R.E.M. still have the remarkable distinction of never once producing a bad album, but this is perhaps the biggest example yet of the group merely treading water, whereas once they majestically swam.

In ‘Real Gone’s fearsome complexity of rhythm, lyric and device, Tom Waits appropriates like a shoplifter without much time, and creates something entirely his own. A new music.

'Has Been' is just about as far as you could possibly get from your regular solo offering and as such arrives as one of the year's most strangely captivating albums.

From track five onwards, they rarely put a foot wrong.

'Pressure Chief' sees the California quartet merge their trademark post modern kitsch with something vaguely approaching proper singing and the results are, by and large, pretty favourable.

What need for artless posturing and sloganeering when you have music so powerful, so ugly, so revolting, so incredible?

'Young Prayer' is a piece of work that feels both mysterious and honest; a truly rare combination.

They no longer rely on dense production and atmospherics, because they don’t need to: ‘Antics’ is bare-boned and beautiful.

For anyone with even half a hankering for electronic heaven, this is non-stop introspective wonderland.

A collection of rehashed moments from his brilliant though patchy career, a sowed together patchwork of pastiche.

There are several duff tracks, certainly. And, sure, as a whole 'American Idiot' can easily be criticised for its simplistic, occasionally naïve sixth form lyrics, all round pomposity and general adherence to the group's tried and tested formula of punchy three-chord pogo-pop. But it's still a wonderfully entertaining, polemical punk rock record.

This is a record for the late night after a later one; the cauterised throat, the yellow of the reading lamp, and the restless shifts in twisted sheets.

This ain’t no classic.

A Victorian freak show with a cracking voice, but just a few stolen Prince and Stevie Wonder tunes, Har Mar Superstar seems to be humiliating himself and reaching for the lowest common denominator in search of lays and some fleeting personal success.

Bottom line: One dimensional ghetto fodder this is not.

The stuff of magic.

It's a clever, chic and defiantly underground record, alright, but it's guilty of trying too hard when clearly it doesn't need to.

Their zeal is such that, for the most part, we can overlook their failure to be flawless.

Even if this was an instrumental album it'd be thoroughly charming.

This is a fragile, beautiful music, it all nearly falls apart and then flops back together.

Björk has transcended any pop plinth she may (incorrectly) have been placed upon, to become, probably, our greatest contemporary female vocalist since Diamanda Galas.

Minor aesthetic gripes aside though, ‘Winchester Cathedral’ is how you and I want Clinic to be.

This might be quality above innovation, but it’s also maturity above cliché, and above all, passion over cynicism.

While it's got to be said 'Amerika's Nightmare' certainly has its moments over the space of a complete album the familiar themes and reference points start to feel a shade tired and predictable.

Yes, there is a lot in the way of failing relationship therapy on here, but when it's done with such eloquence and downright elegance it'd be churlish to treat it with the disrespect more easily afforded to music's legions of professional disenchanteds.

Lanegan's lyrics are poetic, well thought out and devastatingly honest, making this more a serious artistic account than some braggadocio bullshit. And then add to that the fact the music is just fantastic.

Chock full of songs that are lounging rather than strictly loungey, cosmpolitan-sounding in a wearing-aviator-shades alongside a large-haired lovely kind of way and blessed with harmonies that fall narrowly on the breezy side of melancholia.

It’s an atmospheric and tender record, and although you have to wait for each line you never lose patience.

Badly Drawn Boy's been sketchy before, but never quite this artless.

Few artists can master the trick of capturing ambience and atmosphere without resorting to cliche. M83 are among the few.

Given how many of their contemporaries have attempted to xerox a winning sound and got it so far wrong, the fact that the Kings can still turn their hand to such magnificent lost hits as 'Misread', spin out obtuse, imaginative imagery as they do in 'Surprise Ice' and sculpt such tender ruminations as 'Stay Out Of Trouble' is cause for serious celebration.

This is a genius pop album, one on which pretty much everything fantastic happens.

The diversity audible throughout 'Nostalgialator's' 11 tracks makes the album feel like some surreal kind of trans-generic mix tape.

