Subjects resulting from such reveries include imperialism, the environment and the more familiar home turf of love and longing. Nobody does it better.

Conor Oberst has always been an artist to inspire, irritate and frustrate, and on what he says will be the final BE album he does these things in equal measure.

The sound is a return to the Whigs' finest and the mood is whiskey, cigarettes and damnation.

It's an album about what war does to the aggressor, as much as what it does to the vanquished victim.

Parker's music is approached from a post-Coltrane, post-free jazz aesthetic, with the rhythmic edginess of bebop elided into an all-the-time-in-the-world fluidity. A masterpiece.

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

Throughout the exquisitely mournful Violet Cries, Rachel Davies issues Cassandra-like predictions of woe and mayhem, while Thomas Fisher's filigree guitars shimmer like sunset on a lake.

Built for repeat listening, this will keep on giving. Don't you just hate it when the hype is right?

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

Right at the end of what is officially the most depressing month of the year comes a shaft of unadulterated sunshine.

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

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