The results breathe that same rarefied air as Nick Drake or Vashti Bunyan.

Both artists have stepped outside their regular roles to make what feels like a genuinely instinctive, love-fuelled record that zings with an enthusiasm for all spectrums of music.

The record that Bright Eyes fans have been praying for - carefully played, quietly honest, dripping with glorious poetry and painful insight, truly the work of utter genius.

Frequently staggering.

Over fifty minutes of slick, loungey, cinematic music.

The 'world-music' excursions of the previous 'Global - A Go Go' album are less in evidence and 'Streetcore' is a sharper, leaner collection for it.

If you're the sort of person who can see music--even if you can't, perhaps--this is so colourful.

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

Ironically, though defined sartorially and sonically by this short window in history, the songs on their debut album are mostly timeless. Few better will be released in 2008.

A deeply special album, and one you hope enough people will allow to get under their skin.

"Everything Ecstatic" pulses with imagination and subtle talent, choosing to follow a sweet technicolour road rather than take a harder, and far well trodden path.

It seems only logical that the three of them have relied so heavily on synths to create It's Blitz--despite Zinner's natural gift for manipulating the guitar--an album that's effectively a love letter to the dancefloor.

A great lost album in the making.

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

We've heard it all before, we know the punchline, we've bought into the joke, but still we want the delivery again and again.

It's tumultuous. It's breathtaking. It's expressive without the barest hint of Radiomuse indulgence.

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.

The Flaming Lips' most effortless and varied exploration of their charming and profound tongue to date.

The Canadian-American boho remains as feisty and red-blooded as ever, her hewn-from-marble voice--part-cowgirl part-Patti Smith--crooning and bawling tales of feckless lads and late night disappointments.

"Seven Swans" is as a graceful tour de force of an album - beguiling, bewitching and beautiful.

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.

His eye remains sharp.

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.

It is beautiful, uplifting stuff.

What Seventh Tree actually does - successfully - is tap into a very English spirit of eccentricity, taking the mellow floatiness of Goldfrapp's earliest work and imbuing it with a dash of Hammer horror and the aroma of country meadows.

At just over half an hour long, 'Rock Action' is a concise and robust statement of intent. It also contains some of the most beautiful and mesmerising music you'll hear this or any other year.

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

Almost everything here boils down to Cave's perennial concerns of sex and violence, rather than any Dark Lord of rock'n'roll stuff, coming loaded with lines to make even the most grave-faced goth chortle into their gruel.