You can almost hear the chickens out in the yard and see the dust mites dancing in the sunlit air.

It's all pretty good, but you want to see them live more than replay the album, though "504" needs downloading.

Porter has made the best vocal album in an age.

Stuart Staples and his band delivering nine pieces of beautiful bossa-nova noir, daydreamy reverie and existential easy listening.

But where Learning drifted into the ether, this captivating follow-up thrives off harnessing his fragile sensibility to fulsome melodies.

It is a near-total triumph.

The most vibrant, organic and energy infused African hip-hop debut since K'naan's The Dusty Foot Philosopher.

Chris Thile is the most remarkable mandolinist in the world; fluent, articulate and sometimes just a little too clever to be truly engaging.

Smart, thoughtful lyrics about everything from iPods to the Arab Spring.

Marvellous.

The wan vocals and listless melodies conspire to render such eclecticism [on this album] as flavourless as a Cup-a-Soup variety pack.

One minute it's like listening to early Genesis, the next Smile-era Beach Boys, the next XTC and the next, um, 1980s Genesis.

Dazzling songs, dismally sung.

Recorded in Hollywood, which figures - there is a near-visual sense of overstatement to the bleakness.

It is, as you'd expect, spacious, gentle, reachy, euphonious and, for Air, fairly organic sounding.

Suggests that McCartney lacks anyone to tell him when he's had a terrible idea.

She has ... created a sound which is almost absurdly ill-matched to her songs.

A charming companion piece to The Best of...

A dance album that spins the decks back to the turn of the millennium.

Not to say Cohen is not an artist to be treasured, just that Old Ideas may not be entirely essential.

Somewhere between Ladyhawke and M83, it's 1980's fetishism all the better for the apparent lack of irony.

A delicious hybrid of Portishead and Nancy Sinatra.

Their unadorned, effects-free music remains simple and straightforward, like a rock equivalent of the Dogme school of cinema.

With its flutes, xylophones, mandolins, a truly incongruous mention of Superman III and, not least, Martin's own lilting delivery, it also has a fair quantity of charm.

BTS is a covers album recorded at and paying tribute to Memphis's Sun Studios, deploying tumbleweed guitar twang, and occasionally, the falsetto.

Very enjoyable package.

First Aid Kit sing harmonies so close you couldn't run a Band Aid between them.

Occasionally the listener is carried away on the soulful cusp of Gonjasufi's scraggly voice, but more often than not they are simply overwhelmed.