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Review: On its 20th anniversary comes a reissue of No Doubt's 1992-2003 singles collection, which brings together the very best of the ska and pop rockers' contributions to music at large over their first decade of stardom. Known as the alt-rock group fronted by Gwen Stefani, No Doubt were a formative act for the spreading of a distinctly American, pop-oriented form of ska punk. With Gwen's brother Eric on keys, and with bassist Tony Kanal and drummer Adrian Young also in tow, No Doubt's career was a slow-burning exponential curve skywards, which saw a successful takeoff despite some early flops. A huge team backed their recordings; notable on this compilation is two production features by Sly & Robbie, 'Underneath It All' and 'Hey Baby'.

Review: Iconic punk outfit Siouxsie and the Banshees were already a big deal by the time 1981 came around. That's likely the reason they decided to put out this compilation album featuring all their UK single releases up to that point. Several of them had not been on any album by then despite them clocking up four long players already. Amazingly, 'Once Upon a Time/The Singles' spent a total of twenty-six weeks in the UK albums chart and is still to this day a cohesive overview of their early sound and subtle evolution.

Review: Since the glorious synth pop years of Japan, David Sylvian has journeyed into many other realms as a musician. The experimental nature of his formative band set the tone for a career of genuine intrigue, demonstrated wonderfully on this compelling album from 2009, reissued as a double vinyl release to foil some astronomical second hand prices. Manafon centres around pieces of free improvisation, experimental rock and chamber music, with Sylvian's eloquent voice guiding your ear through all manner of fascinating soundscapes and story scenes. With contributors including Christian Fennesz, Evan Parker, Keith Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura, this is a widely hailed piece of leftfield art that ranks as one of the brightest jewels in Sylvian's glittering career.

Review: It has been said before that Polly Jean Harvey's 1998 album, Is This Desire, marked a watershed moment in her career. A veritable coming of age record that failed to match the commercial heights of To Bring You My Love, but was actually a far more complete and personal thing. Less angry than preceding efforts, it painted a more balanced and accurate portrait of an artist whose formative years were pockmarked with media analysis and criticism of her visible powerful attributes - sexuality and fury.

Coupled with the fact that Harvey has never been one to pander to scenes in the hope of top ten chart success, and you can only imagine how happy she was with the finished product. And all this is before we start banging on about the musicality, from title track's subtle, hushed baritone blues to the garage rock-out of 'A Perfect Day Elise'.

Review: If you're not a Blink 182 fan the fact the American pop punk rockers put out a Greatest Hits album in 2005 might be quite surprising considering they only rose to international chart repute at the turn of the century. Delve into their story, though, and you realise by the time they put out this compilation - coinciding with their split and, in the label Geffen's words, "indefinite hiatus" - they'd actually already been going for more than a decade.

Nevertheless, it's impossible not to acknowledge that it was the landmark albums Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, respectively landing in 1999 and 2001, that saw them really break into the mainstream conscious. As such, excerpts from that era, for example 'All The Small Things' and 'What's My Age Again?' represent the biggest hitters here, however it's hard to ignore just how infectious every upbeat, angst-laden track is.

Review: Polly Jean Harvey broke into the common conscious with her unique and individual approach to alternative rock, and she's managed to maintain that aural autonomy throughout a storied career that has simultaneously found favour in the musical mainstream and refused to stray far from the leftfield. A difficult balance to strike, this, her eighth solo studio album, is indicative of that point. There's nothing here not to enjoy, but there's very little here you could predict.

Not least given where it sits in her back catalogue. Production began as the seminal but decidedly hushed White Chalk was released, and this record couldn't be more different from the preceding LP. Doing away with introspect, for the most part anyway, and refocusing attention away from pianos, it's a rousing indie collection that further cements the artist as one of Britain's national treasures.

Review: 30 years on, the power of Nevermind has never dulled. Of course it's the most commercially appealing of Nirvana's albums, but it's no less daring for it no matter how many times you've heard it. Well, how to toast an album as world-changing as this one? By going all out on the lavish vinyl edition of course, which in this case means a mammoth eight-disc 180gm vinyl edition with a 40-page hardback book. If you want an altar at which to worship one of the definitive moments in popular music, this authoritative release is surely all the plinth you need.

