Generation Indigo is a hugely enjoyable electro-pop album.

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.

The internationalist (Scouse-Chinese-Scottish-Bulgarian-Israeli) electro-rock quartet may not have presented a comprehensive summary of their career here, but it's a superb starting point for Ladytron latecomers.

The second Yelle album is essential for anyone who appreciates dancefloor-friendly European synth pop.

Fans of Raising Sand and O Brother...will find much to love. As – more surprising this – will fans of classic-era Fleetwood Mac.

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.

Though there's no smash hit leaping out, with its consistent unity of atmosphere, The Fall is the most cohesive Gorillaz album yet.

And whaddayaknow, this ugly duckling – out of a hoodie and into a tux – turns out to have a fine white soul voice and has followed a record you couldn't bear to hear more than once with a record you'll want to play over and over.

Unless I'm going insane, On a Mission sounds like a modern pop classic.

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.

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

For all its faux-primitive origins, their seventh studio album is every bit as likely to ship platinum as the previous six.

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

A strange end to a strange album, whose mood, to invoke one of their earlier songs, is not so much "Fuck You, It's Over" as "fuck yeah, it's over!"

Nonchalant no more, here they spike their sparse blues-print with humour and humanity, dub grooves and Southern gothic flavours.

Presumably not this unremittingly OK collection of hazy pop-rock singalongs paying anodyne homage to the Ramones, Jesus and Mary Chain and, er, Interpol.

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

It's actually a more interesting artifact than the Mitchell one. Having said that, it is also hobbled by a paucity of good songs and a slightly splashy production. Solomon rides the turbulence like a whale.

It plays like a very conventional, early-90s pop record.

Max Martin, Mr "Baby One More Time", has been roped in again along with scores of interchangeable Scandinavians to create an album of autotuned landfill chartpop which you will scour in vain for anything on a par with "Womanizer".

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.

Her voice hangs inertly among racks of lustrous guitars like a worn shirt.

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.

Coming from a band who blatantly don't want to be a band any more, Angles is inevitably disjointed. But it's not disastrous.

The fourth album from the award-winning strings-and-sisters folksters is a thing of shivery and spooky charms.

Despite a version of Earth Wind & Fire's "After The Love Is Gone" that is so good you can play it for days, this dream-team collaboration between jazz singer Elling and big-time weirdo producer Don Was delivers less than it promises.

Enchanting stuff.

The most rewarding part of this double-disc is the first quarter. Not that the hissy old demos and rarities on the rest of the collection are without their charms. But it's the opening section which really whisks you back to another age.