Moby may have stolen his thunder on Play but St Germain, aka Ludovic Navarre, has been showcasing his futuristic nous and love of roots music by funking up the 4/4 electronic world with a little blues and gospel since the early 90s. After his F-Communications swan song, From Detroit To St Germain in 98, Navarre worked with a host of great session musicians for this, his major label debut. Tourist, his first album for the legendary Blue Note label, certainly justifies the continuing hype. A perfectly formed melodic journey of eclectic and idiosyncratic deep house that mixes blues, latin percussion and, of course, jazz without the noodle factor, Tourist is likely to generate as much head-nodding as dancing down your local groove emporium. The tracks range from the straight-ahead blues cut, "Rose Rouge" to the aptly titled "So Flute", an Afrobeat percussive shin-dig with a wondrous flute riff. "Latin Note", a funky latin stomper, reminiscent of Nuyorican Soul/Masters At Work is packed full of minor chords, smashing beats and off-the wall dynamics. Elsewhere, Navarre proves himself a master of suspense and beat-heavy poignancy, "Pont Des Arts" combines a carnival spirit with a monster piano groove, whereas "What You Think About" would have made Roy Ayers circa "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" very happy. Tourist is the kind of album that is put on at a fantastic, idyllic beach bar stereo at sunset and then constantly looped, a future classic. -Kate Nafolo.

Danish group Aqua arrived on the international pop scene in 1997 with their multi-million selling smash "Barbie Girl". Developing a formula pioneered by their successful Swedish rivals Ace of Base and Whigfield, this album demonstrated that the band were more than just one hit wonders. Skilfully crafted for instant, easily digestible consumption, Aqua is equally entertaining at the club or at home. It is jammed full of bubble-gum pop classics, ranging from the Euro-disco opening track "Happy Girls And Happy Boys", to the Madonna-esque ballad "Turn Back Time". It is a treat for all pop lovers: an album which will both entertain and surprise. - -John Galilee.

Culled from the band's ten year, six album career, Lest we Forget: The Best of Marilyn Manson features some of the greatest rock anthems of the last decade. Opening with "The Love Song" from Holy Wood, it proceeds to the first of a handful of cover songs which have made it as singles. The decadent, beefed up version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" may not vary much from the original but the band do it the appropriate Goth justice; "Tainted Love" adds a menacing, industrial-glam to the electric northern soul of Soft Cell's version; and the one that broke them into the UK mainstream, "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics sounds as good as ever. So, they do a good cover but it's really the fists in the air crowd-pleasing anthems that back up the band's iconic imagery. The high-energy signature tune, "Beautiful People" and tracks like "Disposable Teens" or "The Fight Song" typify the band's intelligent approach to rock'n'roll posturing. While many may have all the albums already, Lest We Forget is the perfect addition for anyone who likes the odd song but was too fearful to delve any further in the world of Marilyn Manson. -Georgina Collins.

Beautiful Future-a hopelessly optimistic moniker for their ninth album, no matter which way you approach it, since Primal Scream are almost universally accepted to have strutted past their zenith around the same time they helpfully mislaid their vowels (on 2000's unrelentingly anarchic Xtrmntr). To claim any future, especially after the all-too-brief successes of 2006's turgid Riot City Blues, let alone a handsome one is foolhardy to say the least. But, you see, they're actually being cuttingly sarcastic, or so we ascertain from Bobby Gillespie's ham-fisted sloganeering on the title track's tirade against modern ills ("you live by the sword, you die by the sword, you're only free to buy things you can't afford", etc. ). If anything in particular is exposed as a spent force here it is he and his pen, sense disregarded to the point of parody, words drifting like flotsam amid the band's systematic attempts to reinvent themselves. The small miracle is that they just about manage. "Beautiful Future" leads into the album with a curious and eventually overwhelming infectiousness, gleaming like CSS delivering a Shirelles pastiche complete with cheesy bell-ringing and an effeminate vocal delivery that almost clouds over the lyrical content. "I Love to Hurt (You Love to Be Hurt)" actually features CSS's Lovefoxx as this album's Kate Moss and holds its own with some minimalist malevolence. As an album it jerks and it stumbles, lacking a definitive identity, but it at least ensures they'll live to see another day. A future of some sort is assured. [+]

Like De La Soul's Three Feet High & Rising, The Pharcyde's 1992 debut came at a time when hip-hop was headed in one direction and the group were going somewhere else entirely. A crew of spunky b-boys armed with a self-abating sense of humour, The Pharcyde made an album that was fresh and profoundly honest. "Ya Mama" is a clever array of mother jokes set to cartoonish beats; "On the DL" has each MC unguardedly making self-denigrating confessions (like Fat Lip admitting to masturbating-previously a hip-hop no-no); and "Passin' Me By" is an ode to hopeless crushes on unattainable women. The group's playfulness was also infused with smarts, too, most visibly on "Officer". Recorded around the time of the Rodney King verdict, the song was an indictment of racial profiling-shrouded, of course, in a comic tale that parodied Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos". With animated beats from J-Swift (the West Coast version of Prince Paul) and four distinct rhyming styles, particularly Slim Kid Tre's melodiousness and Fat Lip's nerdiness, this album captures an innocence rarely seen in the music's posturing ways. It is something that this album captures forever. -Joseph Patel.

