The affection is winning, as is Metheny's mastery of the guitar and harmonic subtlety, but the tone of ruminative gentleness does start to seem unvaried.

On his fifth album, he seizes the mainstream jugular with a lushly romantic, brightly orchestrated and delightfully optimistic collection of epic love songs.

This album is a musical gumbo: a rich, surprising and ultimately satisfying stew of Simon's folk, rock and pop influences from all over the world.

The confidence of this Texan trio's last effort (2009's Fits) is lacking on their first major-label release.

This isn't mere cleverness, it's instinctive musicality, buoyed up by three other fine players.

Sharper production focuses the singer's woozier tendencies, revealing a succession of hooks to adorn his take on Neil Young's grooving folk-rock and Blur's twisted indie.

After an opinion-dividing experimental phase with 2009's Humbug, roar back to melodic life on their fourth album.

Her uncompromising, June Taboresque alto and imaginative, original material--from ye olde narrative ballads to modern love songs--are enduringly seductive.

Gaga goes over the top and keeps on going: exhilarating, exhausting blockbuster entertainment.

Let's hope the slightly odd CD cover image does not put anyone off discovering the music held within because Jarosz has produced a fine album.

Parping away beneath her synthesised fantasies and hypnotic dance floor dramas, you can also hear the unlikely stirrings of an Eighties sax-solo revival.

Epic and intimate, serious and playful, Okkervil River's third album is genuinely awe inspiring, growing with each replaying.

The pair tracked down musicians who worked on Sixties spaghetti westerns, then added Jack White and Norah Jones as singers, resulting in a delicious album, redolent of easy listening but with all flabbiness removed and replaced by a modern warmth and elegance.

There is, as Bush intended, much more air around the songs, which can reduce their original, raw intensity but also gives them a more mature, lingering potency.

They have done Ray Charles proud.

It's something of a connoisseur's collection (steering clear of some of the big hits such as Release Me) but has treasures such as Making Believe.

Pitched somewhere between his two most famous albums, Play and 18, it's hardly groundbreaking but is enjoyable none the less.

A sensational debut from the British rapper. Tempah's wit, imagery and rhythmic flow is offset by schoolboy humour and a tendency to build raps from non sequiturs.

This is glorious summer music, possibly the summer of 1974, but sunshine all round none the less.

Full of groove and grit, it's raw and enjoyable.

The foray ultimately fails because Laurie's voice is no more than adequate.

Blending hi-tech and lo-fi, modern synthesised sound and old-fashioned song writing, her work plumbs torrid emotional depths, similar to alt-rock stars such as Lou Barlow.

Following 2009's hookup with Drive-By Truckers, Potato Hole, his latest record finds him backed by hip hop combo The Roots, who nudge the 66-year-old organist towards his funkiest excursion in years.

A flat-out belter of the Adele/Florence school, surrounded variously by daft orchestral sturm-und-drang and flimsy ProTools disco/house. Better may come.

The first half's vocal tracks woefully resemble standard-issue chart fodder. There's some better instrumental stuff later on, but, overall, it's ordinary.

Sparsely arranged around piano, guitar and his gruff vocals, it's sombre, but affecting.

Even where the musical ideas are strong, they're sapped by the determinedly relaxed ambiance.

Pecknold enthusiastically revealed how the album was a direct result of his indulgence in MP3 piracy, as he tracked back to discover Fairport Convention, Roy Harper, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and all the heroes of the Sixties folk boom.