While 'You Are The Quarry' is a very good album it's not the earth shattering masterpiece many had hoped for, nay, expected.

There is, undoubtedly, something impressive in the craft and detail of Plaid’s labours, but the whole lacks an intangible something to lodge their 'Spokes' securely in our hearts.

The production is simplicity itself, and by the end you won't remember 'Remember Today' from 'Every Stitch', and you won't know whether 'End To Begin' is at the beginning or the end, or even in the middle.

Despite their reputation for distinctiveness parts of 'The Tipping Point' feel distinctly under par by the Roots own high standards suggesting that the departures of MC Malik B (Slacks) and human beatboxers Scratch and Rahzel have, in some ways, led to a successive narrowing down of the range of the Roots' previously loose and eclectic sound.

The sound is small scale, but the bewildering range of styles shows he thinks big -­ listen with your brain plugged in.

Given how many of their contemporaries have attempted to xerox a winning sound and got it so far wrong, the fact that the Kings can still turn their hand to such magnificent lost hits as 'Misread', spin out obtuse, imaginative imagery as they do in 'Surprise Ice' and sculpt such tender ruminations as 'Stay Out Of Trouble' is cause for serious celebration.

The record is littered with highlights.

A very slickly produced record that's practically unlistenable.

There are many more interesting artists out there doing the kind of thing Jamie does with more panache and originality with voices that don't make me want to throw myself under an underground train, but they're not from Wimbledon.

If 2002's 'High Society' found them honing their nascent pop sense then this effort finds the New York trio sounding almost too cool for their own good.

His best album in over ten years.

If there's a quibble, 'Honeycomb' does lack variation of pace. Though it doesn't matter when the tunes are as consistently as good as 'Sing for Joy'.

The album suffers from serious momentum problems. You get something that hammers in a good and interesting way and then a few minutes later it's like the tap of a blue tit's beak on a milk bottle top.

Their brilliance lies in writing the crassest, most obvious, lowbrow hooks.

Even on repeated listens, the search for the showy dazzle of The Killers, the lyrical tomfoolery of the Kaiser Chiefs or the sheer stadium smartness of Franz Ferdinand proves fruitless, and it becomes apparent that, in an age where indie's proving to be the stronghold of overachievers, 'Cuts Across The Land' may have missed its moment.

Aside from a few duff tracks 'Loose' is an absolute beauty that couldn't have arrived at a better moment.

'Try This' is quite the album - most things to all people, touched by audacious greatness, and as fine an advert for imperfectionism as we could've demanded.

A worthy endeavour from one of the most important bands alive.

You've heard all this before, but it still sounds glorious.

The music itself doesn't quite have the simple accessibility and easy soul of her debut, but it's loads of fun and bursting with ideas.

'Brother Is To Son' has to be listened to many a times before certain things start to fall into place. But when they do, boy, they sound great!

It's a joy to listen to but tough to recommend.

Too often, though, as on the lacklustre title track 'Favours For Favours' or 'Thursday', it has to be said that the new beast just isn't as feisty as the one-trick pony of old.

It's about the best a studio grime album can be.

Great album though this is in it's own right, the failing of 'The Endless Not' is that it just sounds like it's happy to play safe. No shocks, no surprises... and , sadly, none of what made TG arguably, together with the Sex Pistols, THEE most important force in the evolution of modern popular music.

Not necessarily a fantastic album then, but a great excuse for a record, nonetheless.

A collection of skewed pop classics that draw as much on the contemporary R&B of Timbaland as they echo the darker side of New Order.

It feels like one of the most uncompromising and oddly impactful offerings they've produced in many years.

Offers the sound of Stereolab doing what they do best. Love it or hate it, it won't alter the world, it just is.

See, there're a good few cracking singles on here, but there are also occasions when her wistful classicism leads her down blind alleys.

As an exercise in hubris and chutzpah it's a rather fascinating affair.

