There's little of the pop sparkle that shone through the likes of 'The Modern Age' and 'Last Nite' even when - as with 'You Talk Way Too Much' - they're rewriting old material, and Julian's vocals are, to be blunt, awful, sounding uncomfortable to record and rather complacently nasal.

Challenging, arresting and moving in equal measures.

The whole experience becomes rather draining after a few listens.

The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.

A beguiling marriage of the electronic and the organic that, while perhaps short on tunes per se, bristles with engagement.

Lyrically, things are mainly annoying, although there are a few bits of amusing storytelling, and some interesting couplets.

One of the most distinctive and satisfying records you'll hear all summer.

This is a long soft sigh of an album, suggesting not a sudden relief of pressure but just a pleasant exclamation of contentment.

His most poignant and accessible album yet.

Summer Sun is a compelling, enthralling and gorgeous album that gets better with each listen.

There are ideas galore here, which is always admirable, though you feel he could have taken the 15 tracks, whittled it down to 10, and developed all this stuff to staggering effect.

Even for a band that crowbar "love" into as many titles as they can, you've got to admire their sauce, and, impressively, they're cramming really difficult music into affable scuzz-pop coatings.

Z's leaden voice is what really makes The Like stand out.

The lyrics, insincere as they are, grate somewhat, but the spastic grove cannot be denied they're a bit like a pervy, conservative Devo, with more earwax.

It's inevitable having enjoyed their partnership for so long, that you occasionally feel the lack of Moffat's brutal honesty, but Middleton grows more interesting with each solo release.

Yes, 'Let's Get Out Of This Country' is a ludicrously fey, coy, twee and light record that could very feasibly be knocked out by an injured butterfly, it's that gentle. But it's also a gorgeously produced, beautifully romantic and ultimately uplifting record.

Lyrically, it's astounding as ever.

'Happiness In Magazines' is likely to make you smile, and may even have you remembering a bygone era when Blur provided the soundtrack.

Gone are the hippy, dippy platitudes of their do-good daisy age; replaced by the most bullish beats, the snakiest rhymes and the overwhelming sensation that you're listening to the undiluted thoughts of the three most intelligent men in hip-hop.

‘Margarine Eclipse’ manages to be generous in length without ever finding itself repetitive, doodles are never allowed to become noodles, understated charm is maintained throughout.

'The Eraser' is Radiohead's fourth best album, and not bad considering it's the first one with only one man on it.

An absolute triumph from one of the most consistently forward looking hip hop bands in the world today.

The diversity audible throughout 'Nostalgialator's' 11 tracks makes the album feel like some surreal kind of trans-generic mix tape.

Whilst this comes closer to 'Out Of Time' than anything else they've done, it never once sounds dated.

His most ambitious and diverse album yet.

One trick pony's they may arguably be, but they've done the same trick twice and pulled it off.

The only disappointment is it's all probably way too leftfield for generic consumption, meaning most people won't actually get to hear it.

If you were disappointed by 'Antics' then this'll make up for it, and if Interpol's last offering did agree with you then you'll spend the rest of '05 at least giving this a great big hug.

Only problem is, though, Ladytron still sound too self-consciously detached and robotic for us to view this as a great leap forward.

An album of dull, vocal virtuoso ballads.

Much of 'Trust' dallies down the dark end of the street, where graceful Velvet Undergroundisms lounge around sharing tabs with gentle folk implosions.

'Young Prayer' is a piece of work that feels both mysterious and honest; a truly rare combination.

A travelogue of even richer and stranger territory than its storming predecessor ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts’, although, inevitably, there’s more than a sprinkling of dead cities and lost ghosts throughout, to say nothing of the occasional red sea too.

The most poetic, bookish and winsome of the anticon crew, his new album as Why? sees [Wolf] creating lavish wordscapes over the deceptively straightforward folk rock music.

