Band

Monochrome minimalists go Technicolor, with startling results Anyone familiar with 2002's Everybody Makes Mistakes could be forgiven for thinking they'd stumbled on the wrong band here. If that album was austere—a kind of aural porcelain—then Shearwater's third is a riot of movement and colour. They remain, in parts, as sombre-still as American Music Club, but now add more than a dash of Spirit Of Eden-Talk Talk and a whole heap of '70s FM pop. Soft-rock chamber music, if you will.

36-track masterclass in larger-than-life rock

Two-CD compilation of '80s coulda-beens

Tirelessly horny MC returns to his dancehall roots

Ravishing pop debut from Malmo four-piece

Double album retrospective from Kidderminster's favourite blues band

Career anthology that runs out of steam halfway through

The Crowded House siblings back together for the first time in nine years

The '80s albums which made them the most successful duo in US chart history

Treasures unearthed from '80s Beeb archives