Frank is an honest, refreshingly personal record which, though very occasionally strays into easy jazz, has Gucci bags of personality.

A fine album for autumn.

Throughout, monster riffs abound. Perhaps this monochrome-clad cartoon combo are as great as singer Howlin’ Pelle always said they were.

The first few tracks work a treat, melding glitchy beats and stomping brass bands in the best tradition of Björk or Sigur Rós. After that, however, things start to feel a bit overwrought.

Burial has concocted a noir-ish sound that’s as powerful as it is atmospheric.

Occasionally veering into rakish skiffle in an annoying hat, it’s not quite the righteous sword-slash of vindication prayed for by fans; still, it’s a relief to see Doherty’s muse in surprisingly rude health.

Raymond Raposa, the ex-surfer behind the ever-shifting line-up, sounds like Neil Young after spending a few nights on a park bench, his decayed folky croak the perfect thread to link these hushed laments.

The sense of clutter, not to mention a recurring high-pitched motif, makes Preparations feel like being trapped in someone else’s nightmares too long.

In Rainbows really does present Radiohead at their most full-blooded and confident.

The new album conjures something of Condon’s own imagination, more deftly-etched romantic fiction than dry travelogue, and is all the better for it.

When Cease To Begin rocks out it's euphoric, but there's a mournfulness shadowing each of these insistent melodies that will have you crying even as you smile.

The songs on Comicopera rate amongst his very best--emotionally complex, politically charged but never short of beautiful.

Don't let the seductively pleasant drift of the tunes fool you: this is sharp, dark stuff.

Even by her own unsettling standards, however, her seventh album is disturbing, a collection of smudged and spectral laments that appear to have been written before the invention of penicillin.

The result is a folk album so rich and intricate that, in scope, it's comparable to Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks."

it's great to hear Banhart playing outside of type, and the swagger and muscle occasionally at work suit him surprisingly well.

It's a bewildering jumble on first gaze, but Harte's little fingerprint-smudged slivers, so lovingly composed, are precious things, and you'll fast find yourself addicted to his sweet, glum love stories.

Give it a bloody good stereo and your full attention.

An ambitious, filler-free, modernist-sounding beast which laughs in the face of underachievement.

The Go! Team are clearly committed to the lo-fi, DIY aesthetic, but with songs as strong as these it’s rather a shame they didn’t apply a little depth and finesse to their production.

Good Bad, Not Evil delivers 13 testosterone-crazed grooves which mercifully give finicky revivalism the swerve, in favour of fuzz-frazzled sonics and lots of fun.

It's Christmas come early, and None Shall Pass won't disappoint his fervent admirers.

Experimental yet poppy, awkward yet unforced, Panic Prevention is a minor masterpiece from a truly bar-raising new talent.

All whoops and yelps, their third album jumps skittishly from primary-coloured electro to punk to poolside cabaret, with an impressive sense of its own silliness.

M.I.A. and co-producers, including Switch, straddle more styles than you’d find in most music collections, let alone on the same disc.

It's brilliant: Broder's twisted tales are better than ever, this time underpinned by urgent guitar riffs, off-beats and perfect pacing.

Roots And Echoes is an album of songs with all the warmth and familiarity of old leather--and as strangely unexciting as that sounds.

It's still heavy on the harmonies and hummable choruses, of course, and does meander into happy-clappy, round-the-campfire territory too often for those of us with a low saccharine threshold.

Rather than play catch-up, the Chems are accentuating the difference, digging deeper into melody instead of piling on the noise.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sees Britt Daniels channelling his persecution complex into more piano-driven 60s pop songs, screaming "Don't make me a target!" at the heavens as his girlfriend walks out. His band prove surprisingly versatile.

It’s an evanescent experience, for whilst you’re awestruck by the sonics beneath the electronic sheen, you can’t remember anything much about them after they’ve evaporated at the end.

If there is such a thing as music with a hairy chest, this is it.

There's a real richness here, and raw venom beneath any fey first impressions, as gentle finger-picking bursts into free-jazz fuzztone guitar blasts and bloodied lyrics.

NYPC's restrained disco needs to rip it up and get wilder, cos this down‘n’dirty posse is actually cleaner than a Boots cosmetics counter.

It’s a fun mess, and although heavily indebted to 60s psyche folk and acid rock, Astronomy For Dogs has a verve and colour that saves it from derivative pastiche.

Overall, The Sun feels like three men taking things at their own leisurely pace but without wasting a second.

For what both of Guillermo Scott Herren's alter-egos are concerned with is sound's texture rather than its structure, rendered here through the soft caressing of acoustic instruments instead of circuit board torture.

Their debut has a great deal of shadowy appeal: there are lyrics about ghosts and secrets, set to drowsy washes of guitar.

Whatever the permutations, Amiina's fragile magic can't fail to beguile.

It’s not just the recurrent meditations on mortality that makes Ma Fleur even more heart-rendingly beautiful than 2002’s Everyday, it’s also how The Cinematic Orchestra’s new album actually feels.

Excellent Italian Greyhound is vintage Shellac: stark, razorous and blackly comic, lurching into whatever time signature happens to possess drummer Tod Trainer.

While their sound might have progressed in an even more bizarre – if sadly less atmospheric – direction, it's still surprising, full of invention and totally unique.

As fun and full-on as it gets right now.

He’s an acquired taste, perhaps, but a distinctive and extraordinarily talented songwriter.

The influences may be antediluvian but the spirit is timeless.

As exciting as it is original-sounding.

The result is less cohesive than Vespertine or Medulla but the fun’s in the exuberance, the jolting between musical styles.

Having eschewed the over-earnest knob-twiddling of erstwhile producer Steve Albini, Verity Susman’s vocals and Mia Clarke’s guitars now sound crisp and urgent, and when the envelope gets pushed... the band’s detached cool melts into a pleasing joi de vivre.

