Big only because Arcade Fire think big, Reflektor stretches stadium rock’s reach in the acts of self-reinvention and revitalisation. Now that’s entertainment.

Contact is shamelessly allusive, never remotely challenging and characterised by a get-to-the-chorus immediacy.

Funny, warm, eloquent, dynamic, oddly soulful and technically delicious. An unremitting joy.

A delightful indie pop record that’s by turns intense, playful and touching.

If H&LA's 2008 debut was an ideal accompaniment to the clubland chaos, then Blue Songs is the gentlest of comedowns.

R.E.M's 15th album could trade places with almost any of the previous 14.

Baird's own rather fabulous acoustic is garnished with touches of dobro, pedal-steel or electric, over which her wisp of a voice, and words, hang in a vapour.

Interesting to see that a few of the unused songs from the period (1978) push the released material for quality.

This covers album maybe a joyous blast of buzzsaw pop, but you just know that the live shows will be even better.

It's good, but you want to hear them live.

The soundtrack to Jennifer Aniston. Nice. Attractive. Hygienic.

WTR is a classy bit of radio-friendly Mercury-bait which highlights Dangerfield's development as a songwriter.

They're reunited with vocalist N'Dea Davenport but don't really need her, their dressing-up-to-go-out groove being the thing.

The Glaswegian band's chosen style this time around, namely dark vintage synth pop (early Human League) and scratchy, spindly post-punk (Wire, the Cure), matches the mood and subject matter perfectly.

Oasis minus the organ-grinder needn't be an entirely horrific prospect.

They're back now, all troubles set aside, and the results are good.

Fusion fans might be confused but as a sentimental affirmation of melody it's Metheny to the core.

While it may, at times, sound a little too familiar--A&F is almost good enough to banish the memory of the dozen or so albums--influenced by grams not Parsons--since.

With its flutes, xylophones, mandolins, a truly incongruous mention of Superman III and, not least, Martin's own lilting delivery, it also has a fair quantity of charm.

While Wagner's voice is not always up to it, Tidwell's authentic country pipes are the real revelation here.

This one feels much more like a group searching for a sound together, even if the sound once belonged in a Venn diagram linking Led Zep, Deep Purple and Dio-era Sabbath. And it rocks most periodly.

It finds the singer in meditative mood--this is, by some distance, the least playful Björk album--and, amid soundscapes made from tinkling harps and bells and deep electronic burps and farts, she's an uncharacteristically discreet presence, a humble narrator of the wider story she's trying to tell.

Pervaded by children's laughter, this is a lovely departure from the Mambazo norm, as befits the quest it reflects.

Their command of "neeeooow" noises suggests a schooling in retro rave, and their cover of the Jets' "Crush" turns the sugary original into something superbly sinister and stalker-ish.

There's a childlike sense of adventure and fun about his sampladelic approach.

Black Rainbows isn't all-out kick-ass noise but, by turns, spindly and fuzzy, smooth and angular.

Rocky's rhymes are believable when reminiscing about growing up poor.

Should you be struck by a nostalgic mood yourself, Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da is a Madness album like they used to make 'em.

Either way, we get what we always get: the analogue rendition of a stick of Southern yarns, long on observation, short of syllable and rough as your old boots.

Impressive rather than engaging.

Here, Beam adds funky Stevie Wonder synths to the mix. And marimba. Lots of marimba.

A feast of vulnerable balladry with a political heart and, audibly, much surrounding air.

In the main, she remains stylistically faithful to the originals.

There's a master at work here and if he finds his filter he'll no doubt lose some of that fairy dust.

Isbell is an accomplished and serious songwriter and what keeps Here We Rest from being the stonker it so nearly is is not the writing but the slightness of his voice – and his band.

As befits a novelist, the songs are narratives concerned with the big issues. Life, death, that sort of thing. Good record.

It's all very gladsome, technically fine and will lift your day. But, as with all such heritaged musics, it won't make your day over. Pleasant though.

It doesn't always hit the spot, but at least he's firing at more interesting targets than the usual renta-rapper.

This has more bounce and sees Lovefoxxx & co close to their best.

It recalls MGMT before the wheels came off. Which is no bad thing.

Ersatz GB is a fine addition to an excellent recent salvo.

The voice (Joni Mitchell meets Anna Calvi), is as tough and tender as before but the music now acts as a bouncy counterpoint to songs with lyrics such as "death is a hard act to follow", blurring the line between unsettling and uplifting nicely.

Pretty lovable.

He wisely sticks to the spoken word for much of the album, whether delivering the sinister inner monologue of a stalker or a robot-voiced attempt to advocate Transcendental Mediation.

Tracks such as "Boiling Water" wouldn't sound out of place in a naff holiday resort. There are notable exceptions, though, such as "Fire" feat Ms Dynamite.

What matters is that the I Monster team have cooked up a production that matches our expectations of a League LP.

Consists entirely of tasteful campfire-folk covers of seasonal classics.

Tracks such as "The Bay" have enough to get heads nodding, but if you hear this on a dancefloor, it'll be courtesy of a seriously hard-working remixer.

