As spacious as Buckingham's native California yet as fraught with unease, this is another gripping postcard from the edge of paradise.

What worked so profitably for him before also works now: his tunes are little Motown-ish symphonies, lit from within by his quiet-storm intensity, itself beholden to Smokey Robinson.

The most bonkers album of the year, but one of the best.

The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous. But Meat's beat manifesto should be treasured as the last chapter of a remarkable rock trilogy.

Sleeker and slicker than their previous works but still as jugular-grabbing.

An unexpected delight.

At 37, he's still at the top of his game.

The question of whether anybody would listen to Love more than once if the original Beatles albums were available in equivalent sound quality is a nice one. But it doesn't seem to matter much when you can almost feel the spit flying from John Lennon's mouth during Revolution, or when A Day in the Life's orchestral swell comes surging from the speakers. After all, it's hard to ask questions when your breath has been taken away.

[The three albums] together make up one very powerful entity.

Pharrell Williams' production and Stefani's fizzy personality make for an unexpected Christmas treat.

You don't have to agree with the prognosis (even Nas has a change of heart by the end) to relish the furious eloquence with which it's delivered.

However arcane they may once have seemed, the truth is that Entomology's highlights were too good to stay obscure forever.

It should be maddening, but the trio understand that if you're going to write songs that sound like four songs spliced together, all the constituent parts must be equally enticing.

You're left both marvelling at the album itself, and considering what a unique figure Albarn cuts. If you doubt it, try to imagine the result if any of Britpop's other major players had assembled a supergroup and made an anti-war concept album. Now take your fist out of your mouth.

Whatever it lacks in straightforward pop tunes, this album makes up for in rich, multilayered weirdness.

This is a multi-faceted delight from start to finish.

The mood is joyfully confident, the sunshine-pop and dreamy harmonies as seamless as the carefully constructed ideas that lay behind them.

The only problem is that, like the Rapture last year, they've made their best album a good three years after the cultural capital of discopunk has been spent.

Pocket Symphony most recalls their influential 1998 Moon Safari - only it sounds older and wiser.

Candylion isn't a major musical statement, but its idiosyncratic, nostalgic appeal is hard to resist.

Explosions in the Sky are staking their claim to Mogwai's dark kingdom with an album that, despite being only six songs long, takes prisoner of your head and your heart.

Yes, I'm a Witch makes a startlingly effective case for Ono's songwriting skills.

A delight, from start to finish.

There are elements of everything from Radiohead to Sigur Rós and even the shimmering beauty of the Cocteau Twins, yet their sharp songwriting conjures up Snow Patrol with less obvious strokes.

Vieux already sounds like his [father's] natural heir, with confidence, expertise and a style of his own.

The Modest Mouse frontman has the kind of overbearing personality that seems to bring out the best in Marr: their collaboration on the band's fifth album is thrilling.

Call this album their application for recognition as one of the decade's major UK bands.

It's a knock-out.

Purists may cry sacrilege, but the Roxy Music singer vastly improves Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues and All Along the Watchtower by imbuing their edgy agitation with his classicist pop sensibility.

The concept may be laboured, but the music is entertaining.

The prevailing mood is one of euphoria - of clouds parting, sun shining and hearts melting.

If you like your Americana raw and passionate, look no further.

[A] witty, wild and impressive return to his past.

Barrie is a compelling frontman.

Oberst's frequent comparisons to Bob Dylan won't suffer, but he has also conjured up some of his best tunes, especially Hot Knives and If the Brakeman Turns My Way, with themes of alienation and self-medication.

The album is a satisfying hodge-podge of guitar noises, as they doff their caps to shoegaze, garage, prog, punk, post-punk, baggy and pop throughout their musical tourist-trip.

The spellbinding quality of Veir's sharp, chilly vocals - at their most powerful on the tracks Black Butterfly and Don't Lose Yourself - stops it sounding like something a Church of England vicar thought up.

Crammed with hooks, The Best Damn Thing is a triumphant comeback.

Favourite Worst Nightmare shows them pushing gently but confidently at the boundaries of their sound.

As with the Beta Band, exploratory self-indulgence is rather the point of the Aliens, but here it's firmly anchored by fantastic songs.

The rest of the band haven't progressed quite as speedily as their frontman - although they've added some welcome Johnny Marr-type guitar flourishes - and remain perplexed by anything at less than breakneck speed.

A refreshingly passionate record.

Some of her best work in years is here... There's far too much, though; cut to 10 tracks it would have been her one of her most significant records.

Their songs are longer and, in a move that is bound to set some fans' teeth on edge, their brash post-punk edge has been smoothed away to a polished pop finish.

Her jump dancewards is curious commercially, but thoroughly worthwhile artistically.

Volta lacks the unity of vision and enveloping sensuality of Vespertine and Medulla, but no one else could have made this record, voracious in its synthesis of world music.

The albums Smith released before his probable suicide in 2003 had a bruised, fragile quality, and these sparse songs... are no different.

A wonderful album, packed with stunning melodies and brilliant lyrics.

Staples is magnificent.

More satisfyingly adventurous than recent Fall albums, it's full of surprises.

Neither jazz nor trip-hop nor any other label you might care to slap on it, Ma Fleur delineates an immensely moving, utterly distinct night-time world which is a pleasure to inhabit.

Occasionally, the combination of parping horns with perky indie melodies means the sound slips its moorings and drifts into another genre entirely: the kind of jolly, vaguely saucy-sounding easy listening found on the soundtracks of 70s sex comedies.... More often, however, the formula works perfectly.

With their reputations at stake, the Chems have conjured their most brilliant work since 1999's "Surrender."

Icky Thump positively swarms out of the speakers.

It's Dizzee Rascal's pop album: catchy and danceable.

