Album

Given the unfolding and increasingly tragic saga of The Libertines, it's a miracle this record even exists, let alone has any artistic worth. For, in the two years since their extraordinary debut album (2002's Up The Bracket), the story of this erratic but enthralling group has taken in serious drug addiction, a prison sentence and—during the making of this record alone—three failed attempts to get frontman Pete Doherty through rehab. Indeed, on the eve of release, Doherty has temporarily been removed from the Libertines line-up. The second Libertines album is all about this.

Superb debut from string-laden troubadour

Britpop nearly-man gets pastoral

Ravishing pop debut from Malmo four-piece

Big Star man's missing 70s years

Career anthology that runs out of steam halfway through

Sixth terrific solo album from hedonistic, nihilistic Seattle survivor

In the mid-'80s Alex Cox, having made Repo Man and Sid & Nancy to some acclaim, was deemed a financially viable punk auteur. This changed after Straight To Hell, his surreal anti-comedy-cum-spaghetti-western, which had a peculiar genesis. Cox had booked a bunch of less than abstemious musicians for a Solidarity Tour of Nicaragua.

Latest instalment in one man's crusade to keep the spirit of the '60s alive

Third album proper from ex-Boo Radley Martin Carr