Final Straw, third album from Glasgow-based quintet Snow Patrol, is a darker, nastier and altogether bleaker beast than anything they've produced before. These are ostentatiously pop melodies that have been locked up in a basement, blindfolded over night and subjected to gleefully twisted torture and cruelty until they've squealed. The bruised, distorted (yet basically acoustic) "Wow" ...

Manufacturer: Polydor Group

Manufacturer: Rhino

Amy Winehouse's second album, Back to Black, is one of the finest soul albums, British or otherwise, to come out for years. Frank, her first album, was a sparse and stripped-down affair; Back to Black, meanwhile, is neither of these things. This time around, she's taken her inspiration from some of the classic 1960's girl groups like the Supremes and the Shangri-Las, a sound ...

Manufacturer: Island

Anyone familiar with cultish comedy series Flight of the Conchords will be aware of the wonderful songs that the hapless New Zealand duo Bret and Jemaine concoct for each episode. Tackling all genres, from hip hop and soul to glam rock, the duo create highly original and well-produced tracks that typically satirise the very genre they're imitating. This album collects together many of the ...

Manufacturer: Warner

Warning: the Verve’s wittily titled fourth album--the first since their reformation in 2007--is no Urban Hymns Part II. That much is clear from the album’s first single "Love Is Noise," a punchy-yet-addictive propulsive rocker, but it’s a fact underlined several times on the remainder of the album. Taking a determined stroll along the boulevard of experimentalism, the ...

Manufacturer: Parlophone

In Silico might be the second album from Pendulum, but it's their first as a fully-fledged rock band. Of course, this Australian dance collective have paddled in these waters before: their debut album Hold Your Colour was a muscular collection of hard drum'n'bass and slamming breakbeats that, for all its synthetic construction, displayed firmly rock sensibilities. On In ...

Manufacturer: Wea

An astonishingly intense and ambitious album, Elbow's Cast of Thousands is relentlessly experimental. Having toiled for 10 years over their spellbinding Mercury-nominated debut Asleep in the Back, the maverick Bury five-piece--who were initially hailed as the new Radiohead--have produced a worthy sequel in a comparatively short two years. While mirroring their debut's melancholy ...

Manufacturer: Commercial Marketing

Manufacturer: Epic

The latest outing from former Destiny's Child starlet Beyonce is an intentionally schizophrenic affair. Splitting herself into two separate characters--herself and alter ego Sasha Fierce--is the artist's way of presenting what she obviously sees as an artistic duality. The first set, I Am... is intended give a glimpse beneath the surface of her usual R&B-pop persona. Featuring recent single ...

Manufacturer: RCA

Various Positions was Leonard Cohen's first album of the 1980s, yet was in keeping with the rest of his albums in two important respects: one, it sounded absolutely nothing like anything else anyone else was doing; two, it was a compelling reason for anyone else dealing in songs of love and its loss to wonder why they were bothering. As a lyricist, Cohen has few, if any, peers--he has never ...

Manufacturer: Sony