Despite flashes of unexpected vigour, Everybody is ultimately more variation-on-a-theme than it is wheel reinvention.

Coming in 2007 it sounds oddly fresh, but nothing here’s as full-on as their early stuff or as lovely as Feel The Pain.

Even the most melancholy moments... have airy jazz arrangements that let them breathe.

Turner’s sharp narrative ear is still tuned to the revealing banalities of everyday life, the whole band admirably responsive to emotional nuance.

More incoherent than Dntel’s superb debut Life Is Full Of Possibilities.

This is not a bunch of old blokes looking to recapture their youth; rather, Grinderman sounds like a freshly hewn and rudely vigorous chunk of leftfield rock.

What seemed fresh and charming on 2005's Noah's Ark sounds like an interminable racket this time round.

The lyrics are often sublime, of course, but there are big, stupid choruses too.

There’s gold here but you need to dig deep.

This is one of those rare albums that makes you wonder how you ever got by without it.

Klaxons serve up Day-Glo pagan ritual and pop silliness on toast, and kids get sick on it.

Caught between essentially meaningless singalongs and trying to actually mean something, what you get is average power-pop with crass attempts at poetry.

There’s some great stuff here – specifically Relax, Take It Easy’s sublime falsetto hook - but elsewhere buoyant pop is sunk by relentless vocal mugging and production which wears its influences much too heavily.

At the heart of this album is a trio of absolute killers.

This is music that hits the head, heart and hips all at once.

The subject matter takes them closer to Nick Cave than ever before, yet, whereas he displays a knowing black humour, Low’s earnestness sometimes makes them unwittingly hilarious.

El-P's uniquely, beautifully harsh vision remains undiluted.

An album as rich as it is strange.

While still lush in its own grimy way, Ruff Draft represents the harsher, more experimental end of Dilla’s palette.

The sort of euphoric, sweetly intentioned indie pop that, despite occasionally making Belle & Sebastian sound like Da Lench Mob, nevertheless manages to stay the right side of cloying.

A cannily considered, thoroughly de nos jours mix of punk, skiffle and music hall-bred power pop which fizzes with energy and affects a brash charm, but adds little to Barat’s and Doherty’s original blueprint.

Godin and Dunkel are peerless at conjuring a mood, and sonically this is typically impressive, but it needs more foreground, more focus.

There are missteps... and the production is sometimes frustratingly muddy, but Neon Bible very nearly delivers on impossible expectations.

Don't expect the gumption of Super Furries, instead bask in the mellow psychedelic ramblings of Gruff unplugged.

This is the sound of a fighter punching below his weight.

The album’s dark title belies its artful balancing of psych pop’s sweetness with head-down, rock riffing and the emotional power of the blues.

Overblown orchestrations, searing choruses, a demonic self-help tape pastiche and odes to Tom Cruise’s private life are tempered by sparse melodic interludes and tender songs of souls battling against grim routine.

There are off-centre, post-hardcore workouts and plenty of edgy but polished, pop fusion pieces, which suggest The Futureheads transplanted to 70s West Coast America.

It's perfect for passing down the crown of Malian desert blues.

As lush and expansive as his former work was taut and aggro - only the quality remains.

Lyrically, Allen spins the street-slang tales of blowjobs and booze told with varying success by everyone from The Streets to Shampoo.

At their best, on Yankee Go Home and Five Easy Pieces, their sound becomes less indie rock than ecstatic chanting.

Now every track is an intensely creative pop gem, like those brilliant pockets scattered throughout previous releases, refined and condensed.

This is a beautiful record; so wistful and reflective when it finishes it’ll make you feel instantly nostalgic.

The production is smoother, but when Sleeping Lessons morphs from an opiate dream to a riffing stomp with such exhilarating economy, or Red Rabbits wraps drunkenly swaying strings around yet another firmament-bound chorus, you can forgive an occasional excess of slickness.

Much of Hissing Fauna… dances in the face of its depressing subject matter.

His vivid, scattershot rhymes are clever without being cryptic, and his techno-tinged beats never veer off into tuneless arhythmia.

Essential listening.

This only occasionally matches the breathtaking splendour of last year's …Illinoise! but with its modest price and immodest extras only Scrooge could fail to have his heart warmed.

It’s to her great credit that Newsom (literally) plucks artistic triumph from the jaws of cloying whimsy.

This may not measure up to The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, but it does boast a batch of sweet and deceptively unfussy, scruffily heartfelt tunes dealing with love, loss and the messiness of life that help redeem his unarguable songwriting talent.

Meek Warrior’s seven tracks form a sprawling tapestry where every guitar pluck, clarinet wail or joyous shout seems part of some euphoric cosmic plan.

The bubbly cartoon funk of single Cell Phone's Dead is a winner, but tracks like 1000 BPM and We Dance Alone are mid-paced, cautiously funky numbers with neither the bare sentiment of Sea Change nor the ribald lunacy of Hansen’s late-90s bombs.

[Finn's] smart, poetic, unashamedly adult lyrics... almost guarantee this is the best arena band that’ll never play an arena.

Shorn of the orchestral lushness that distinguished their previous effort, The Dears now have little to recommend them.

Bewildered newcomers will soon be entranced, old fans won't be disappointed.

While it’s a bit hit and miss, the sheer bullishness of this album is impressive.

Shot through with attention to detail and the lush production typical of Dunkel’s main concern, Darkel might have its moments of archness but it knows how to shake it’s booty, too.

It’s a winning combination, with the Prince’s shambolic charm still intact but lent clarity by the new additions that make this infinitely preferable to previous efforts.

Heartfelt but sometimes overly polite.