Dave Grohl and Pat Smear both make cameos on the record, but high profile guests aren’t the album’s high point. That accolade goes to the gentle soft rock triumph of ‘Raspberries’, the shred-happy ‘Pieces of the Puzzle’ and the piledriving, ’70s-era Aerosmith ballad ‘Too Far Gone To See’.

A freshly squeezed record with the pulp left in it.

Beneath those perverted pop bounces, though, are some sadder, softer moments, and a reminder that Levi doesn’t just need discordant noise to twist your insides.

It’s rich with Afro-centric grooves and dusty drum breaks, the spirit of James Brown weaving in and out of the pro-Black messaging, which emphasises hope and progress but still acknowledges the pain and suffering endured along the way.

‘Algorithm’ will probably appeal more to the older hip-hop cynics, though anyone who grew up in a house where their parents played ‘California Love’ or ‘It Was A Good Day’ will also revel in the nostalgia offered by the record.

An album that sounds like it was written as a soundtrack to the best film never made. [20 Jan 2007, p.31]

The shimmering beauty of 'Tame The Sun' and the My Bloody Valentine atmospherics of 'Bones' serve to elevate the aesthetic that Male Bonding established on their debut Nothing Hurts to greater heights.

There's a bunch of teary emotions bagged up in the spikiest of descending scales.

There’s nothing on Hombre Lobo (Spanish for werewolf) that couldn’t be constructed by breaking down the DNA of the previous six Eels albums and repiling the strands up in some melodically fresh but warmly recognisable way.

While Green Lanes doesn’t exactly break new ground, it does refine their warm’n’cosy formula enough to interest.

Rule of thumb for this album: ballad good, uptempo shocking. [20 Nov 2004, p.57]

They may be a one trick pony, but these 2008 recordings show that Stereolab are good at what they do.

Ultimately the one thing truly lacking on Dungeonesse is the bright spark that makes pop stars so entertaining to obsess over.

What it is overall, however, is a disappointment. A few sparkling moments of invention aside, much of this album is comfortably interchangeable with "Stars Of CCTV's" less inspired tracks.

Ten tracks of exuberant, blissful pop later and it looks like the Mackem lads have actually come good on their promise.

Silly? Indisputably, although Dani Filth's theatrical vocals ensure that 'The Abhorrent' is every bit as grandiose and ridiculous as a classic Hammer horror.

All too often, tracks feel like connectors – carriages to transport listeners between the singles. There’s little narrative, few definitive themes, but there are lots of guests.

A wide-eyed, serotonin rush of an album that will make you eternally grateful for Swim Deep’s perseverance.

This debut confidently chronicles every dizzying high and crushing blow that love brings – affairs of the heart have, after all, long been Michaels’ specialist songwriting subject. Most notably, each song is anchored by Michaels’ distinctive one-liners.

The tracks that work on this album would fit perfectly on a spooky science fiction soundtrack, but the remaining songs really drag the collection down.

The freewheeling spirit does occasionally give way to a less exciting middle ground: ‘Eight Minute Machines’ comes as a blast of scuzzy guitar-driven punk we’ve heard a lot of in recent years, where the six-minute closer ‘Greasin’ Up Jesus’ is built around a drum machine doesn’t go anywhere in particular. For the most part, though, this is clearly the sound of a band ready to party once more, making for another carnival of different sounds and offbeat ideas.

It's an impressively unpredictable record that veers down wildly different paths, in ways no previous Modest Mouse album has dared.

What Muse have done is re-establish themselves as a respected British institution by being fun.

Gatekeeper's Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkel crunch elements of '80s post-industrial dance, horror/sci-fi soundtracks and computer game music into an enjoyably garish whole.

If it sounds close to daft on paper, Merchandise have the ingenuity to make it work, and so it is with this fine album.

The most brilliantly ambitious record of the year.

File under: ‘shoulda put a donk on it’.

Intimate, unpolished and worth getting to know.

It’s a shame the saccharine musical backing too often makes it hard to empathise.

At times, you want more rage. Other times, more clarity. You can’t doubt Public Enemy’s resolve. But on Man Plans God Laughs, music and message remain a notch out of synch.

Confidently expressing vulnerability over woozy nocturnal soundscapes to create comfort and intimacy in a lonely, quiet place, LoveLaws will be your fireside companion.

Like most break-up albums, ‘This Is Really Going To Hurt’ is self-indulgent. There are moments of relatability, but for the most part, Taylor’s fury steamrolls everything.

As inviting and accessible as anything released this year. [2 Apr 2005, p.50]

Ash come close here to that which has always eluded them: an album that amounts to more than the sum of its singles.