'Elevator' is not as instant as 'Make Up The Breakdown', though it has adequate catchy tunes in the style of XTC and Joe Jackson to retain most of the interest from those who enjoyed them last time.

Compared to their offerings to date 'Amber' has the hardest edges, but it wouldn't be Clearlake if it wasn't soft in the centre.

Twilight listening of this ilk can teeter dangerously on the ledge of snoozedom, but anyone who can manage to drop off during this album's many unnerving and often hyperactive moments is going to have some damn weird dreams.

A collection of rehashed moments from his brilliant though patchy career, a sowed together patchwork of pastiche.

It's highly unlikely that Buck 65 is ever going to become the cash cow that his paymasters probably thought he was going to be, but let's hope that he is invited to keep on presenting us with his skewed worldview; a beautiful painting seen in a shattered and blood stained mirror.

'Why Bother' is a testing listen, of course, and after a while the vocals can begin to make your brain start to dissolve in minor whirlpools.

If it's house music you're after then you won't like this because this (sorry to point out the bloody obvious) is something completely different. And that, as far as we're concerned, is the whole point.

Picking highlights from a release so well executed and downright ass-shaking is difficult.... 'To The 5 Boroughs' is a triumph.

This is heavy pop at its very best.

Someone should put Blink 182 out of their misery.

A lean, aggressive and thoroughly relevant album.... If you really need to spend any money on an album where a multi-millionaire relentlessly tells you how remorselessly shit life is; make it this one.

It's all hugely ridiculous, of course, but executed with a surprising amount of passion.

The warmth of her debut is still there but now overlaid with something fearsome, forceful and almost overbearing at times.

As smooth and comforting as an afternoon on an old leather sofa that fits you like your own skin.

'Baby 81' sees a band lose focus from what made them tick in the first place.

'Trading...' may be better than we had any right to expect, but the fact remains that there's nothing here that would've catapulted him to public consciousness were it not for his astuteness and the Donnie Darko connection.

It's like a thicker, dirtier Good Charlotte.

Totally inessential, utterly inoffensive, yet truly beguiling, 'Son Of Evil Reindeer' remains a charmingly radiant record.

An ultra sleek and, it has to be said, generally impressive, 80s-inspired party record.

This is a record that brattily demands total attention, and as such, will either be lauded as a bold journey, or derided as pretentious indulgence.

The band have colonised the rich turf at the intersection of meticulously structured mope-rock and free-flowing three-chord pop, where moments of resignation cosy up alongside twinkling hopes for the future like Winehouse to the sauce.

Lord knows what's going to happen when they abandon their commercial concessions entirely (as we suspect this buys them the opportunity to do. Good), but this is stunning enough in its own right.

A wondrous re-emergence.

This is a record of outrageous range and unprecedented panache.

If there’s a problem with ‘This Is For Real’ and you’ll have to really look, it’s the fact that it’s a tad too shiny. Not much, but, at times, it’s lost a bit of that dirtiness that made the Grease so appealing.

What need for artless posturing and sloganeering when you have music so powerful, so ugly, so revolting, so incredible?

There are too few ideas here to really make 'Keep On Your Mean Side' worth our devotion.

If The Delays had succeeded in making the latter five-sixths of their debut as wondrous as the first portion, they could be credited with fair miracles.

'By The Way' is pretty much 'Californication' part two with a deeper exploration of the nu melodic Peppers, a classic LA record that somehow combines the melodic rush of the Beach Boys and Mamas and Papas and hints at the dark underbelly of the city of angels just like Love did way back in the late sixties.

Nothing earth shattering, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Sophomore album 'The Only Thing I Ever Wanted' is the work of a band with a keening melodic sense, akin to the development apparent in the prime works of, say, Idlewild or the Delgados, and, impressively, it does this without losing any of the idiosyncratic DIY charms that characterised its makers in the first place.

Think Pavement with a shake of Grandaddy and a little dash of something else low-key and lackadaisical and that's Quasi.

