People who hate the venality and misogyny of modern mainstream rap will find this a particularly joyless experience, but this unwavering and energising disc at least has the courage of its convictions and makes the immediate competition look like the mealy mouthed twats they are.

It's terribly important that you don't give up on this record too easily. Given just a little bit of your precious time, the album will grow into something you never expected.

'Love' is trying to be all things to all people and suffers for its lack of ruthlessness and direction.

A colourful, incomparable colossus, a work of breathtaking, staggering genius and no mistake.

This isn't really a party record, more of a reflective, late night curled up on the couch with a loved one record.

She has issued a treasure. She has floored us again.

It's hard to truly love a band that are so chameleonic that they sacrifice signature definition for adventurousness.

'Milkwhite Sheets' will come to you offering kisses, but beware the knife behind its back

'Public Warning' is a good record. It's just unfortunate that (no doubt at the behest of the major label moneymen) Sov's Stateside commitments have led to it emerging here rather bloated, feebly, and late.

'Chops' isn't wholly disastrous, but it's all too often a reminder that, for roughly his first decade onstage, Childs was an infuriatingly insular and mildly indulgent performer, and it now appears that he was able to make such genuinely fantastic records in spite of that because of the healthy influence of his band-mates.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, here is an album that is going to be deservedly huge.

His new lyrical equation seems to be rip off someone else's words, add some street slang that would have been out of date five years ago, mention some brand names, say something offensive and then shoe horn it all together.

It's sexless twaddle pure and simple, delivered by an over-contented and conceited artist with nothing left to offer the world than refried lyrics and quasi-profound meaningless phrases.

There's little that sounds really new here.

A curious, klezmer-infested charm.

'Young Machetes' is both a magnificent and important album.

They entwine eastern canticles and fuzzy finger picking and electronic trickery like no other.

The Information is as creative, tuneful and interesting as you could wish from an established artist.

The Killers album is, whisper it, pretty good in places.

Though loquacious, 'Boys and Girls in America' is a record full of maddening stream of consciousness lyrics that amble without direction, and narratives with no real stories or purpose.

There are enough pinnacles of musical achievement married with subtle storytelling to justify the scale of this album.

Intelligent, melodic, poetic and funny, so this is what Now sounds like eh?

Although more full-blooded and more rhythmically experimental in places, '...Planets' isn't a giant stylistic leap from ''Homseongs', but then, why would you want it to be?

A very slickly produced record that's practically unlistenable.

There simply aren't enough superlatives to describe the genius of his music.

A lap or two behind many of the albums it seemingly aspires to be (Cat Power, Radiohead, Fiona Apple and Elliott Smith comparisons have been made before and seem almost invited) 'Knives...' still has enough personality and original thought to shield it from accusations of simple derivation.

This is a densely structured journey through intense pummelling and dervishes of electronic noise.

Experimental it ain't, but this summer in a shiny flat box it is.

Aside from track sequencing issues... and dodgy indie geezers, 'The Outsider' is a great album and well worth the wait.

What we're offered here is pretty much a second take on the discordant beeps, Mani-ripped basslines and lazy hip hop breaks of their first album, with the addition of some hideously nipped and tucked string samples padding out their attempted lyrical bravado.

A quite beautifully realised album.

It's not quite the second coming or even the first for that matter, but 'Food & Liquor' should leave you feeling sated and occasionally elated.

Fascinatingly dense, soulful and utterly divine.

'Crazy Itch Radio' bumbles along with mid-paced beats and, it seems, too many disparate influences to really hold together.

The sonic palette here is just so relentlessly perfect that, for me, it becomes constricting and cloying.

And so it goes on sonic cliche after awful lyrics after terrible synth settings after lazy drum beats after... well, you get the picture.

A lesson in understatement, 'Into The Blue Again' reminds us that LaValle is the undisputed master of emitting emotion without embellishing it with perverse orchestration or all manner of multi-tracked trickery.