A honky tonk Leonard Cohen, the music of Smog sounds like it's spent all its life half cut in a saloon bar way out in the American mid-west thinking far too deeply about love and life for far too long.

Like 'Deserter Songs' and 'All Is Dream' before, 'The Secret Migration' is a compelling, visual album. And yet within this, Mercury Rev have moved on.

Where 'Parklife' was exuberant and almost knowingly callow, 'The Good, The Bad & The Queen' is weary, confused, almost mourning for what once was.

If anything this year's model raises the stakes on its predecessor.

Whereas 2001's 'Confield' often felt like a thankless task 'Draft 7.30' is often, by Autechre standards at any rate, a much more welcoming beast.

Compelling. Devastating. Amazing. And rocks like a bastard.

Despite the unconventional approach, it's definitely an album.

'The Loon' retains a genuinely empathetic sincerity that deserves applause, but should be praised to a greater degree for bringing weird, left-of-centre indie back to the fore.

This is probably the most exciting record that Domino will release in 2006, eleven songs of hillbilly hoe-down, gothic atmospherics, scuzzy rock & roll, acerbic post punk noise, and dark sexuality.

For the uninitiated, they churn out a joyless mess of badly tuned indie guitar, spasmodic jazz drumming and cutesy vocalisations, and on 'O'Malley, Former Underdog' they overlay this with irritating electronica that is reminiscent of the noise your discman makes when your mobile phone is in the same pocket.

Restraint they were always good at, but now they're masters, and the melancholy that swelled up all over Young Team like a particularly ripe bruise is here for all the world to see in 'Rock Action''s damp eyes.

Almost everything about 'Kicking The National Habit' is righteously unfashionable.

The confident arrangements throughout 'No Shouts, No Calls' are the finest Electrelane have yet committed to tape.

An assortment of evocative instrumental journeys that warm the cockles.

The Birmingham band's finest hour yet.

The signature wordplay and musical ingenuity are as strong as ever here... but they're rolling with a far harder edge than you remember.

The Rapture may not quite be wholly heavenly, but they've made an album that's entirely admirable and often lovable.

Everything feels bolder than before, more assured of the rightness of singing from places that most lyricists fear to tred. In textures and words alone, 'Open Season' is a country mile ahead of any of the supposedly heroic guitar debuts knocking around in 2005.

'Suspended Animation' is less a compendium of songs and more a splurging, raging, raping jazz metal fusion machine, weaving in samples, gong noises and assorted cartoon horror.

This album is bollocks. Not the bollocks, mind, just plain old fashioned middle-American bollocks, the sort of 70s, vaguely psychedelic-tinted, vaguely funkdefied bollocks that Lenny Kravitz and old school MTV made their own.

While Wayne Coyne has been carving out and presenting to the world the manifestations of his crazy mind for an age now, the possibilities have so often been superior to the finished article. That is certainly not the case here.

This is music that never quite settles; it's in perpetual motion.

'Young Machetes' is both a magnificent and important album.

Anyone expecting something similar to his early doom-laden musings will find nothing of the sort here.

It's a more oblique successor to 1999's self-explanatory 'Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet', and, paradoxically, their most focused effort yet.

You can smell the impotent melodic desperation a mile off.

Like scoffing a King sized Mars Bar, the instant gratification and sugar rush is soon superseded with nausea, whining and guilt.

A fascinating work of collage that never gets tedious or faddy.

One of the most witty, ambitious and intelligent British guitar albums thus far in 2005.

Although Darnielle's incessant lyrical urgency occasionally causes some words to sound too forced, it's these delicate, well placed notes, minimal piano tinkles and two chord strums that save the songs.

'Apropa't' sounds as organic as a dump and as lush as a drizzly sunset.

Sandoval has a voice quite unlike almost any other and perfectly suited to stark, narcoleptic laments, which is what this, with a couple of curious-if-brief instrumental diversions, delivers on a regular basis.

