This is a dog of an album, by anyone's standards, but if you play it next to 'If You're Feeling Sinister', which we did, then it is the sort of dog that shits all over the kitchen and has constant mange.

Of course, if you've never particularly liked rickety, no frills, folk albums complete with twanging country guitar solos, banjos, the odd duff note and gloriously lo-fi percussion, then 'Where The Humans Eat' really isn't the record for you.

There are several duff tracks, certainly. And, sure, as a whole 'American Idiot' can easily be criticised for its simplistic, occasionally naïve sixth form lyrics, all round pomposity and general adherence to the group's tried and tested formula of punchy three-chord pogo-pop. But it's still a wonderfully entertaining, polemical punk rock record.

Underpinning this wry melancholy are the winsome languor of Stephin Merritt's voice and the generous stash of tunes.

'Walking With Thee' is a smoothed-over cacophony where the surreal meets the jovial and declares it an octagonal fish - deadly seriousness with a hint of smirk.

It is that love, devotion, and unfaltering belief that makes 'Permission To Land' such an essential listen, and such a joy to behold. It is the sound of triumph.

The overall mood (so spot-on is the title that the whole thing feels like a big chilled-out dance doughnut with stardust for sugar, heh heh) saves it, along with the occasional staggering moment of beauty.

This is a record stuffed with fun and joy and magic for all the family.

There is much to get teeth-grindingly irritated about with this album.

Daring, inventive and groundbreaking.

'...Broken Seas', though understated and pretty, tingles with furtive sexual chemistry.

'Want Two' is simply in a league of its own.

Quite simply, 'Bows + Arrows' is a Great American Record, taking the qualities most admired in the last 35 years of US rock and barbecuing them together.

Where Ladytron's first two albums might have felt to some to be alienating and monochrome, like a shallow bender on champers and very nice drugs, but a shallow bender nonetheless; 'The Witching Hour' is blessed with a far greater palette of sound and sensation, and is as fine a spell as you'll succumb to all year.

There's definitely something horrid, hairy and horrendously hippyish hobbling these lovely boys.

This is a densely structured journey through intense pummelling and dervishes of electronic noise.

It's not just the vocals that captivate. The sheer busyness of the whole production and all the sounds are to be marvelled at, and though it would be easy to over-egg, they never allow any of the tracks to be cluttered or overblown.

So yeah, he's moved on a little but no, he hasn't gone soft on our perilously-leaping arses, and his personal holy trinity still seems to be the deeply unfashionable but unironically ace Van Halen, Meat Loaf and Billy Idol.

Well as befits such a completely uncompromising visionary/awkward pain in the arse (delete one if you can be bothered) it veers between the preposterously awful 'Genuine Lullabelle' with its bewildering spoken word passages and the awesome wire taut assault of 'Be Prepared'.

Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.

A gloriously accomplished and very rewarding listen.

Too often tracks drag us down below the high standard an artist like Beck Hanson has set himself. Red Hot Chili Peppers outtakes with some harmonica and vocoder balanced incongruously on top are frankly not good enough.

In ‘Real Gone’s fearsome complexity of rhythm, lyric and device, Tom Waits appropriates like a shoplifter without much time, and creates something entirely his own. A new music.

They're simply repainting comfortable territories with even subtler strokes than ever.

Lamb's most rounded and complete collection yet.... Even if they've lost something special in the process.

The results are almost painfully fashionable, f'sure, but utterly essential nonetheless.

It’s good fun, it’s a scream, and it stands up well to the likes of '...Do Dallas'.