Perhaps the album of her career.

So horribly untrendy it’s a new-black must-have, ‘Milk Man’ is the essential oddity of 2004, and a more-than-worthy successor to 2003’s magnificent ‘Apple O’’.

This is what you get when you give an overactive imagination the space to expand; it’s indescribably perfect.

It’s as simple as songwriting can get; as striking as songwriting can get.

Quite simply, this is the most invigorating album released in recent times and definitely one for the collection.

The Veils debut is a colossal - yet strangely intimate - record.

A taste for the exotic and a winning way with a winnowing hook leavens the most ear-shredding aural barrage, short-circuiting a connection between central nervous system and booty.

They’re the most unique band since The Van Pelt or At The Drive-In, with vocals comparable to the lyrical finesse of Tim Booth.

[His] most spellbinding LP to date.

Never happily slotting into any template demanded back in their home town, MM are nearer to some wondrous mish-mash of Pavement and Beck; closer in harmony to The Flaming Lips.

The key is - unlike the tongue-in-cheek cock-rock of The Darkness and the running joke of Electric Six - Scissor Sisters are reverential to the sounds of the 70’s.

The defining characteristic of ‘Happiness In Magazines’ isn’t its full sound, nor its sharp reminder of what a great band Blur used to be; its in the sheer imaginative scope.

Something new has been born here; its parents are every form of dance and many forms of rock, and it rolls.

This is evocative music. It’s beatific, charming, sophisticated and cool.

The names Pitchshifter, Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein are often bandied about in this company, but here’s a tip: Skinny Puppy have rendered them once again irrelevant.

There’s no shortage of pogo anthems, reflective quiet and headspinning ideology, and never a dull moment.

Bazan will never sound truly happy on record, but here he’s as content as anyone could have hoped for, and all the healthier for it.

Nothing less than a whole new world will do, and Adem has created just that.

Fragmented and disturbing, yet thoroughly refreshing.

It isn’t the place of a debut to straddle styles as diverse as harmony-drenched 60’s beat-soul, the shoegazing sound-paintings of the 80’s and relaxed futurism of now, yet this is their debut, and it covers all this and more.

Their country-sagged beat-focused rock remains, which, coupled with some sumptuous keys and Andy LeMaster’s notoriously unnerving range, reveal Now It’s Overhead’s startling magnetism.

‘No You C’Mon’ is more schizophrenic but equally satisfying, ranging from dinner jazz to bursts of discordant piano boogie.

At eighteen tracks it comes close to outstaying its welcome, but it doesn’t.

A collection of frisky funk, slinky soul, raucous R&B and heated rock ‘n’ roll based on real songs, rather than the doodles and sketches that have recently become the norm.

Young pretenders beware: this old dog isn’t so much learning new tricks as inventing them.

Though Auf Der Maur has run off with their blueprint and built it as seen, there’s raw passion and no little class here; Corgan and Love must be rueing their luck.

Like an air-bushed Slint re-emerging with Stereolab as their chief influence, Blonde Redhead engulf their guitars beneath so many keyboard tinkerings.

There’s something here that most - if not all - will find thoroughly refreshing and enchanting.

Reveals Sam Beam to be a songwriter of exquisite talent and enviable inspiration.

If invention and imagination are the criteria to judge, this is a future classic.

This is uncommonly powerful music, created from common instruments.

Felix Da Housecat’s shift into the wastelands of punk- funk and No Wave has given ‘Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever’ the feel of an excursion into virgin territory.

This is music best heard in the dark, on your back.

It’s ridiculously eclectic, yet uniformly affecting; a winter warmer that moves with a mysterious grace.

By far her best yet.

His mumbled burr recalls that half-awake state where reality melts, a strain of Southern Gothic best listened to at 3am with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and all the lights on.

No affectation, no pandering to fashion, just good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. How refreshing.

It’s Kweller’s lyrics and voice that do it though; joy and melancholy combined to deliver pop as uplifting as Weezer and rock that’s as unsubtle as Kings of Leon, with anti-folk and Merseybeat along for what is a thrill-filled ride.

There’s plenty of impressive tongue-twisting here, but as the re-working of ‘Feel So Good’ illustrates, he’s even more impressive when he slips down a gear to work the ladies.

Often you’re left amazed at the fact that this is the work of just one man.

This is a rock ‘n’ roll album in the same way that ‘Fun House’ was a rock ‘n’ roll album.

Their most accomplished album to date.

Shows that Jon Langford’s voice has lost bite but gained growl.

There’s nothing even remotely punk-funk here, instead conventional structures are stretched, shattered and re-assembled.

This is like saddling up with a fearless, interdimensional astronaut; fasten your seat belts.

Catching electronica in it’s embryonic state and somehow fusing it together with lush folk stylings, weathered ambience and the slightest - most beautiful - trace of vocals ‘Summer Makes Good’ is a truly breath-taking record.