Linda Ronstadt was America's sweetheart of the 1970s, because she was able to combine a pretty face, a pretty voice and a safe personality. Her songs might be full of big notes and high emotions, but they satisfied every predictable expectation of a love ballad or good-time rocker. Mariah Carey is America's sweetheart of the 1990s for the exact same reasons. Music Box topped the charts, yielding number-one singles like "Dreamlover" and "Hero. " The titles, one a hollow Minnie Riperton knock-off and the other a stiff Barbra Streisand imitation, are tip-offs to Carey's reliance on untethered fantasy (she's the fantasizer in the lyrics and the fantasy object in the videos). These songs, co-written and co-produced like most of the album by Walter Anasieff and Carey herself, are constructed to show off her dizzying soprano, not to provide an original approach to a well-worn subject. Even when she gets a strong ballad to sing, like her current singles-Babyface's "Never Forget You" or Badfinger/Nilsson's "Without You"-she overdoes the self-pity bit so much that the song loses its dramatic tension. -Geoffrey Himes.

Born, the debut album by four conservatoire-trained young women has little to do with classical music. It's a gimmick, fusing a string quartet of frivolous femmes, spicy girls who all want to be "Posh", with dance beats, a big production mixing their violins, viola and cello with polished electronics. Add an enormous marketing budget and watch them top the charts. Taking themselves less than seriously-they played the James Bond theme at their Royal Albert Hall debut gig-pop "Victory" looks assured. This single bounces along with a dash of Rossini's Barber of Seville and a real sense of pop melodrama, in spirit little different from what guitarist John Williams did with his rather less photogenic band Sky in the late 1970s. What may surprise is that tracks such as the frenetic world-dance "Quixote" are penned by the film composer Magnus Fiennes, brother of the more famous Ralph and Joseph. "Winter" adds Jean Michel Jarre-style synth and voice-over to the ghost of Vivaldi and the infectious beat goes on, and on, and on. Sex sells, and Bond's success seems assured: this is a state-of-the-art product, but with Mike Batt of Wombles fame's bonus remix of "Victory" just don't expect it to be art. -Gary S Dalkin.

At the time of Coast To Coast's release, Westlife could do no wrong. With a staggering record of every one of their seven singles hitting the top spot of the British charts, they were really at the peak of their game. Within a week of this, their second album's release, their cultural forefathers Boyzone announced it was game over, leaving their most successful member Ronan Keating balancing his solo career and his job as Westlife's manager, aided and abetted by Louis Walsh, the man who made Boyzone and who was now firmly focused on his five new Irish wonder boys,. Together they have come up with a winning formula-good looks, ballads and gentle pop-and they rigidly stick to it. After all if it ain't broke don't fix it-look what happened to the Spice Girls, swept aside thanks to a combination of a radical change of direction combined with Westlife power. As such, the album itself is hardly a challenging affair, in fact the only things that really jump out and grab you are the aberration that was their duet with Mariah Carey on "Against All Odds" and their butchering of Abba's "I Have A Dream"-taking the lush harmonies of the original and turning them into the aural equivalent of wallpaper paste. However, it isn't all totally bland, there are moments where the harmonies shine through and the pop sensibilities come to the fore, such as "My Love", "When You're Looking Like That" and "Dreams Come True", in fact anything that is remotely up-tempo and a break from the relentless wishy washy nondescript ballads. This is the sound of Westlife at the peak of their career-the only trouble is, with their phenomenal track record and the wonderful fickleness of the British pop charts, the only way from here is down. -Helen Marquis.

Robin Carlsson-better known as Robyn, the diminutive Swedish fireball who scored a hit with 1997's "Show Me Love"-has slowly but surely made her mark as an international R & B queen. Robyn, her fourth album, is arguably her strongest statement to date, jam-packed with sassy, streetwise lyrics and an array of novel beats and songs. Tracks like "Be Mine" and the playful, upbeat "Konichiwa Bitches" are instant, immaculate pop gems, while "With Every Heartbeat"-which boasts a Royksopp-esque melancholy, sidereal bleeps and rousing strings-is much more dance than R & B. "Who's That Girl" (produced by The Knife) rides an infectious electroclash groove; "Crash and Burn Girl" is a cheerful take on disco; while "Bum Like Me" and "Should Have Known" (which owes a conspicuous debt to Prince) are shiny slower jams that warn against getting hurt by time-wasting men. With the exception of "Eclipse" and "Anytime You Like", Robyn is a delightfully upbeat album, cementing Robyn's reputation as a kick-ass pop diva with some seriously deadly Ninja moves. -Danny McKenna.