Ladyhawke’s louche synthetic pop is brazenly Bananarama, ridiculously ‘Rio’, and wonderfully Waterman, but the lack of posing – her sheer scruffiness – makes it the first credible ’80s pop record since ABC’s ‘The Lexicon Of Love’

[The] constant sense of melodrama robs the record of its potency, the impact of that pounding sonic template diminished through its constancy. The sense of doom is familiar, the sound of the band’s new record even more so.

He's a white man crafting beats behind street-level odes to marking out territory from the likes of Detroit's Guilty Simpson and Marv Won, plus others, and he draws on a cornucopia of cultures to do so. Latin, Middle Eastern, African and, worst of all for Starkey, freaky German (NOT THEM!) Moog music rears up on a seductive record that reveals itself in layers.

While the guitars are grimier and the drums hit harder, Pins haven’t totally smothered their sound in engine oil.

This psychedelic folk pop-athon of tickled riffs, snappy elastic basslines, shimmering synths and sweetly sung vocals is all dreamy eccentricity, with a bittersweet hint of rhythmic unrest, from start to finish, and should send Hidden Cameras fans into an amorous tizz after just one listen.

His molasses-coated cooing works well along his sparse arrangements. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

Canopy Glow can pass you by on first listen, but persevere and memorable moments do emerge.

Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 is a triumph; a good-time album of wall-to-wall hits with a carefree, funky tropical feel and more than enough cool points to see him embraced by the hipster crowd as well as holding on to the pop kids.

The result is delirious party music, which, although at times deliciously dumb, is never – as cerebral Addison Groove fan Aphex Twin would attest – stupid.

‘Love For Sale’ is best when Bennett and Gaga playfully trade lines and sing in unison, with the veteran singer countering his collaborator’s belting vocal with artful restraint.

As before, attempts to explore London's seedy underbelly verge on hamfisted and voyeuristic. But, again as before, Soft Cell really flourish with Marc's relationship horror stories, which happens on two songs.

An enormous, symphonic, sprawling, highly ambitious, far-reaching work of wonder. [17 Jul 2004, p.48]

It tries to capture the essence of 1973 without having any big hairy old prog hits on it. Which is a bit like trying to capture the essence of the Star Wars films by cutting out all the bits in space.

A total car-crash of excess enthusiasm. [12 Jun 2004, p.49]

A little more melodic resolve wouldn't go amiss, but 'Ester' is a solid, imaginative debut that leaves you aglow with the ice-warmth of a blip-literate Cocteau Twins.

Yet amongst [a few] luminous choice picks, sometimes it gets lethargic – and the record stalls.

It’s a sleeping giant of a dancefloor creeper that will be everyone’s favourite new electro album in approximately six months’ time.

Just as Moz's stance as a one-man outsider army and ringleader of the tormentors is restated, so is his standing as the godfather of indie disaffection and despair.

ii is a record that unveils itself slowly, initially sounding ugly and abrasive before the melodies surge to the fore. Once you look for it, there’s beauty amidst the ugliness.

Busy and Melissa have made a record that shimmers with possibilities, mapping out an alien territory that’s eerily inviting. Now it’s time to build on it.

Sea Of Cowards, then, is the record The Dead Weather should have come out with first, casting them firmly as a real band, albeit one that sound like they’d roofie their fan club soon as look at them. It’s actually supremely brave and exhilarating.

Thankfully, on The World Is Yours the band sound more engaged than they have in some time.

For all its high-mindedness, it’s garage-rock primalism is just as easily enjoyed with your brain switched off. Perhaps that’s the point.

Whether or not you'd want to listen to it more than once depends on your pain threshold, but those 45 minutes will be among the most terrifying of your life, guaranteed. [13 Nov 2004, p.56]

Although the decision to release what sound like half-finished tracks purposefully left in the draft folder somewhat misguided, the album doesn’t do anything to tarnish his legacy. Instead, there are moments where it shows how capable of an artist Åhr was, a gentle reminder of the stardom Lil Peep could have achieved.

All those years in Audioslave have smoothed Cornell's appealingly rough edges, and as grand as King Animal occasionally sounds, it lumbers when it should roar.

Red may only be a fleetingly satisfying confection, but maybe that was the plan all along.

Combin[es] the chummy West Coast country pop of The Thrills with the plink-plonk pub piano philosophising of Embrace. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

Pleasantly tuneful pop-punk. [23 Oct 2004, p.51]

We’re left with a sprawling, obvious, uber-commercial, stoopid punk-pop album that might just stop five million American idiots from voting for a war-mongering Republican baby-slaughterer when they grow up. Works for me.

The immaculately chiselled 'Daybreaker' is so beautiful and distant that it almost isn't there at all.

If there's a clear problem with the album, it lies in the sugar-coated crystalline sheen that surrounds everything.

