All in, this is probably their best work.

Whether forsaken or not, Fucked Up certainly do a fine job of making the political sound personal--a victory in itself when taken with a sonic ferocity so broad in its range and wide in scope.

A 93 minute-long nervous breakdown that offers few concessions to the needs of the listener to be entertained.

Not since Springsteen's "Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ" has an album carved poetry so successfully from the dirty streets of America's greatest cities, or has a lyricist dealt so skilfully with the themes of addiction, failure and snatching redemption a split second before passing out.

In a bid to make a startling epic work, she's concentrated on the form and neglected the content.

Three albums in and Basement Jaxx are still so far ahead of the pack that they're a barely visible dust cloud on the horizon.

It's dark but without employing the dull monotone formulas that have dragged drum and bass down.

The songs might be helmed by waves of guitar fuzz (their self-styled 'loose wool' sound) and dissonance, but the gentle orchestration provided by long-time collaborator Padma Newsome and the defiantly tough, robotic drumming of Bryan Devendorf give these songs a warm, phosphorescent glow.

A quietly timeless triumph.

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

This is music designed to fill arenas - possessed of a consistent quality and vision, a head, a heart and soul - that simply leaves the competition trailing in its wake. An utter triumph.

Be assured, this is a genuinely spectacular album: the most stunning aspect being that there's clearly better to come.

Represents a considerable stride in ambition, reaching into dark unchartered territories and repaying close listening with the kind of organic insights that great music excels in unearthing.

With this ramshackle spread of spiked beats and filthy-fingered funk he's produced easily his best work.... An intoxicating, headstorming brew of desire and despair 'Bow Down To The Exit Sign' is the first great album of the millennium.

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

'Old Ramon' is a slight affair cut from similar cloth to '...Blue Guitar', fuzzy with distortion, hampered by less than inspirational songwriting.

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.

He's perhaps not very hopeful that 'This Is Happening' will capture the same number of ears and hearts as 2007's terrific 'Sound Of Silver' did, but it's a fine and thrilling epitaph nonetheless.

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.

Free from the trappings of hype this is simply a great album. Rock 'n' roll: just like they used to make.

It is surely intoxicating.

It easily stands comparison not just to the stars Jay-Z has been forced to compete with since 1996, but to the all-time greats of hip hop history.

Fans of musical experimentation, and Eno / Byrne completists, will no doubt want to add this set to their list, but for the uninitiated, you might be better off spending an hour or two browsing the World Music department of your nearest record shop than grappling with this quaintly outmoded collection.

This is a frequently great and occasionally bold statement from an - extraordinary - artist on top of her game.

The good news is that The Polyphonic Spree still make sense stripped of all visual gimmicks.

Incredibly, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' is a record that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with 'The Soft Bulletin', refining that album's themes and defiantly charging into unchartered musical territories. Another masterpiece.

On Dark Days/Light Years, their ninth album, The Furries consolidate their best ideas--electro leanings, hypnotic motorik excursions, catchy, hook-driven riffs and layers of vocal melodies.

As much U2, New Order and Jan Hammer as they are The Field, Harmonia and Black Dice, ultimately F*ck Buttons are in a league of their own--and with Tarot Sport, they just bettered themselves.

Pretty much a repeat of an earlier 1990 compilation.

This is a very, very good record.

At its best, 'We Love Life' features some of the finest British rock music of recent years.

By rights, Elbow should be pretty annoying, the same kind of lardy, overblown and overrated band as their compatriots Doves.... Yet there's something rather haunting and affecting about 'Cast Of Thousands', just as there was about 2001's 'Asleep At The Back', which raises Elbow far above most of their peers.

Compact and succinctly direct, its 16 tracks rarely break the three-minute mark but are packed with a greater density of ideas than its predecessor.

Arguably up there with his greatest achievements to date, "The Letting Go" is business as usual for Oldham, but also a brand new start.

Much scruffier and far less inhibited than Coldplay, and way more compelling than Editors, Two Dancers is widescreen stuff nonetheless and an album that will carry them across more thresholds than their first.

It's warm, analogue production bolstered by Madlib, ?uestlove and the inevitable J Dilla exhumation that makes it a summer smash in waiting, not least on 'Umm Hmm''s exhortation to let your feelings show.

Cut out vague Shindoa track, "The Instrumental", tired Gunter Kallmann Choir-retread "Daydreamin'" and the offerings here that are marred by warbled soul harmonies - consistently added as afterthoughts to choruses - and this would be perfect.

This is not merely a good album, but a truly great one.

A hugely impressive debut.

The most genuinely interesting addition to The Beatles' canon in years, it actually makes you want to dig out the originals and fall in love with the music all over again.

They've become accomplished, exciting, restrained and wise.

To anyone who's felt like they've been along to share even a little bit of that journey, it's an album-of-the-year contender that's bound to do nothing but delight.

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.

If you're lucky enough to have the original version of 'In Search Of', you don't just own a sure-to-be-valuable collectors' classic, you also have the better album. [Review of U.S. version]

[A] nine-minute sprawling, shifting and landing tidal wave.

Even the vague pointlessness that hangs over this product (some interesting rarities – aside from the not-very-different 'alternate takes' of a few tracks included here – wouldn't have gone amiss) can't detract from the incredible music contained in the first two CDs.

At these transcending moments, "Good News...". is elevated into excellence. But overall, there is too much Mouse that bores and not enough Mouse that roars.

New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War is an insane, obscure and exciting record of the kind that very few artists have the guts or imagination to make anymore.

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

Broken hearts litter pop music of course, but the way this 24-year-old almost welcomes desolation into her life is nothing if not fascinating.

Lazily accomplished without ever truly igniting, a classy update on a slightly dated hip-hop sound.