It's as if they're trying to mimic Primal Scream but on ‘Let’s Make History’ they’re more like an under the weather INXS, and on ‘Armed Love’ you could even draw comparisons with Ocean Colour Scene. Eeeeeeeeee!

Giant mutant rats are running about the place with gasmasks and guns. Their eyeballs are electric red, firing lightning bolts of acid, spit and shit and blowing up the place and the furniture.

Although pretty catchy, this album is a tad too monotonous.

Blueberry Boat is a frustrating, niggling, great idea of a record.

This is a record of outrageous range and unprecedented panache.

There's precious little here not to like, and it's as satisfying an experience as any of the ambient survivors have produced in years.

Despite their reputation for distinctiveness parts of 'The Tipping Point' feel distinctly under par by the Roots own high standards suggesting that the departures of MC Malik B (Slacks) and human beatboxers Scratch and Rahzel have, in some ways, led to a successive narrowing down of the range of the Roots' previously loose and eclectic sound.

With each track they descend further into the mire.

Keep giving it a whirl though and it becomes something rather exquisite.

The record is littered with highlights.

A decidedly schizophrenic experience, if a frequently beautiful and, at the very least, relentlessly promising one.

This time, as well as simply delivering the goods, Wilco come bearing a basket of extras.

Leaning closer towards the fiercer end of the guitar spectrum, 'Molé' is a splurge of intense and angry songs, a reaction to the filthy Bush era.

Ejstes... has an innate sense of melody, rhythm and the skill to play some pretty natty fat bass splurges, and psychedelic, peripatetic spider-like drum rolls.

Picking highlights from a release so well executed and downright ass-shaking is difficult.... 'To The 5 Boroughs' is a triumph.

This is the sound, throughout, of a remarkable institution doing all the things they do best and sounding as alive as they ever have.

If there’s a problem with ‘This Is For Real’ and you’ll have to really look, it’s the fact that it’s a tad too shiny. Not much, but, at times, it’s lost a bit of that dirtiness that made the Grease so appealing.

What's apparent from playing this album is that almost everything they've got is a killer single.

Polly Harvey’s contradictory sure, but the complexities of her character and where she is right now are expressed with an honesty and intensity few artists can ever even begin to think about mustering.

'Brother Is To Son' has to be listened to many a times before certain things start to fall into place. But when they do, boy, they sound great!

Now there was nothing wrong with Stone Temple Pilots, but anyone who’d hoped for Guns‘n’Roses mark II (or III) will be very seriously disappointed. Weiland’s dry, powerful voice cancels out the music, like light cancels out dark, or Owen Wilson cancels out Ben Stiller.

A decent album, then. But one containing an EP that would've had us going "!!!!!".

The whole thing makes for a masterclass in enigma and economy.

It nods in so many directions that our heads should be spinning, but the gel in the system is a linear production ethic that weaves the threads whilst keeping it refreshingly rough.

'I Com' delivers on all the promise that preceded it and makes quantum leaps of brilliance every time it's played.

This record is more riddled with more clichés and pure, retro water-treading embarrassment than anything [Courntey] Love ever conjured up.

However, if 'Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever' proves anything, it proves that Felix knows three years have passed since [Kittenz]. Now he's partying like it's 1984. It's a development of almost comical chutzpah, and it's one that he wears terrifically well.

While this album is hardly a sellout or a mellowing down, its shifting in direction, its differing textures make it far better than 'Iowa'.

Basically, this is a fantastic band releasing twelve brilliant songs, and it's not only the best guitar album you'll ever hear with no guitars on it, it's one of the best this year generally.

Lethally simple pop tunes which sound like they were written during a particularly good seaside holiday in 1974.

A rock-solid album that improves with each listen.

It’s good fun, it’s a scream, and it stands up well to the likes of '...Do Dallas'.

If The Delays had succeeded in making the latter five-sixths of their debut as wondrous as the first portion, they could be credited with fair miracles.

But even on those tracks that don't make the cut as RJ stand-outs almost everywhere you care to look there are stylish touches and subtleties waiting to be discovered with each subsequent listen.

