An album of dull, vocal virtuoso ballads.

One of the most distinctive and satisfying records you'll hear all summer.

With that warm soapy trumpet now hinting at something a flutter more soulful than the usual dose of despair and despond, the Tindersticks have actually moved on and started meaning something again.

It's clearly touched by the hand of Brian Eno, who tries (and succeeds with) all sorts of jumpy, trippy beats.

'Rooty' isn't going to change your world - 'Remedy' did that - but it is another indispensable, truly, properly, madly inventive and utterly enjoyable album of the sort that, at the moment, only Basement Jaxx make.

The album is a parasite, a pollutant, and should be kept well away from children and old people.

Somehow Blink 182 have captured the space created by Green Day.

As smooth and comforting as an afternoon on an old leather sofa that fits you like your own skin.

Worth the wait? Well, sort of. This is the sound of a band that has tired of its popular straitjacket ­ searching for something more real, more original, more cutting edge. But you can't forget what you've learned, can't retrace your steps or begin again afresh.

Repeated listens draw out its infinite flaws, its awful smugness, and remind you that were this not A Radiohead Album it would have been consigned to the pile marked 'Not A Patch On Aphex Twin' last week.

A showcase of complementary flavours that burst out of the electronica ghetto.

Supporters have argued that this is " a perfect comedown album". In the sense that you'll feel like you're coming down even if you haven't taken anything, yes.

This album is bollocks. Not the bollocks, mind, just plain old fashioned middle-American bollocks, the sort of 70s, vaguely psychedelic-tinted, vaguely funkdefied bollocks that Lenny Kravitz and old school MTV made their own.

It's not so much her actual rapping skills but her keen ear for a devastatingly simple track structure that makes her stuff so satisfying.

'Exciter' stakes a hell of a claim on bringing Depeche Mode into the 21st century.

As welcome as emphysema.

Whilst this comes closer to 'Out Of Time' than anything else they've done, it never once sounds dated.

'Lions' is a mediocre album.

You can almost see the soul evaporating off this into nothing. But the good stuff struts through the sludge of the bad, and it's worth it.

Restraint they were always good at, but now they're masters, and the melancholy that swelled up all over Young Team like a particularly ripe bruise is here for all the world to see in 'Rock Action''s damp eyes.

She has rediscovered The Beat, giving us such funk-strewn gems as 'Trust A Try' and 'You Ain't Right'.