The startling musical variety amplifies the fact that no matter how aloof, how diffident, how cartoon Beck might be, he's so extravagantly talented that he's already lapped everyone else on that strength alone.

A mature and, occasionally beautiful album, possibly the finest of their career.

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

Despite the quick gestation, it's actually better than the successful debut - a rare enough occurrence - and the direction in which they've pushed things is equally surprising.

Some are already calling it a landmark. This year's 'Deserter's Songs' or 'Soft Bulletin'. In truth it's probably better than both of those records.

At 14 tracks long, The Dodos do push the point a little, but it's really a case of once you've lit the touch-paper you live with the explosions till the last spark.

Hearing him coast is still better than listening to most rappers trying; but the Jay-Z of today sounds like someone for whom making music is an enjoyable hobby, not a burning need.

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

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

Their dedication to refined, pretty songs means there's a very narrow scope here that didn't afflict Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest" and which makes proceedings here sound a little wan and wishy-washy after a while.

Nine Types Of Light is an album that manages to blend experimentation with a welcoming accessibility that proves pop music can still be bold this far down the line.

Such is the depth and quality of Turner's songwriting, it plays like a best of.

She's melded the two sides of her history much more seamlessly; four-to-the-floor pop belters mix with touches of electronic and lyrical darkness to make one of the pop albums of the year.

Establishes him not only as a master of the fast and fluid flow, but an insightful, frequently humorous - if somewhat socio- politically naïve - lyricist.

'Poses', his second terrific album, is a collection of 12 songs in search of a musical; arch tales that mingle snapshots of boho life with arch allusions to courtly love.

This is not a 'commercial' release, at least not in the commonly construed meaning of the word. If you had to be picky, you could say that nothing has the impact of that cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt" or Nick Lowe's "The Beast In Me". But that's beside the point.

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

It is not a terrible album by any means; just an unfocussed and sprawling one.

This is not the work of a band prepared to make a song and dance to keep everyone interested, but one happy to build something good from not a lot and hope you like it.

Most people will deem this album a significant piece of work, and maybe if you haven't heard much Pavement then it is.

Utterly unique and frequently wonderful.

Re-emerging after a mere eight month gestation with their second album (they're referring to it as an extended EP just to be difficult, but whatever), the only natural assumption would be that the whirlwind of inconsistency smashes on unabated. And in some respects it does, but key to this record's fortunes is a sense that first they're running out of ideas and second have chilled their bones to become less rigidly obsessed with quantity and cleverness and proving their self-worth.

At every turn this record astonishes with its accomplishment.

Aside from the incredible sonics though, Phoenix's real triumph here is successfully contorting the songs into ever more elaborate and unconventional arrangements without losing any of their classy pop impact.

Nine fantastically-detailed, delicately-constructed and warm-sounding pieces that are far too slippery to fall into neat genre parameters.

Inevitably, it all starts to grow a little samey.

They muster compelling music that sounds like triumph in the face of adversity, building something beautiful out of the building blocks of sadness and despair.

This Is It... is an incredible leap forward as a result. She was already good. Now she's awesome.

A work so consistently stirring, stately, and pop-aware it makes most recent guitar-based art-rock albums look tawdry.

The album misses the addictive funk of 'Red Alert', the off beat quirks of 'Yo Yo' and the engulfing production depth of 'Same Old Show'. But it's a powerful package and a proof that the Basement Jaxx have the confidence and vision to pursue their own path.

It's rather a genuinely exuberant, joyously infectious and sheerly celebratory affair, its tribal drums, parping keyboards and rippling, brassy guitars offset by sweet vocal harmonies and reverb-laden solos, with Koenig's witty and literate lyrics marking out their crucial difference.

'One Day Like This' rolls out an exultant, almost fulsome, bright blue-sky assurance that really, no matter how gloomy you might feel, a lovely day can put an altogether better complexion on things. If anyone else voiced such sentiments, you'd rightly want to reach into the stereo and slap them hard, but that Elbow make the affirmation ring touchingly true is a testament to their sweet sincerity and principled candour.

Beyond the grooves etched in this record, what is most exciting is the ease with which Arbez brushes aside the canon of 90s giants.

Many of the tracks (including "Positive Tension" and "This Modern Love") are so choppy and discontinuous as to give you the same nauseous feeling you get when you hear a Mars Volta record.

This is not an album to listen to casually. It insists on taking over your life for an hour, demands a level of concentration rare in rock, amply repays multiple plays.

Luke Haines, of nineties nobodies The Auteurs and Baader Meinhof, together with Sarah Nixey and John Moore, appear to have taken Saint Etienne's 'Like a Motorway' (from 'Tiger Bay') and driven away with it in a battered Ford Escort to a distant destination, a concept album about motorways and travelling.

Even at his laziest, Wolf sounds vastly more intelligent, committed and interesting than his supposed rivals, and "The Magic Position" is full of heart, warmth and beauty.

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.

For some, this and the album's unabashed opulence may prove too much to stomach. For others though, Lindstrom has created a sophisticated and lovingly crafted album that despite its dance driven pulse will resonate with music lovers of all persuasions.

You'll struggle to find any filler on a record that works magnificently as a whole.

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.

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.

"Jarvis" is a collection of 13 individual songs, rather than an album with cohesive impact.

It's certainly very cleverly composed and constructed but ultimately sounds aloof and impenetrable and, as a result, somewhat devoid of emotion.

While it'd be ridiculously premature to cast The Horrors as the future of anything, this is a bold and often brilliant step in that direction.

If leaving Lost Highway was a blow to Regan's confidence you'd never know it from hearing this - he's definitely taken the right turning.

'Under Construction' isn't a retro album, so much as it's informed by both new and old. But it also isn't beyond question whether this return to roots doesn't conceal a lack of inspiration.