Despite the handful of duff tracks and a couple of absolute howlers, 'Here Come The Tears' is a fine album - certainly not the best they've made together, nor even apart, but accomplished, ambitious and often highly impressive.

His best music has a kind of timbral vulnerability about it that makes you want to reach out and kiss his computer better.

A honky tonk Leonard Cohen, the music of Smog sounds like it's spent all its life half cut in a saloon bar way out in the American mid-west thinking far too deeply about love and life for far too long.

Yes, 'Don't Believe The Truth' is an improvement on the trilogy of folly that is 'Be Here Now', 'Heathen Chemistry' and 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants'. But so what? Can't polish a turd, you know.

The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.

Quite simply, there are thirteen absolutely cracking tunes here.

About as disappointing a follow-up as you could ever imagine.

Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.

Like 'Deserter Songs' and 'All Is Dream' before, 'The Secret Migration' is a compelling, visual album. And yet within this, Mercury Rev have moved on.

'Mesmerize' is a frantic, frenetic brutal assault on the senses. It mashes up the most intense hardcore, the fiercest fire-starting punk rock with ridiculously complex riffing that’s like amphetamine prog.

A slice of experimental pop, simultaneously bright and bleak.

While there's some fresh experimenting and choral loveliness, it sounds formulaic and tired by Electrelane's standards.

You can feel how dreadful this record is from the very first bar.

'See You Next Tuesday' is so good it should be the soundtrack to a smash hit Broadway musical.

This is anticon at their most approachable and reflective and should be filed on your shelf somewhere near Dosh, Boards of Canada and Arcade Fire.

A frustratingly self indulgent and inconsistent double album that pitches itself somewhere between the classic country rock of 2001's 'Gold' and the lovelorn despair of 2004's 'Love Is Hell'.

It displays the kind of emotion and movement that Four Tet, Boom Bip and Stereolab would all appreciate.

A lean, aggressive and thoroughly relevant album.... If you really need to spend any money on an album where a multi-millionaire relentlessly tells you how remorselessly shit life is; make it this one.

The Raveonettes genius is that they pay homage with such style, passion and grace that it's virtually impossible not to be converted to their cause.

What's beyond doubt is the magical blend of the surreal and the fantastical that made 'The Unseen' so memorable is once again in the fullest effect on this showcase of fearlessly skewed production, dense organic vibes and hemp & helium-fuelled raps that make up this smoked-out saunter through the back streets of the cosmo-according-to-Lord Quas.

This is a standout record even by his high standards.

This is pristine, state of the art, pop: the usual perfect combination of great melodies and swooping atmospherics that you can dance to.

Dicing with folly at every stage and coming out victorious, 'Blinking Lights...' is sprawling, galling and downright enthralling.

Not only is Folds singing better than ever, and not only is his song-writing oozing confidence - but the musician in him is also at the peak of his powers; the piano playing is just mesmerising.

Alas, it's not as consistently satisfying as 'Born To Run' or 'Born In The USA', and Springsteen's voice, always gravely at the best of times, has taken on an increasingly wizened air that sometimes renders it frustratingly impenetrable.

A stealthy, smoking beast of a thing: hip hop with a British passport and dubplate roots, embroidered with wiggly, scratching sound effects and made-to-measure production.

However, despite all the smarty-pants ideas, let's be clear on one thing. You FEEL this on a GUT level, because 'Untilted' packs a punch that rips through your speakers.

If there's one thing that unites 'Illuminated By The Light' it's how sweaty a vibe it gives off.

Home recording gives 'In Case We Die' an apathetic politeness that lacks any real grrrrr, which is a shame.

While 'Bleed Like Me' is easily better than 'Beautiful Garbage', it's still not worth buying. It's recognisably Garbage, but it's unarguably garbage too.

Everything feels bolder than before, more assured of the rightness of singing from places that most lyricists fear to tred. In textures and words alone, 'Open Season' is a country mile ahead of any of the supposedly heroic guitar debuts knocking around in 2005.

The Books make the incongruous harmonious, the silly sensitive and the complex easy to understand. 'Lost And Safe' will sweep you up into an aural world where, for once, beauty and humour co-exist.

A wondrous re-emergence.

'Elevator' is not as instant as 'Make Up The Breakdown', though it has adequate catchy tunes in the style of XTC and Joe Jackson to retain most of the interest from those who enjoyed them last time.

'Suspended Animation' is less a compendium of songs and more a splurging, raging, raping jazz metal fusion machine, weaving in samples, gong noises and assorted cartoon horror.

This record is, the odd awful phrase here or there aside, rather marvellous.

Too often tracks drag us down below the high standard an artist like Beck Hanson has set himself. Red Hot Chili Peppers outtakes with some harmonica and vocoder balanced incongruously on top are frankly not good enough.

The ham-fisted attempt to modernise Stereophonics' sound... falls flat at every attempt as samples, effects and the odd electronic buzz avoid the underlying mulch like gas-gun fired dried peas off titanium.

When 'Arular' works - a good three-quarters of the time - it's unmissable.

'Silent Alarm' is a brilliantly accomplished art rock record that immediately immerses you in a world of taut, late 80s post-punk, melodic indie. It rarely lets up.

The jewel in Scott's creative crown is that he has an uncanny knack of keeping it flowing, even when his beats and tones are jerking our sensibilities to shreds with their cerebral madness.

What's great about this album is they've managed to wield the same monolithic power riffs but make them count, with melodies and ideas way more consistent than before.

As with most such collections you're going to get good, bad and extremely ugly, and this is no exception. The fact it spans three CDs seems a bit indulgent considering some of the material should be consigned to an incinerator never to be heard again.

Too much of it is straightforward four-to-the-floor anodynity, and a number of tracks run out of ideas almost immediately, explore touchstones they've caressed more inspiringly before or, worse, do both.