This is meditative, spacious, profoundly dark music, evidently haunted by Miles Davis's early-1970s excursions into free electronica, as well as the wolves of the Nordic imagination.

See You There revisits his classics as well as finding room for one new track and a beauty of an alternate version of "What I Wouldn't Give."

It's half George Harrison, half Keith West.

The King Of Limbs, named after a famous oak in the Savernake forest near the studio where In Rainbows was made, is good but not great.

Stephen Malkmus is back making amiable but unchallenging off-kilter country rock songs.

Not really "folk" at all but a programme of music for solo guitar (and occasional clarinet) drawing on three centuries of complex harmony; or at least the harmony which appeals to the gruff old Pentangle picker.

Two tracks truly warm the cockles. And if the rest is merely pleasant, hey, season of goodwill and all that.

Whether this Blue Note debut featuring Robert Glasper is better than his two albums with Brownswood is moot, but the best tracks--"Trouble", "Heaven on the Ground", "Do You Feel"--are very good indeed.

Wonderful Glorious alternates between distorted rock and freewheeling country-pop interludes.

Fragrant Word has killer synthpop tunes buried within it, but too often you wonder how much better a record this would have been if they quit dicking around and just gave you the song.

Singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss and Ash frontman Tim Wheeler, a couple in real life, join musical forces and attempt, valiantly and with not inconsiderable success, to breathe new life into that stalest of stale old genres: the Christmas song.

From dancefloor tracks such as "Shake It" to a lover's rock vibe on "Only Thing Missing Was You", Franti has made an eclectic, conscious album

Equal parts Byrds, Beatles and Burritos, this kicks away the cobwebs nicely.

For the most part this is a glorious hymn to the art of playing together, of which Lennon would surely approve.

The result is not, however, a revolution in his sound but a refinement.

His major-label follow-up wisely keeps the retro aesthetic.

It is, almost inevitably, charming.

It's essentially 1980s indie jangle with hints of Afro-pop and Northern Soul, carrying echoes of Orange Juice.

A close to fine debut.

Holland sings songs of discombobulation and wonder, and all is mannered but also naturalistic.

Scratch beneath the surface sheen of It's All True and all kinds of depths emerge.

“Organic moonshine music” she calls it, and no one could argue with that.

Great tunes, decent voice, scary attitude.

There’s singing going on, all right, it sounds lovely, but little is conveyed other than loveliness. However, there’s no arguing with their authenticity or technical excellence.

As an 19-track collection of rarities from the period 2003-present, TTEC is necessarily a mixed bag of styles and qualities.

The music treads a gingerly path between the lighter textures of honky-tonk and a sort of indie lounge-pop. Charming.

Almost every track sounds like a potential single in an indie rock/Americana kind of way.

Only the more straightforwardly poppy numbers disappoint, with power-ballad manqué “Crescendo” a particular anomaly.

With guests such as Jack White and a surprisingly bearable Norah Jones, Rome makes a fine fist of recreating the elegance of prime 1960s Euro-pop. All good, no bad, and never ugly.

Brilliant, frustrating, thrilling and irritating. In other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from an Edward Sharpe album.

Occasionally the listener is carried away on the soulful cusp of Gonjasufi's scraggly voice, but more often than not they are simply overwhelmed.

They unapologetically rip into this album with a pulsating and mangled electro-pop opener called "D-Day", and rarely, if ever, lapse into giving people a poor photocopy of Parallel Lines.

The main signifier is Peyroux's sound, now as downhome as a chicken shack and artfully haunted as a Cassandra Wilson session. Tasteful.

Loud guitars are everywhere, bucked by riffing horns, and the general vibe is testosteronal and sleeveless. He is a rippingly good player.

All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

While nothing grates, all it really achieves is to make you want to hear Hank sing them.

Desperately, painfully arty but worthy of your recollection.

This is another acting job, in a sense, and Laurie's faux-Southern drawl grates a little, but he's assembled a band of N'awlins old hands to add authenticity.

Composer Joe Acheson seems more interested in texture than development and you can long for a discordant voice, but as head-nodding experiences go, this is pretty good.

His second solo album, while often truly horrible, is also fascinating and funny.

It borders on the twee. That it doesn't cross the frontier is the reason this is worth your attention.

The effect is softly inclusive without being entirely bland, and even if Holland's poetry doesn't ring your bell as poetry, then it certain works in this context as sound-art.

It's a little too polished for the Oh Brother... crowd, but fans of Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss should take note.

By Ben Gibbard's own admission "a much less guitar-centric" record than usual, it is therefore, if only by default, the closest thing yet to a follow-up to Give Up by Gibbard's other concern, the Postal Service, although it's more about pretty pianos than effervescent synths.

It's a jukebox-jumpin' take on straight-up Dolly with a smile behind its eyes and a rockabillyish skip in its step.

Whatever they say, this isn’t the “comeback story of a lifetime”: it’s the low-risk re-entry bid of a band who know where their bread is buttered.

Planta feels lightweight; not much really catches the ear or imagination.

Nice is the word.

Throughout, we get a wounded and fragile man setting his hope-filled heart to music.

The result is refreshing but also a bit boring, although things get interesting towards the end.