Put simply: there isn't a bad track on 'Blood Mountain', which will be seen as the metal release of this year, on whichever level you care to mention.

There's a kind of timeless haze that drifts through 'Yellow House' and makes it a pleasingly elusive listen.

Here Dylan has written a great part and acts it out beautifully. And, as usual, everything is out in the open but nothing, absolutely nothing, is revealed.

This album is just a purer distillation, a more joyous exaggeration of the smaller, more tasteful thrills offered by every posturing indie rock band out there.

The 'Idlewild' experience is mostly regrettable and one that will leave you feeling cheated.

'Damaged' is a hugely welcome addition to Lambchop's now frighteningly impressive back catalogue, and an album with few limitations.

Although Darnielle's incessant lyrical urgency occasionally causes some words to sound too forced, it's these delicate, well placed notes, minimal piano tinkles and two chord strums that save the songs.

While not quite aspiring to the lofty benchmark of 'Whatever, Mortal', this recovers the lost ground of 'Pajo'.

Whereas previously his songs felt carefully and beautifully crafted, here he seems content to merely plunder a whole host of archaic musical styles and immerse himself in self-congratulatory jams, and a result you end up with a less than satisfying hotchpotch of songs.

This is an album of gin-fuelled laments, uprisings and battered beauty: such dignity and sharp proficiency shows he can only do better.

Even if you only have a passing interest in 70s heavy rock this album is nigh on essential.

If you're the sort of person who only buys one metal album a year, then you'd probably be better off buying the new Mastodon album 'Blood Mountain' and going to see Slayer live but otherwise, what the hell are you waiting for...

'Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited' is an often fascinating and enchanting compilation as these things go, though I say, somewhat predictably, that there's no substitute for the real thing.

This is probably the most exciting record that Domino will release in 2006, eleven songs of hillbilly hoe-down, gothic atmospherics, scuzzy rock & roll, acerbic post punk noise, and dark sexuality.

Delicately layered with ornate instrumentation and hushed vocals, perfectly poised between joyful and damaged, 'Personality' sees off the previously over-obvious obsession with America's dizzy expanses and endless horizons, instead offering something infinitely more natural and personal.

'Nightlife' is a record that demands to be heard, for not only is it Erase Errata's best album yet, but also one of the finest to emerge from the leftfield this year.

MSTRKRFT have essentially made an album of great productions and remixes and then forgotten to invite any artists or records along to help them out.

An exceptional debut.

Muse's magnificent powerhouse that is new album 'Black Holes And Revelations' rectifies - almost - everything that once was wrong.

What "Happy New Year" really represents is Oneida's finest, most complete record to date, and as such it's the perfect starting point for anyone who's as yet unfamiliar with their rather daunting back catalog.

On 'Impeach My Bush', Peaches has significantly upped her game with a greater leap from 'Fatherfucker' than there was between that album and debut 'The Teaches Of Peaches'.

'The Eraser' is Radiohead's fourth best album, and not bad considering it's the first one with only one man on it.

'Fundamental' will not only be rated up there among the Pet Shop Boys finest albums -- it's also arguably the best electro pop record we've heard in years.

Nearly every line contains a shock, a sharp intake of breath. To say this album is worth more as a social document than a musical one is no insult.

While there are some moments of greatness (the menacing, psychedelic 'Dog Sleep', the mournful, pretty 'Don't Cry That Way'), the majority of this double album is dull, turgid and instantly forgettable.

Aside from a few duff tracks 'Loose' is an absolute beauty that couldn't have arrived at a better moment.

You will have to surrender yourself completely to this record, for left as background music it will waft pleasantly around your head and out your window.

'Victory for the Comic Muse' is the Divine Comedy's finest album since their post-Britpop Chris Evans-approved heyday.

They have developed into an almost evangelically uplifting and powerful rock unit.

