Like Picasso, he acknowledges that the chief enemy of creativity is good taste--which is just as well, since it's not a quality with which he seems over-burdened on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. For which we should all be thankful.

Kiss Each Other Clean is much more focused and homogenous, but there's still a lingering sense of abundant inspiration, eager to carry the songs off to different lairs.

With Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes triumphantly deliver on the promise of their popular debut, the album that helped establish folk-rock once again as a formidable commercial force rather than just a fringe interest.

There's a consistency and homogeneity about the 11 tracks (seven from The Red Shoes, four from The Sensual World) which echoes her work on Aerial, and which lends the project a character entirely its own.

Is there nothing they can't do?

["A Little Bit Of Everything"] is a thoughtful, mature conclusion to an album that seems to summarise one of the more welcoming trends in American rock

On this, Gillian Welch's fifth album, the familiar blending of traditional sounds and moods with modern sensibilities is effortlessly sustained through songs like the mordant "The Way It Goes" ("Betsy Johnson bought the farm, stuck a needle in her arm, that's the way that it goes").

Twenty-five years ago, Lifes Rich Pageant found R.E.M. metamorphosing from what was effectively a turbo-charged folk-rock cult indie outfit into a proper rock band capable of filling stadia.

His symphonic-soul innovations here would map out the course of much 1970s soul music, while his use of multi-layered vocals – the happy result of an engineer accidentally running two vocal takes in the same mix – added an extra element to Gaye's vocal armoury which he would use extensively throughout the rest of his career.

It's a relief to report that Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down is his best effort by far since Chavez Ravine.

An album which contains no filler at all, each track blooming in its own way like a collection of strange desert succulents, with a whole lot of hollerin' and a touch of Lieber-Stollerin'.

Not only did they change the course of rock music; they also sustained an inspired creativity for almost two decades, something that the career arc of this retrospective brings into focus, right down to the Bacharach-esque touches of the final unreleased tracks, which pleasingly bring things full-circle in certain ways.

Soul Time! is a near-perfect expression of retro-soul style that grips from its opening bars.

The result is a lush, immersive work which is sonically more homogeneous than her earlier albums.

It all adds up to probably the best Stones album since... well, since Some Girls, actually.

There's an urgency and drive about these tracks that's simply exhilarating.

The Roots' 13th album may be their best.

That he manages to express such ethical and religious principles without coming across like a sanctimonious buzz-killer is quite remarkable.

Taken as a whole, it's a marvellous piece of work, boasting a rare congruence between lyrical themes and musical evocations, and fronted by one of the most broodingly characterful voices in rock music.

[It is] possibly the band's best album.

These 10 tracks are a masterclass in modern pop creation, pinballing from style to style without endangering their essential "TingTingness".

[The] debut album sparkles with invention and throbs with emotion.

[Wrecking Ball is] unquestionably his most potent album so far this century.

Just a series of great, swampy soul grooves, fronted by the most arresting new voice you'll hear this year, and the kind of natural songwriting that seems to contain the entire history of Southern music within its staves.

The character of the base music here is overwhelming: complex, ebullient and life-affirming, and in yoking this intricate dance music to his sophisticated New Yorker sensibility, Simon created a transatlantic bridge that neither pandered to nor patronised either culture.

An engagingly outre delight.

Despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours.

Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.

The Staves are like a distillation of all that's best about the folk heritages of England and America.

Part of its success is due to Stevens' uniquely ambivalent position, at once ingenious and ingenuous.

Truly, the album of a lifetime.

With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.

Centralia is by far the most satisfying release to date by the Brooklyn-based minimalist post-rock duo Mountains.

These are big themes, dealt with imaginatively by a singer and a band both operating at the peak of their powers. Album of the year?

It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

Roth fits Hunter like a glove, bringing out the warmth of his brass section and framing his raw voice in perfectly judged R&B arrangements that spark and bounce.

Kouyate's electrification of his ngoni lute is just as effective a sign of resistance: fed through a wah-wah pedal, his serpentine, fleet-fingered lead lines gain a fresh, assertive power on songs.

Inspiration Information [is] repackaged with an extra disc of pieces recorded since then, which show his abilities undiminished by age.