It's a lot less dangerous than we've been led to expect.

But even on those tracks that don't make the cut as RJ stand-outs almost everywhere you care to look there are stylish touches and subtleties waiting to be discovered with each subsequent listen.

After the patchy pleasures of 'Wanderland', 'Tasty' is a huge Roman orgy of an album.

With 'The Last Romance', a whole lot of people are at last going to fall in love with Arab Strap for the very first time.

It's not overestimating matters to call 'Tones of Town' a timeless masterpiece.

A beautiful ramble of a record.

there's something in this that sounds just so much more intelligent than fannying around making devil horns.

'Wind In The Wires' is a magnificent record full of the language, imagery and sound of travel.

If Simple Kid is too simple for you, if you always liked Supergrass but never thought they pushed their material to its astral conclusion and felt their retro musings were a little too close to the original blueprint, then this baby, is for you.

A return to form: no tongue-in-cheek pop motifs, but a welcome re-embracing of the mid-American rock that always informed Pavement's more enlightening, abstruse moments.

There's a lot of tracks on this album that go a lot deeper than anything Jigga's ever done, but so what? They ain't gonna cut it as party jams. Well, except the party jams.

Aside from one or two bore-me-ups, this is an album of understated perfection.

Gruff Rhys is one of our most imaginative and original musicians.

Fierce and noble and fragile and genuinely moving, 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' is a lovely furnace of searing goodness made by some wonderful contradictory bastards.

Yes, of course it's a touch on the pretentious-sounding side, and it's also one of the most remorselessly miserable records of the decade so far, but none of this should discourage you from embracing it wholly.

'Hate' is gloomy without being self-indulgent, and grand without being pompous.

Yes, it's the relentless energy, humour and versatility which makes this record stand out and apparently their albums are merely incidental compared to their stunning live shows.

This is a fragile, beautiful music, it all nearly falls apart and then flops back together.

It's not without fault; too many songs and too little variation between the tracks detract from unequivocal enjoyment. Much more of an album to admire, rather than cherish.

A curious, klezmer-infested charm.

This is anticon at their most approachable and reflective and should be filed on your shelf somewhere near Dosh, Boards of Canada and Arcade Fire.

A stealthy, smoking beast of a thing: hip hop with a British passport and dubplate roots, embroidered with wiggly, scratching sound effects and made-to-measure production.

It has the electric hot valve excitement of sixties garage rock, the stomping sexuality of glam and the amphetamined rush of punk rock all dusted down and mashed together in its fever pitch workouts.

'Fall Heads Roll' as a whole might not quite scale the heights of 'The Real New Fall LP', but there's no doubt that elements of it are up there with it.

This is a brilliant, visionary album and needs rewarding with units - MTV won't have the scoobiest what to do, radio programmers will freak, and hip-hop will, once again, move forward.

So few men have managed to touch our scabrous hearts in such a way. Cohen, Bukowski, Barrymore, Hulk, Waterman... Middleton, Moffat.

Giant mutant rats are running about the place with gasmasks and guns. Their eyeballs are electric red, firing lightning bolts of acid, spit and shit and blowing up the place and the furniture.

This isn't really a party record, more of a reflective, late night curled up on the couch with a loved one record.