Idealism packs in more memorable riffs and tunes than the recent Bloc Party and Futureheads albums put together.

Kelly Rowland failed to step out of Beyoncé's shadow commercially with Ms Kelly, but in artistic terms the album revealed her as a viable solo star.

Singer Tom Smith tempers his constant anxiety with flashes of optimism, his brittle nihilism with gooey sentiment.

The grooves are gnarly and congested, the synth riffs are distorted howls and the samples are torn from Devo and horror-soundtracking prog-rockers Goblin.

This album, their third, hurls in everything from trombone and steel drums to something called a "two-note apocalyptic swamp axe". What that refers to is unclear, but it can't be a bad thing if it assists a ridiculously infectious jerky party vibe somewhere between Talking Heads' juddering funk and early B52s' stop-start pop.

Even at its weakest moments, Kala sounds unique--and, thrillingly, like an album that could only have been made in 2007, which is not something you can say about many albums made in 2007.

The only shortcoming is how quickly it's all over. Roll on number nine.

Dark as the rest of the album's subject matter, it wafts by like a delightful breeze. That's partly because the music is delicate and gentle, but it's mostly because Tunng can write the kind of melodies that get under your skin. They are still there long after the gloom has dispersed, making Good Arrows a dark pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

Still, the music is never timid or conventional. Only as a lyricist does West sometimes disappoint.

Proof of Youth is exhausting; otherwise its sweetness is irresistible.

'Right Moves,' meanwhile, is the kind of soppy-hearted, joy-fuelled singalong tune American freeways, convertibles and radios were designed for. If it doesn't make Ritter a star, nothing can.

The austerity of Harvey's self-imposed constraints is uncompromising but rewarding; she forces herself out of her comfort zone, and takes the listener with her.

The Foos' sixth and most accomplished album sees the band comfortable with arena tricks such as wistful Led Zeppelin-y acoustic guitars and choruses to learn and scream.

A strange, intoxicating and unsettling album, idiosyncratic enough to make you glad Joni Mitchell put her retirement on hold.

Condon's rich, barrel-aged croon is buffeted by a whirl of brass, accordion, ukulele and Owen Pallett's fleet-footed strings, sweeping towards a finale so magnificently moving that the only correct response is a standing ovation.

It leaves one pondering why more bands don't move to the countryside, if it produces such delicious melancholy.

Things may go awry on He Said He Loved Me, where comedy Essex girls cheep-cheep the grating refrain, but as an updated take on the Specials' equal disgust and infatuation with urban life, it's impressive.

Still, 'Tick Tock Boom' and 'Try It Again' put them all together as effectively as anything they have done since the big smash 'Hate to Say I Told You So' and suggest these revivalists are themselves due a revival.

There's a dignity to this lovely, mysterious album that suggests Talbot will never be ready to make the compromises necessary to bring Gravenhurst in from the margins.

It's a bold, exciting album.

Guitarist partner Gale Paridjanian and backing band have upped their game accordingly, and the sound isn't far short of what you might call "epic."

Though the blues are at the heart of the album, what makes the most impression is Scott's sensual bravado.

There are contradictions--but it's hard not to hear the honesty and soul that resonates throughout this album.

You can hear an early, instrumental version of 'Someone Great' here, and it's pretty melody, twinkling xylophones and pulsing synths are mesmerising enough to take your mind off the pain of physical exertion.

It almost feels as if there's something quietly revolutionary about this gently overwhelming record. Either way, a revelation.

Her awareness of the bad times runs like a thread through every note she sings, and the album's finest moment comes when she confronts them head on.

Thirteen songs of to-ing and fro-ing should leave anyone exhausted, but somehow this band's wide-eyed, sweaty-browed energy--the sound of indie rock with a heart full of adrenalin and affection--keeps on pumping the blood.

Do You Like Rock Music? is the glorious sound of a unique band going for broke.

Behind the penny loafers and songs about commas, there's a bold band that can balance dextrous originality with an innate pop sensibility.

All this energy somehow comes together as one, making the whole package so radio-friendly it's practically kissing your aerial.

Stagey but effective, Lust, Lust, Lust does the Raveonettes proud.

An album to play loud and often.

The strength of Just a Little Lovin' lies in its refusal to jump through hoops; the emphasis throughout is on an under-expressed sadness that owes far more to Lynne's interpretative gifts than to Dusty Springfield.

Definitely, a sense of danger, hunger and heat--qualities that so many current groups guilelessly miss. Bloc Party and other post-punk apostles should come gather at this altar, and prepare to kick the bucket.

Anyone who has surmounted that hurdle will be delighted to discover that the album represents business as usual: 13 absorbing songs, sparingly orchestrated to concentrate attention on the lyrics.

In full flight of one of their frequent psychedelic crescendos, Dead Meadow are among rock's most eloquently deafening joys.

Seventh Tree represents a dramatic rethink: out go the stomping glitter beats and whip-crack synthesisers, in comes "psychedelic folk."

This is intense music, with moments of pure bliss.

Pemberton doesn't strain to impress. He doesn't need to: his darting intelligence and racing imagination are evident in every line.

Now and then, alas, it is perhaps more Dave Matthews Band than Steve Miller Band, but when it all rings true, as on the glorious crescendo and singalong that closes Lord Have Mercy, it's an impeccably pitched, retro-rock joy.

Their best songs are epic and emotional, and range from the sweeping strings and south-of-the-border brass of 'Along the Way' to the European Gypsy influences of 'Comrade Z.'

Elbow sound beautifully understated rather than underwhelming, less underachieving than desperately undervalued.

Detours into hip-hop and rap slow down the fast-paced action, but Neon Neon have poured as much love and attention to detail in this prototype as their hero put into his.