There isn't a duff or thoughtless moment.

This muscular follow-up ratchets up the internal tension until his exuberant toy-town techno becomes a shot of pure musical adrenalin.

Their joyous hooks ensure Donkey is as fun as its predecessor.

Inspirational stuff.

Rhys has made both his wildest and most accessible record to date.

Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.

This, their fourth album, feels like a breakthrough, more polished and poised to build on cult 2006 single 'Lloyd, Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?'

Lunatico won't alienate fans by having evolved too fast, nor disappoint by excessively rehashing old themes.

This set has 21 unreleased folk and pop tracks, their conventional framework unable to contain the childlike dreaminess that marks their creator's best work, whatever the genre.

Born Like This finds DOOM back to his scalpel-tongued, scatter-mouthed best.

A perfectly executed debut as might be expected from a band championed in OMM53 for their mathematical precision.

This is a daring, crisp modern soul album rich in ideas and star quality.

John Frusciante has carved out a parallel world as a solo artist over a series of intensely personal and brilliantly realised albums. His 10th, The Empyrean, is his most ambitious to date.

Somehow, though, it soars, the title track especially.

Scars on Broadway offers up the tastiest smorgasbord of bite-sized pop-metal delicacies since the last time Cheap Trick recorded a Queens of the Stone Age tribute album.

Trumpeter Mathias Eick has a sound that gently beckons and, like softly spoken conversation, you instinctively lean forward to catch every gesture. One you'll listen to on repeat to fathom its subtle meanings.

Unlike the calculated, humourless thump of Razorlight, this is stirring, ecstatic and - just sometimes - brilliantly OTT stuff.

Best is the title track, a roll call of compassion that embraces the darkness of 'Frankenstein technologies' and the hope of "a safe place for kids to play/ bombs exploding half a mile away." Both sombre and defiant, it's Mitchell at her finest.

Grasslands, wind in your hair, long, dusty roads travelled - it's all evoked in Joan's fine 24th studio album, and her voice, high and flowing, low and gravelly, flows timelessly through it like a mountain stream.

That's the problem with social realism, but the Enemy do their best to vary their sound and mode of address.

Whenever Hard Candy threatens to get boring, something always happens to recapture your interest, but the three songs in which Madonna actually seems to forge a genuine connection with her musical helpmeet leave the rest of the album in the shade.

Eight years after his last album, Pharoahe's return doesn't disappoint.

'Cult Status'--just one standout from their joyous debut--sounds like Primal Scream when they were trying to be the Rolling Stones. Even better is 'You Made Me Like It,' their hand-clapping, hip-swivelling calling card.

The 24-year-old's debut is a tropical soundclash of spiralling steel drums, looped, gnarled local songs and untrammelled joy.

This is a heavyweight album in every sense of the word.

Such is the balm-like propensity of her singing that the listener experiences it as a physical sensation as much as a sound. Yet as these 13 brief but perfectly formed songs rush by in 35 hectic, blissful minutes, the overall effect is galvanising rather than palliative.

It's most beguiling when the eastern influences are to the fore.

The lyrics lack focus at times but this is a winning debut.