Repeated listens draw out its infinite flaws, its awful smugness, and remind you that were this not A Radiohead Album it would have been consigned to the pile marked 'Not A Patch On Aphex Twin' last week.

A decent album, then. But one containing an EP that would've had us going "!!!!!".

Miraculously the lyrics never sound like the pompous shite they undoubtedly are. They fit the music and make the whole picture even more laughably and absurdly brilliant.

'Fundamental' will not only be rated up there among the Pet Shop Boys finest albums -- it's also arguably the best electro pop record we've heard in years.

A decidedly schizophrenic experience, if a frequently beautiful and, at the very least, relentlessly promising one.

This is mainly an improvement on a brilliant formula.

Keep giving it a whirl though and it becomes something rather exquisite.

It really is like they've never been away; their glee and enthusiasm can be heard coursing through every bar.

The vast bulk of this album is the sort of stuff you'd expect from an averagely talented bunch of first year music students. Who smoke way, way, way too much dope.

Key to the success of 'Broken Boy Soldiers' is the relatively restrained musicianship.

Quite simply, there are thirteen absolutely cracking tunes here.

What's so remarkable about Morrissey's writing on 'Ringleader...' is a seeming greater comfort with the more upbeat subject matter than with his usual morose metier, and what remains of that is executed with an exceedingly hammy fist.

Quite simply, only the Chili Peppers are even in this class now, and it took them a lot more than four albums to get there.

There are no real surprises here but then in the land of pop-punk surprise is not high on the agenda.

'The Magnificent' largely sidelines Jeff's considerable turntablist skills preferring to showcase the talents of his A Touch Of Jazz production company.

There's little here that you won't have heard countless times before but as a pretension-free house album, 'Muzikizum' is an accomplished, pumping affair.

As with most such collections you're going to get good, bad and extremely ugly, and this is no exception. The fact it spans three CDs seems a bit indulgent considering some of the material should be consigned to an incinerator never to be heard again.

[A] weird, angry, frustrating album.

'Capture / Release' is an album that sounds very much like now, but it should way transcend it too.

For those who looked forward to the new genre-leading direction in downbeat dance that would come with the next Massive Attack album... well, let's just say the major challenge you'll face with '100th Window' is deciding whether there is a hidden track or that 'Antistar' is really a 22-minute song with an excessively long silent bit in the middle.

The energy that spills forth from these grooves hails both the positive power of loud guitars and gorges itself on the general insanity of life, but nails it all home with a knowing melodic sense of the anthemic and a musical complexity which elevates the entire album beyond mere thrash and burn histrionics.

Leaning closer towards the fiercer end of the guitar spectrum, 'Molé' is a splurge of intense and angry songs, a reaction to the filthy Bush era.

Muse's magnificent powerhouse that is new album 'Black Holes And Revelations' rectifies - almost - everything that once was wrong.

The View are a study of all the essentials of British rock & roll.

In isolation you can imagine any of these songs may have appeared over the last 10 years giving a warm comforting feel, but listened in its entirety the effect is strangely soporific, a steady morphine drip running from start to end.

They've managed to produce a seventh album that's the equal of their baggy debut.

Although more full-blooded and more rhythmically experimental in places, '...Planets' isn't a giant stylistic leap from ''Homseongs', but then, why would you want it to be?

It may well be too long and it might stick to its blueprint a little too faithfully, but singularity of vision can hardly be criticised on a debut record. 'Finelines' is a black-hearted but coruscating journey at speed.

The Raveonettes genius is that they pay homage with such style, passion and grace that it's virtually impossible not to be converted to their cause.

The Sea And Cake are ultimately an infuriatingly inoffensive band.

Hot Hot Heat have managed to find a corner of the rock universe that hasn't been overkilled and have made an impressive and imaginative album.

This is a smart LP. From the opening chunder of 'One Note', a mean bass riff and some grade A wittering, their throb is pure and their thrum sweet.