A weak Meth album produced poorly and without imagination in the main, by an assortment of losers, with each track featuring a guest emcee.

The production is simplicity itself, and by the end you won't remember 'Remember Today' from 'Every Stitch', and you won't know whether 'End To Begin' is at the beginning or the end, or even in the middle.

Most of the hooks are appalling - a few, sung by Skinner, like 'Such A Twat', and opener 'It Was Supposed To Be So Easy' are enjoyable, but when he lets his mates croon soupily all over his beats, shit gets distinctly unpleasant.

While 'You Are The Quarry' is a very good album it's not the earth shattering masterpiece many had hoped for, nay, expected.

‘Up At The Lake’ lifts the best bits from pop’s past and melds them into a largely agreeable, but ultimately underwhelming, classic rock album.

Underpinning this wry melancholy are the winsome languor of Stephin Merritt's voice and the generous stash of tunes.

It's not easy listening, it's scarcely fashionable,... and, to be frank, it's not exactly the best advert for Joel's generally estimable talents.

We've rooted for them and been scantly rewarded, but at last they’ve done it - 'Heroes To Zeros’ is great and they know it.

This is a brooding, thoughtful work, a band stripped bare, naked music and raw emotion, beautifully sung and played with the command of a band that knows less is more is the key to great rock'n'roll.

This record is about as bad it is possible for a record to be. It is offensive on every level - the music is bad, the rapping is bad, the sleeve is bad.

At least 'Musicology' reunites us with that trademark Prince sound, that regal sparkle that’s influenced many and been matched by none.

Fourteen listens deep, this is still getting better. All but a rap classic. You know, Kanye's good, but really, fuck that. Ghost for president.

The sheer enveloping bliss elicited by hearing the album in one sitting (especially in public – 'Faking The Books' is a headphone masterpiece and no mistake) leaves one wishing it were a whole lot longer than its taut 40-minute duration.

A geek's wet dream.

'The Runaway Found' may have sounded great in 1996, but it also sounds great now, and by our reckoning it always will.

In fairness, if they'd released this in place of, say 'TNT' we'd probably have been all set to hail it as a truly delightful and conceivably seminal record. Instead, we find familiarity breeding just a touch of unexpected contempt.

A waste of good beats.

It just feels that amidst his bare and heartfelt explorations of life and the old wooden box wherein we all end up, Brock has learned to dance, learned to allow himself a smile.

There's a decidedly reigned-in grandeur to the orchestrally-focused Silent League. The strings and things are never allowed to get overly carried away in their stratospherics, the slide guitar and saw are supplied in delicate veins rather than employed in over-styled extravagance.

Finds her flailing club-footedly some twelve steps behind contemporary R&B, whispering distractedly through a seemingly unending array of interludes and phoning in songs that even Mariah at her most barely-there would dismiss as a trifle on the insipid side.

'Absolution' is Muse's most accomplished album to date, and kicks their - at the time - excellent debut album 'Showbiz' into the ground.

'Trading...' may be better than we had any right to expect, but the fact remains that there's nothing here that would've catapulted him to public consciousness were it not for his astuteness and the Donnie Darko connection.

It's not just the vocals that captivate. The sheer busyness of the whole production and all the sounds are to be marvelled at, and though it would be easy to over-egg, they never allow any of the tracks to be cluttered or overblown.

Many tunes possess an open, spacious quality, as if waiting for the jigsaw’s last piece.

Listening casually is OK, as you can get by the annoying Pharrell and enjoy some of the silly retro groves. But pay any degree of actual attention and there are problems.

As unremarkable and average a comeback as humanly possible.

Repeated listens propel it towards sounding like his best yet.

It has the electric hot valve excitement of sixties garage rock, the stomping sexuality of glam and the amphetamined rush of punk rock all dusted down and mashed together in its fever pitch workouts.

Fearsomely post-post-punk, appealingly brazen, and ambitiously tight, they have indeed made The Album That Saved Indie.

It took U2 10 years to reach this level of blandness.

A good record, if a little frustrating.