The beats aren't always the best, but Wretch, who lives on the notorious Tiverton Estate and whose "mum's still living in the ends", has a self-awareness lacking in many of his peers.

As always, Ladytron make the world feel a more haunted, evocative, romantic place. Faultless.

CYHSY now sound more or less exactly like The Killers.

The music treads a gingerly path between the lighter textures of honky-tonk and a sort of indie lounge-pop. Charming.

The second Nixey solo album is a thing of subtle gorgeousness, with Nixey's none-more-English, sexy school-mistress diction dealing with topics as bleakly improbable as the Bridgend teenage suicides.

A potent shot in the arm for Afrobeat.

The effect is softly inclusive without being entirely bland, and even if Holland's poetry doesn't ring your bell as poetry, then it certain works in this context as sound-art.

Stephen Malkmus is back making amiable but unchallenging off-kilter country rock songs.

It's as close to a perfect Americana album as there's been this year--fans of the California sound from CS&N to the Jayhawks will find much to love.

This has more bounce and sees Lovefoxxx & co close to their best.

Their command of "neeeooow" noises suggests a schooling in retro rave, and their cover of the Jets' "Crush" turns the sugary original into something superbly sinister and stalker-ish.

None of it is clumsy but, equally, none of it truly escapes the originator's gravitational field.

In place of politics, or any kind of point, all this album offers is a parade of premium brands, from Grey Goose to Louboutin. The overriding sensation is akin to reading one of those luxury-shopping magazines you get on planes while a mediocre hip-hop station plays over the headphones.

It's pleasant enough, but on the whole feels like Hynes' sketches towards an album, rather than the finished item.

Gentle Spirit is impressively inert.

All diva froideur and drum machine snap, it nevertheless transcends pastiche via a pervasive air of murky ambiguity.

Its main virtue: brevity. Most songs are sub-2 minutes, and the entire album is over in 20.

This is accessible, song-based contemporary jazz at its most earnest, ordered and empowering.

Great tunes, decent voice, scary attitude.

The most perfect suite of music recorded in my lifetime.

Simultaneously grounded and spiralling off into the stratosphere, this is urgent, epic stuff that doesn't let up for a moment.

Unless you have a natural predisposition towards the enjoyment of self-consciously nerdy vocals and jangling harmonic songs taking a 'sideways looks' at life, Sky Full Of Holes will leave you completely unmoved.

This debut is so lame, it makes the Beady Eye album sound like Let It Bleed.

From dancehall/nu-metal hybrids to dubstep-meets-Bond theme balladry, its bombastic stuff, but also finely tuned in its balance of sincerity and showmanship.

The impeccably hip credentials of HN's Roberto Carlos Lange are rather at odds with the wonderfully gloopy Latin-cheese of this Spanish language, old school synth-session's best tracks.

The writing is generic, the studio-craft impressive. Enjoyment will depend on how you get on with the voice and its hooting cannonade of mannerisms.

The danger is that they might spread themselves too thin, but on this evidence they've kept their best ideas close to their chests.

This one feels much more like a group searching for a sound together, even if the sound once belonged in a Venn diagram linking Led Zep, Deep Purple and Dio-era Sabbath. And it rocks most periodly.