An unexpectedly enjoyable late addition to a formidable body of work.

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

It shows a musical maturity way beyond its creator's years.

As an exercise in expanded range, Shangri La is too diverse and distinct to dismiss.

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

It's sprawling, overdue and not for everyone, but at least it's not a play-it-safe comeback with the hot producer of the day.

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

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.

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.

Winehouse's progression from fresh-faced ingénue to agonised diva is operatic stuff.

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

White Lies have just enough elegance and intrigue beneath the bluster to carry it off.

Blacc proves he’s more than capable of stepping into the spotlight for his first major-label album which features 60s soul, folk, retro pop, R’n’B and even country.

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

They've enlisted non-dance musos such as Robert Fripp, Barry Adamson, Nick Zinner and Josh Homme, as well as relative young 'uns Cat's Eyes and Factory Floor, with often delicious results

With its unrelenting positivity, Yes, It's True sounds like the Flaming Lips fronted by Deepak Chopra, and valiantly courts the daytime radio play that will inevitably elude it.

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

Effortlessly mixing traditional instrumentation with samples, this varied yet cohesive album has an angular funkiness and a soulful pop edge.

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.

A delicious hybrid of Portishead and Nancy Sinatra.

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

Glowing Mouth is so subtly soaring it could restore words such as "atmospheric" and "portentious" to the rock lexicon.

Songwriter/producer Sergio Pizzorno opted for a more slimmed-down sound, stripping away layers of sound to allow the ideas to speak more clearly.... It’s a brave but largely successful move, as is the shift from mainly guitar-riff-based songs to ones predominantly fuelled by synthesisers.

The majority of A (clever title, in the context of Faltskog's history) consists of dignified, age appropriate ballads.

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

In spirit, their third album takes them back to their origins as an independent group from Glasgow making defiantly direct music in an age of detachment.

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.

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