Too often, though, as on the lacklustre title track 'Favours For Favours' or 'Thursday', it has to be said that the new beast just isn't as feisty as the one-trick pony of old.

'The Warning' is a splendid combination of braindance and footdance.

'Rather Ripped' is the most accomplished and mature album Sonic Youth have done in years.

Like scoffing a King sized Mars Bar, the instant gratification and sugar rush is soon superseded with nausea, whining and guilt.

Yes, 'Let's Get Out Of This Country' is a ludicrously fey, coy, twee and light record that could very feasibly be knocked out by an injured butterfly, it's that gentle. But it's also a gorgeously produced, beautifully romantic and ultimately uplifting record.

Sophomore album 'The Only Thing I Ever Wanted' is the work of a band with a keening melodic sense, akin to the development apparent in the prime works of, say, Idlewild or the Delgados, and, impressively, it does this without losing any of the idiosyncratic DIY charms that characterised its makers in the first place.

Put 'Peeping Tom' on the stereo and it's as slickly dark and eminently devourable as Hip-Hop with R&B overtones can be, though whack it on the headphones and you're introduced to something infinitely superior.

'The Drift' is an extraordinary piece of work, even more challenging and expansive than Scott Walker's startling last album.

So while Hamilton Leithauser believes he's made a record comparable to the legendary 'The Basement Tapes', it seems almost churlish to point out that you'd be far better off digging out a copy of 'The Basement Tapes' and listening to it, than going out and purchasing 'A Hundred Miles Off' and listening to it once.

Key to the success of 'Broken Boy Soldiers' is the relatively restrained musicianship.

While their political musings... are well intended, the lyrics are so heinously bad and the music so incredibly earnest and bombastic, you're tearing it out of your CD player after five or six tracks.

This is woeful, otherworldly - and wonderful.

An album of repetitive, insipid riffs: eleven tracks flakier than chippings and more irritating to your facial passages than toxic MDF sawdust.

there's something in this that sounds just so much more intelligent than fannying around making devil horns.

'Bang Bang Rock & Roll' is as clever as it is funny as it is entertaining. It's the most original independent album in years.

It's hard not to feel that the mystique is so damaged by the poor execution of the opening, that the rest of 'St. Elsewhere', however good, struggles to catch up.

'The Spell' marks their most successful record to date in creating a coherent aesthetic throughout; a beguiling and compelling atmosphere of black magic.

An album that rivals the brilliant 'The Sophtware Slump'... as their absolute masterpiece.

Challenging, ingenious, electronic surrealism for the brain and ears.

Daring, inventive and groundbreaking.

Former admirers, be warned that 'Without Feathers' will send you into a headless, flailing flap; while any newcomers to The Stills will be left with a plump, bald turkey on their hands.

It's not without fault; too many songs and too little variation between the tracks detract from unequivocal enjoyment. Much more of an album to admire, rather than cherish.

This is Pearl Jam, it's down to you whether that means anything or not.

'Capture / Release' is an album that sounds very much like now, but it should way transcend it too.

'The Hardest Way To Make an Easy Living' is a far more skilfully crafted album than the 'A Grand...', despite what you might have heard.

No-one makes gizmos and machines prong like fruity tuning forks as well as this man, nor do they construct such vivid atmospherics with such cunning simplicity.

This is an album that seethes with anger, ambition and malicious intent, and it's all the better for it.

Even Paul McCartney himself hasn't made an album this McCartneyish for some twenty-odd years now.

Come and pay homage to the new Lounge Lizard King.

While Wayne Coyne has been carving out and presenting to the world the manifestations of his crazy mind for an age now, the possibilities have so often been superior to the finished article. That is certainly not the case here.

What's so remarkable about Morrissey's writing on 'Ringleader...' is a seeming greater comfort with the more upbeat subject matter than with his usual morose metier, and what remains of that is executed with an exceedingly hammy fist.

Her voice is still like clear honey dripped on freshly baked bread, and almost sounds nourishing.