy High' with its Plantish wails and solid Sabbathy riffs.

This is a record that proves, again, Joss Stone's considerable worth.

All in, this is a terrific, life-affirming and, at times, deeply romantic album - one that proves the potentials in both rock'n'roll and the electric guitar.

Weller fans can once again breathe a sigh of relief, for the man's still got it.

It's a dizzyingly impressive debut.

It’s both an oddly comforting and exhilarating trip.

What emerges is Sonic Youth at complete ease with themselves and their music, operating simultaneously at the peak of their powers and with a powerful, audacious restraint.

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.

A savvy, shiny, slyly sophisticated set of thoroughly modern dance floor exercises, it's the record we hoped Girls Aloud might make.

The main criticism of bands built on laptops is that they lack soul but while Telepathe's 'processes' may be intrinsically stylized, tracks like these and the thriving, exhilarating 'Devil's Trident' still carry moments of genuine romance, innocence and drama.

The record's treasure is folded into layers which make it an endlessly rewarding place to invest a couple of months of your life.

Rambunctious and packed with a lust for life, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Seesions" is not only Springsteen's rowdiest set in years, it's the one that seems likely to win him a whole new audience.

He still tinkles the ivories with dazzling skill and his scything comments on breaking-up and the emotionally inept are all too easy to identify with, yet the most enamouring thing is that he manages to do this all without being zany or patronising.

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

Musically, too, there's a definite sense of progression. These tracks have a richer and warmer sound than anything the band have previously released, and rather than standalone expressions of emotional dysfunction, they feel very much connected, bound together by their complex arrangements and sumptuous yet subtle production.

Warm and welcoming.

There's a rolling, free and expansive feel to the album as a whole that is not only one of its most attractive features, but is also the most difficult thing about it to pin down.

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.

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

'Vol. One' might have opened the band up to a wider audience but 'Vol. Two' is a far better reflection of what Everclear are all about.

They now have more in common with Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers than they do their former mentors Papa Roach.

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.

An impressively rounded, engagingly inventive record that ranges across British blues / R&B, Mod pop, psychedelia and American country rock.

It's a canny mix and results in Hercules And Love Affair making music for feet and heart, but also for the soul.

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.

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

The result is largely the mature second album that we were hoping for with Steve Mason's magical way with a tune still proving capable of injecting an awe-inspiring and yet indefinable emotional resonance to everything he touches.

Although only eight songs long, Body Talk Pt. 1 is a fully formed, imagined futuristic world that uses technology to propel it into a future version of the present day.

At 31 minutes, the record is a short and bitter mind-melter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Kicking Television" documents a band on fire and a frontman in clarion clear voice.

Ultimately, 22 Dreams is, simply put, Weller's best album since "Stanley Road", and one to be remembered for years to come.

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

Rather than mimicking and rehashing "Simple Things", she's found a warmth and depth of feeling that makes "Colour The Small One" the logical progression.

Bobby Ray has a little way to go to match his mentor's lyrical ingenuity, but as the first post-Lupe rap star he's already absorbed the most important lessons about form and function, inspiration and integrity. It's a great start.

"The Black Parade" is a big, fat, obnoxious, difficult, overbaked concept record and it's all the more exciting for it.

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.

'Mwng' or 'Mane' (as in horses) is a purely Welsh language album and is a theoretically disorientating and complex, but triumphantly audacious, experience.

Hidden backs up some audacious conceits with studious application and winds up a major achievement from these po-faced sentinels of the secret history.

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.

Where the album triumphs though is the crystalline clarity of the songs, their titanic emotional wallop and Marling's quite exquisite delivery.

It doesn't disappoint, if beatific, rhythm-infested melodies, resplendent in wondrous brass, stark string accompaniment and obscure found sounds are your bag.

'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.

A hugely impressive debut.

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.

Overall, it's less chaotic and noisily rampant, the Comets' awesome creative fury now channelled into structures more obviously resembling tunes.

At its best 'Wishville' recalls the finest hours of Psychedelic Furs and Mancunian goth heroes The Chameleons and at its worst, the pomp stadium rock of Simple Minds.

'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.

"Supernature" is the rarest of records - one which arrives late in the life span of a genre but defines it so completely and perfectly that a full stop can be placed right there.

Carrying the minimum amount of filler and fat, this judiciously pruned collection conclusively proves that this is one tiger still capable of burning brightly.

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

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.

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

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.

"Thunder, Lightning, Strike" is an immensely derivative album, but one which cuts and pastes its influences in a strikingly original way. Chiefly, by piling them all on at once.

More dutty than rock, "Trinty" fully establishes Sean Paul as not only a dancehall great, but one of black music's brightest talents.

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

Even the lesser efforts are superior to typical chart fare.

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.

Though Manitoba's constructions are joyously slap-dash and defiantly experimental, he still manages to lure the listener in with woozy melodies and strangely beguiling textures.

It's eclectic, electrifying, eccentric and more than a little bit ludicrous, but Sir Lucious's ambition is as infectious as its madness is dazzling.

Yes, and it's just as frustrating, too, and fiddly and awkward and self-conscious and self-important and neurotic and panicky, and as often ugly as it is beautiful, and as often pompous or irrelevant as it is profound. Just as you've come to expect.

Quite honestly, he's never sounded so alive and free - or, more importantly, human.

A tremendously odd hour of music.

Sexy, credible, committed, In Love And War works damn hard for the money, and stands as another thoroughly modern record from a lady embodying strangely old-skool virtues.

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

A supreme return to form.

It's a rich, bright, clever and engaging album that should trash those lame prejudices against Belle & Sebastian once and for all.

Modern Guilt takes that album's insecurity in the face of technology running away with us, to a tightly-written 10 songs that in part seem to focus on what, precisely, we have done to the world; and how on earth are we meant to get back in touch with it?

The Defamation Of Strickland Banks is an unlikely, remarkably successful stab at launching the first major new male star of the decade.

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...

Blige's eighth studio album [is a contender] for being the best of her career.

This is something unique, often flawed and often flooring, and as fine and fitting a memorial for its lyricist as could be imagined.

System Of A Down's music is highly layered and complex, but never succumbs to self-indulgence. Every track is tightly-coiled and urgent because, even while they're trying to broaden your horizons, SOAD are aware of the need to rock hard.

Like Pitt and Clooney’s sharp suits and nonchalant one-liners, it’s a deft balance of style and humour. And not since Quincy Jones’s score for 'The Italian Job' has it been executed with such precision.

Back with the same band that helped her notch up such smoky, smooth jazz hits as 'Your Love Is King', 'Smooth Operator' and 'The Sweetest Taboo', Sade has produced an album of class, sophistication and melancholy soul.

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.

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.

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