By god is it ever long (it's 16 tracks), but on the whole it showcases enough of what makes the Chili Peppers a very good rock group – chief among these are John Frusciante's excellent, inventive guitar playing, and the fact that it is with tremendous conviction that Anthony Kiedis belts out even the most ridiculous words.

As curious a party piece that is, it rather overshadows their phenomenal way with gorgeous melodies and heart-melting harmonies.

Sadly, such pop bluster is largely missing from this debut album, which is over-long and obsessed with pained R&B choruses--precisely the reasons we all went off American rap in the first place.

It’s Dire Straits teamed with louche New York cool--a combination that shouldn’t work, but totally does.

Crunching rhythms, subtle brass, and tunes as intoxicating as a blood transfusion from Pete Doherty combine as he tells the tale of a disastrous year full of rat infestations, romantic strife and weight loss.

Allow Caramel to ooze out and it’ll rock you into an unsettling trance.

Any attempt at bombast is pinned down by singer Liam Palmer’s weary baritone and wry poetry. Intriguingly glum.

Rivas’ voice isn’t enormously distinctive, either, meaning Sky Swimming rarely eclipses the dreaded adjective ''pleasant''.

If ‘The Messenger’ was everything anyone could want a Johnny Marr solo record to be, Playland is pretty much all anyone could hope for as a follow-up.

Being adventurous can often mean over-reaching but, in this case, the production turns familiar elements into one of Fucked Up’s most intriguing recordings yet.

By the end, it’s more than enough noodling, but you can’t help but marvel as Drinks shred their fingertips.

What A Time To Be Alive often sounds more like a Drake album than the jazzier, busier records that Future usually creates. Yet the Atlanta rapper dominates the record, demonstrating his impressive adaptability.

He’s the most successful former One Direction member with good reason, and this album is a high-water mark for the 25-year-old.

This is a nine-song collection of modest ambition, but ‘Buoys’ undoubtedly succeeds on its own terms, that consistently understated sonic template interspersed with surprising moments – the bassy thud of electronic drums that interrupts ‘Crescendo’, the hip-hop style piano riff that marches through ‘Master’ – that makes it a rewarding repeat listen.

Lang struggles when he shoots for huge, belting rock’n’roll – most of the more conventional tracks fade into the background. ... Instead, Lang feels far more at home and intriguing with the intricate, slowly unfurling ‘Final Call’.

There’s one too many generic, string-laden ballads, and a stop-start feel to the record, a frustration given how enlivening its highs are. But if anything, it feels like a record Beer has been desperate to make since the very beginning: she’s come a long way in her time in the spotlight, but now we’re finally getting to know her true sound.

Dando is in spiky, Buzzcocks-esque form. [23 Sep 2006, p.31]

If there’s a criticism to be made it’s that the album’s perhaps a little one-note.

Adam Green’s flowering from puerile anti-folk twonk with The Moldy Peaches to suave lounge-country crooner is laudable.

This time around Tessa Murray and Greg Hughes give the same tricks a more professional finish.

Although the collaborations here read like pop's Yellow Pages... it feels not like desperation, but a wildly ambitious Warhol-esque art project. [9 Sep 2006, p.35]

Sadly, a lack of focus in melody and structure means it's not quite as atmospheric as Mick seems to think.

Bereft of blues bombast, electronic trickery or bothersome concepts, when E's not coming on like Red House Painters he's getting seriously classical.

Bagshaw’s tendency to spout arcane guff about the Odyssey, desert rituals, buried crystals and dancing on the stones is pure hippy mimicry. Sonically, though, this is a fresh and energised ’60s homage.

Time Team is intergalactic, ambient, Rustie-ish drug music set to snare kicks and sturdy hip-hop beats that at its best is deliciously mind-bending.

Manchester Orchestra are from Atlanta and play loud/quiet grunge. Nothing new then, but fans of the Pixies and Weezer will love it.

The Moog returns here, but 'Suns'--two minutes of busted TV static--is an inscrutable opener.

A brilliantly inventive record that concludes with a bit of sarky musical theatre (which may be aimed at Adamczewski). Saoudi has hinted that this could be Fat Whites’ final album. If so, they’ve gone out on the most surprising note of all.

It's hardly 'The Cutter', but it can just about handle the mustard.

Fundamentally, 'The Sword Of God' is a record that fumbles desperately at the door of greatness but can't quite get the key to fit. It tries hard, it's got some excellent songs on it, but it's just slightly too smarmy for its own good.

A glossy, well-produced album of populist anthems with a gangsta undertow that expands his worldview and celebrates success.

At least two thirds of it is still comprised of head-spinning speed metal, but there are signs of genuine progression -- not to mention progressive rock -- from the off.