It will take at least ten listens before you hear everything that’s going on, and ten more to understand it, yet this is far from impenetrable; it boasts a melody line that any pop princess would sell her plastic soul for, and prompts the idea that Knopf and his cohorts have been hanging around a crossroads doing just the same.

Striped of its proto-emo veneer this is sterling stuff, which - although fraught with angst - is run through with a mellow, humbling tone that is as infectious and accessible as it is true to hardcore’s staunch code of ethical values.

This is deep, rich, slightly unnerving and very very beautiful music. [combined review of both discs]

It’s not so much that Electrelane’s signature film score sound has been replaced, more added to and built upon; becoming the veiled framework to a new - almost celebratory - level of contentment.

The band's most accessible, blithe pop record to date.

It’s gorgeous, moving and magnificent.

For the first time in nearly a decade Cypress Hill sound like they’re really enjoying themselves, just like they were in the beginning.

‘When It Falls’ is not an immediate album, it’s a slow burner and one day, after countless hours playing it in the background, you’ll hear something that makes you turn it up; that’s the moment that it hooks you.

Disco, punk and pop, all in one bag.

It sounds like he’s cherry-picked his record collection in an attempt to allow the listener a glimpse into his restless mind.

‘Liberation’ is the most damning indictment of the Bush administration yet recorded, and it’s all subliminal. Magnificent.

A significant broadening of the tonal spectrum notwithstanding, the outfit manages to keep their ferocity intact, although the malevolence is structured with a shrewd infusion of melodic vocals, flourishing experimental dynamics and a motherlode of striking riffs.

Pierce consistently avoids the disturbance of breakbeats and jump cuts, instead rolling the elements into a smooth melange of sound that references world, dance and folk music, yet transcends all.

Even a half good Morrissey album is streets ahead of the competition.

Their third album finds them immersed in light-hearted, yet imaginative hop ‘n’ soul, Parliamentarian funk and the fiery chants of lead single ‘This Way’.

A collection of chaotic - yet charming - avant-pop rooted in Japanese culture both martial and precise, like letting blood in a rock garden.

‘Secret Wars’ is an engaging 40 minutes; a haphazard, likely to spontaneously combust at any moment 40 minutes to be sure, but that was the ethic that spawned rock ‘n’ roll in the first place and in these hands there’s plenty of life in it yet.

‘Tasty’, though haunted by more than a few sops to the slick-soul zeitgeist, is an impressive return.

Mirah’s ability to paste candy-pop nursery rhymes over voluptuous, macabre arrangements is truly unique and wholly un-matched.

What does surprise is the way the results combine Clannad with Cocteau Twins.

His carefully constructed tales are accompanied by a warm intimacy, the folky-edge only reinforcing the emphasis on the stories.

A window into the sublime mind of one of Britain’s great outsiders.

It’s worth ploughing through the strange to get to the beautiful, disturbing, fucked-up ‘Venus In Furs’ though, worth the full five stars all by itself.

Off-kilter, irreverent and unbelievably addictive.

Kidwell has distilled hip-hop into a brew that also contains trace elements of Nine Inch Nails, neo-goth noir and the finest Bristolian trip-hop, as well as the ever-present sonic manipulations that result from a very big iPod and a brain to match.

Here their ambient electro is enhanced with a melange of influences that include soul, jazz and - a real winner this - Brazilian psychedelia.

A below par effort by their high standards.

Unfortunately there are only flashes of Curtis breaking free of the overwhelming dominance of their prog tendencies. When used sparingly they are rich and absorbing, but in these instances they lack impact.

Jules’ talents lie closer to the downhome folksiness of Cat Stevens, enlivened by an eye for detail previously thought the sole preserve of Elliott Smith.

A confusing listen.

It most probably won’t attract new fans, but Margo Timmins’ voice is as unique as Thalia Zedek’s, for example, and remains their greatest asset.

Unfortunately, many of these mixes were submitted either by talented fans or lesser known professionals, and often they’ve removed much more than they’ve put in.

This is a perplexing album: two excellent singles, a few stellar moments of vicious riffage, but little to assuage that lingering sense of emptiness.

It’s all very strange yet thoroughly intriguing, but it does leave you pondering the question of what direction Ghost are planning to move in next.

There’s little in the way of straightforward rock here[;] instead they have opted to renege on their commitment to flat-four crunch and embrace melodicism...and experimentalism.

The trouble is, fine guitarist though he is, he too rarely demonstrates his skills, content to cruise on a simple melody.

The melancholy on offer barely gets above the level of sixth form poetry, and though Wilson tries to sound impassioned he comes across as strained.

Unfortunately, whereas sounding out of place in the late 90s worked in their favour, in the mid-noughties the lack of pretty faces, Converse Allstars and - perhaps most important of all - any half-decent tunes is unlikely to bring Gomez first prize even in their local pub’s battle of the bands.

Patchy at best.

Derivative and unfocused from every conceivable angle.