More often than not displays a penchant for melody and tension which would shame many of the new millennium's pop pups.

The problem is, whilst the debut had more hooks than a fishing rod sandwich, this just doo-wop-yawn, the sort of nursery rhymes kids never remember.

While this album is hardly a sellout or a mellowing down, its shifting in direction, its differing textures make it far better than 'Iowa'.

You really won't find a more interesting, intelligent or wonderful dream of an album as 'Sensuous' all year.

This is classic timeless pop.

When 'A Drug Problem That Never Existed' is at its best, briefest and most brutish, it's a cracking piece of work indeed; daft, dirty and, in many ways, devilish.

About as boring as a record can be.

'In Your Honour' is as rancid and moribund and as redundant of ideas as it is possible to be.

Experimental it ain't, but this summer in a shiny flat box it is.

While there's some fresh experimenting and choral loveliness, it sounds formulaic and tired by Electrelane's standards.

If you're bored of 'Danger! High Voltage' like us, there's plenty to plunder, though ultimately you'll be filing this album away in your "don't play anymore" library after Echobelly and before Electric Soft Parade.

The album is a parasite, a pollutant, and should be kept well away from children and old people.

While the record lacks any of [Queens of the Stone Age's] belligerent twisted rock weirdness they have definitely pumped up the Good Charlotte-style teen anthem choruses.

Staunch fans won't be disappointed, but it's hard to envisage new ears pricking up on hearing 'Octopus' woeful musings.

It feels too clinical, icy cold, almost sterile.

Blueberry Boat is a frustrating, niggling, great idea of a record.

'Fatherfucker' is one motherfucker of an album.

So while Hamilton Leithauser believes he's made a record comparable to the legendary 'The Basement Tapes', it seems almost churlish to point out that you'd be far better off digging out a copy of 'The Basement Tapes' and listening to it, than going out and purchasing 'A Hundred Miles Off' and listening to it once.

Unfortunately a lot of the record falls a wee bit flat.

Fischerspooner might be harking back to a more colourful age, but '#1', more than any other album apart from, perhaps, 'Original Pirate Material' is very much The Sound Of Now.

Turns out what the world was waiting for really was those that saved guitars finally making a record that truly reaped the rewards of their efforts. Is this it? OH GOD YES!

'The King Of Nothing Hill' manages to effortlessly stir a Trans Atlantic cauldron of retro flavours, sleazy soul, avant-garde darkness, soundtrack cool, breaks, head nodding jazz sophistication and electronica sus.

Far too often, 'Wiretap Scars' feels limp, lifeless, bereft of dynamics.

The Champs' music is so exhilaratingly, grin-inducingly, fist-shakingly wonderful you cannot help but want more. VI delivers in spades.

The cool thing about Solex's sampledelia is that she can do it with humour and still avoid the high-frequency buzzing, 60s hi-fi demonstration records and bongwater bubble traps.

If you are the sort of person who thinks of cannabis in terms of how much you smoke a day rather than how much you smoke in a month or a year, then you are going to like this album very much indeed.

If there's one thing that unites 'Illuminated By The Light' it's how sweaty a vibe it gives off.

However, despite all the smarty-pants ideas, let's be clear on one thing. You FEEL this on a GUT level, because 'Untilted' packs a punch that rips through your speakers.

They have made this album many times before and one assumes they will make it many times again.

However essential it was to make, it just doesn't feel essential enough to keep on hearing.

It nods in so many directions that our heads should be spinning, but the gel in the system is a linear production ethic that weaves the threads whilst keeping it refreshingly rough.

With a secret nod and a flick of an amulet, JJ72 have wandered into Mercury Rev's sacred ground of mystical contemplation.

Somehow Blink 182 have captured the space created by Green Day.

This might be quality above innovation, but it’s also maturity above cliché, and above all, passion over cynicism.

Not only is Folds singing better than ever, and not only is his song-writing oozing confidence - but the musician in him is also at the peak of his powers; the piano playing is just mesmerising.