Essentially, 'Employment' is a very British record; an entirely Britpop creation spawned ten years after the event.

'Wind In The Wires' is a magnificent record full of the language, imagery and sound of travel.

Great pop from a great band.

Like most of the cities Doves sing about, these songs are grey, drizzly, often unpleasant, and more often than not... very, very dull.

Miraculously the lyrics never sound like the pompous shite they undoubtedly are. They fit the music and make the whole picture even more laughably and absurdly brilliant.

Alright, so there's no 'Destroy The Heart', the lyrics are uniformly unremarkable, and the odd track is even, dare we say, a touch ropey... 'Days Run Away' is still better than it's got any right to be, and a marginally heroic homecoming with it.

It's an album that's unlikely to yield any massive hits, but like that other iconic singer songwriter, Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos has survived initial success to end up in a place where she has the space to do exactly what she likes in pretty much the only way she seems to know how.

There's a confidence and a swagger that wasn't there before, Green uncapping the band who can convert his quirky sketches into clever, swinging masterpieces.

It's a joy to listen to but tough to recommend.

This is probably the most adventurous musical journey of Garnier's life.

He has humour and cerebral sharpness in spades.

Easily one of the most essential sessions albums ever released, this, and probably one of the year’s most essential, full stop.

LCD Soundsystem have set 2005's bar very high indeed and they sound like they’ve barely got started.

They've created a world of tender reflection encompassing engaging melodic cycles, pastoral textures, glitchy interjections, acoustic decoration, melancholic strings, loose, jazz tinged drums, lonely horns, yearning guitar laments and delicate vocals: All melded into ebbs and flows that form a coherent universe through songs which all have their own defining characteristics.

He doesn't plunder, he interweaves - stuff gets thoroughly snake-charmed into his densely-packed music.

'The Mysterious Production of Eggs' is unmalicious, delicious classical indie with enough originality to mark it apart, and what it lacks in jaw dropping charisma it somehow makes up for with songwriting and instrumentation of the highest order.

This is probably the record that everyone who bought the Keane album should buy.

I don't know when a voice touched me as wholly as Antony's does.

An eclectic ragbag of influences coerced into great exciting guitar pop.

'Happiness In Magazines' is likely to make you smile, and may even have you remembering a bygone era when Blur provided the soundtrack.

If anything this year's model raises the stakes on its predecessor.

Simply put, 'Worlds Apart' is a delicately violent piece of art.

There's an 80s Anglophilic feel throughout, and like the era they're paying homage to it's all very hit and miss.

The quality is high throughout.

The album suffers from serious momentum problems. You get something that hammers in a good and interesting way and then a few minutes later it's like the tap of a blue tit's beak on a milk bottle top.

Shimmeringly perfect.

Whether this is an album that actually suits them is another matter, but it actually makes them feel entirely relevant and, for as prolific a decade-old band, that’s high praise indeed.

A travelogue of even richer and stranger territory than its storming predecessor ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts’, although, inevitably, there’s more than a sprinkling of dead cities and lost ghosts throughout, to say nothing of the occasional red sea too.

It’s clear that Lemon Jelly have well and truly upped the ante.

No less of a passion-scratched, damp-sheet-scrumple of an affair than its predecessors.

Beautiful, fun, dark, sentimental, gloomy, hopeful music.

It appears to paint from a more kaleidoscopic emotional palette than some of the earlier Stars endeavours.

There's a lot of tracks on this album that go a lot deeper than anything Jigga's ever done, but so what? They ain't gonna cut it as party jams. Well, except the party jams.

An ultra sleek and, it has to be said, generally impressive, 80s-inspired party record.

Doom is what is amazing and great about hip hop.

'Want Two' is simply in a league of its own.

The Neptunes have lent their Midas fingers on production duties, but they've gone their schmaltzy route rather than into party bangers mode.

The overall vibe is laid-back and the production slick, with dark moments, fun bits and some cool guests. But it lacks the punch that would make it a classic, and it's all too easy to forget that it's even playing.

This album contains unprecedented levels of female vocal annoyance.

As an exercise in hubris and chutzpah it's a rather fascinating affair.

Of course Cohen can’t sing, but what matter that when the words are so rich?

If you like your dance music jerky, nasty and just a little bit angry, Death From Above are your boys.

'Abattoir Blues' is weirdly full of wonderment, and - get this - 'The Lyre of Orpheus' is even more joyful! And they both kick Nocturama's arse full of buttonholes.

A confident, rampant holler that bristles with the energies of prime new wave, the proselytising vigour of the most barnstorming white soul, and the wry, cerebral kickback of most of the artier artists of the last thirty years.

Razorlight's debut has more hooks than a fishing rod factory, and the advantage they have over Oasis (in addition to not sounding anything like them) is that they haven't had their arses kissed enough to disappear completely up them yet.

Confrontational, clammy, brimming with confidence... ‘Royal Society’ is as majestic as its title implies.

We’re filled with consternation when we first give it a whirl.... Thankfully from [track 4] on in, it gets a damn sight better.

It’s stripped down, tough and raw, but a world away from any gangsta pose – this is more inward facing, an attempt to expand the horizons of hip-hop, striving for a new rap language, with a free flow sprawl of image and polemic.

An unfinished album, and also a beautifully accomplished one.

They’re waay better than The Coral, exhibiting none of the tedious, skunk-smoke wackiness that characterises their labelmates.

But the use of the twin-pronged vocal attack as an instrument in its own right is never relied upon to be the sole weapon in Blood Brothers' arsenal. Intelligence is mirrored in the deployment of the music behind it.

A worthy endeavour from one of the most important bands alive.

This is an album on which EVERYTHING ace you can think of in indie happens.