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

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

Finn's second album continues the project he undertook with his first – namely to shake off the shackles of being "Neil Finn's son" by swamping his dreamy, Beatles-esque pop songs with moments of electronic and percussive madness.

Daves is a guitarist, Thile a genius of the mandolin. Both sing. Together they hammer and tongs the songs like smiths.

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.

A close to fine debut.

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

It's a brilliant record; probably her best.

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

The mood of uplifting-melancholia survives and this time out Vernon needs no dramatic backstory. Clearly, his is a talent that loves company as much as it loves misery.

The perfect soundtrack for early summer, and all the possibilities it holds.

The worldy influence remains but never overwhelms and the album contains at least half a dozen songs that are as simple and profound as anything Simon has ever written.

It's rather fine.

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.

while D contains strange time signatures, proggy flute solos and syncopation aplenty, it soon reveals itself to be a work for the heart as well as the mind.

The second studio album from the experimental New York trio oozes colour.

Here are a dozen more such, all beautifully crafted and conceived with poetic flair, arranged nicely for restrainedly plucked instruments, sung in a thin soprano which strains into a yelp.

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.

The vibe is convivial. And though the great man can't put his cancer-strangled voice to every number, he can still swing the nuts off a Slingerland kit in between chesting a nifty mandolin.

Over 13 tunes, Akinmusire and his very hot quintet (featuring Walter Smith III on tenor sax and a great drummer, Justin Brown) take the basic format of post-bop straightahead jazz and tease it around with absolute authority.

There are standouts aplenty and, as song rolls seamlessly into song.

She's on the cover, smirking in front of an old map: a naughty sea god(dess) in a Cruikshank cartoon. Which somehow suits the discursive post-folk rompery of the music: highly arranged, wordy as an Elvis Costello song with larks taking the place of bitterness.

Her first UK release is a polished, bluegrassy thing of no small wonder.

Taken on its own merits, however, there's plenty to enjoy, as Bush sings new vocals over remixed and re-edited backing tracks in a deeper, more weathered voice.

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

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

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.

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.

Darwin Deez, a New York-based artist for whom the word "offbeat" seems to have been invented. Not that there are any in his music--all straight 4/4 and po-mo lyrics--but there are plenty of tunes, not a little charm and a fair old sense of humour.

The Cumbrian quartet haven't fumbled the ball with the follow-up. Smother, recorded in the shadow of Snowdonia, tinkles and twinkles like the classiest adult-alternative pop of the 1980s.

As with some diseases, the album gets worse before it gets better, but by the end you're left stunned in admiration. Hell, there's even a redemptive arc. Amazing.

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.

The repertoire leaves room for instrumental chops from saxophonist Ernie Watts, while Haden's big bass fiddle thumps out the time with authority.

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

Catchy yet abrasive, noisy yet intimate, kind of funny yet also kind of scary, this is post-pop at its most vertiginously original.

A welcome addition to the Beastie canon, and if it gets them back out on the road, it'll be an absolutely precious one.

Helpnessness Blues is, like its predecessor, archaic and pastoral to the last.

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

There are collaborations with Bobby Womack, Sheila E and George Clinton. All driven by the heavy funk bass of Collins. Which is never a bad thing.

Woon's work is unashamedly bucolic (he writes songs about going for a walk) and beat-literate (he's worked with Burial), and his tremulous, medieval folk singer voice makes it perfectly bearable.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

With new recruit Earl Slick on guitar they've made a third reunion album filled with ramshackle glam and girl-group trash, reverberating with street-corner romanticism and hard-won wisdom.

The results are fluent, tasteful, ghostly and more than a little wistful. Ideally served with morning coffee.

There are times in this 100-plus minutes of a concert recording duplicated over two CDs and one DVD where you want to jog Mehldau's elbow, but overall it's a triumph of imagination and structure.

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.

Commendably, the Bury band's fifth album doesn't see them chasing the mainstream or pandering to the ear of the daytime radio dilettante.

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

Just simple, old-fashioned talent and charm.

In a crowd of loudish country and R&B guitars he tells brief stories of everyday lives with a correspondingly everyday voice, but with a kind of unslung abandonment that goes rather well with the guitars. It's very good.

The songs are mostly shaped in her traditional chord-to-chord method, their melodies looping behind the tempo of the guitars and, for once, in a spirit of uplift.

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

It's touching, witty, and like everything else the Bostonian ever does, brilliant.

It's still a cut above most epic global-influenced rock.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Desperately, painfully arty but worthy of your recollection.

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.