Review: First released in 1998, the last album from the sadly missed Mark Hollis was originally set to be a Talk Talk album, scheduled to follow up 1991's "Laughing Stock". Described by engineer Phil Brown as "open, restful and at times fantastically beautiful", Hollis' only solo effort is quite the opposite of the dark and claustrophobic direction of Talk Talk's final album. Entirely self-produced, the record takes Talk Talk's pared back, emotive intimacy further into yet more minimal, private territory, of sometimes almost unbearable intensity. A complex, compelling last dispatch from an indisputable genius.

Review: Some of the biggest and brightest stars of alternative pop music repulsed together here on this comprehensive and bumper collection from UMC. It is a storytelling selection that takes in a wide array of contemporary heavyweights from across the world. There everything from emo-pop to indie dance, alt-rock to all-out pop via soft rock, indie and more from names like Lorde, Lana Del Rey, and Florence & The Machine sat alongside the likes of R.E.M., Panic! At The Disco, U2 and Queens Of The Stone Age.

Review: Over the last 12 months, Polly Jean Harvey has delivered remastered versions of many of her most acclaimed albums, while also releasing collections of demo recordings for each set. The latest to get this treatment is her critically acclaimed set Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. Famously, most of the songs focus on love and relationships and were written while Harvey was living in New York City at the tail end of the '90s. As with her other collections of demos, most of the early versions showcased here feature little more than Harvey on guitar and lone or multi-tracked vocals. This raw and stripped-back approach gives new life to some songs, with highlights including the heart-aching 'The Mess We're In' and fuzz-soaked 'This Is Love'.

Review: You can never really understate the impact Polly Jean Harvey had when she landed on the UK music scene, and the radars of tastemakers like John Peel, in the early-1990s. Guitar tracks at the time were usually split into unashamedly lager-soaked upfront Britpop, or nihilistic and self-sabotaging grunge and metal from the US. PJ Harvey was neither, and on 'To Bring You My Love' she perfected a particularly UK take on heavy, darkroom rock.

Pressing play means stepping into a world where the blues can either be a sparse, pitch black tome ('To Bring You My Love') or stomping and sweat-soaked juggernaut ('Meet Ze Monsta'), and that's just referencing the first two songs. Compare either to the trip-hop infused downtempo melancholia of 'The Dancer', and it's pretty clear why this was one of the albums of its decade.

Review: Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale, Doug Yule, Maureen Tucker and - a little later - Nico broke the mould with their efforts as The Velvet Underground. The Andy Warhol-managed and produced cult rock icons helped lay the foundations for New Wave and punk about a decade before either sound really started to make inroads in any circles, let alone commercial ones. And, listening back to any of their records now, the music itself isn't just a significant bookmark theoretically: it all still sounds incredible today.

Todd Haynes' highly recommendable documentary charts at least some of that story in a commendable way, more so when you consider it arrived around 50 years after the original lineup disbanded. Using interviews with surviving members Cale and Tucker, alongside archive footage, music and other material, it paints a vivid portrait of an equally vivid band. With tracks by them in question, Bo Diddley, The Primitives and The Diablos, this OST helps colour that picture, and era, properly.

Review: It's hard to underestimate the impact of Nirvana's second studio album, Nevermind, when it first hit stores 30 years ago. A more polished - but still beautifully scuzzy - set than its predecessor, the album turned the Seattle band into worldwide stars and made grunge indie-rock's most talked about sub-genre. This 30th anniversary edition presents the original album in freshly remastered form. As a result, classics such as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', 'Come as You Are' and 'Drain You' sound fresher and heavier than ever. This time round, there's also a second bonus disc made up of live recordings of Nirvana in action in Tokyo, Melbourne, Amsterdam and California during 1991 and '92.

Review: 30th Anniversary Edition of the Cure's best-selling, Grammy-nominated album 'WISH.' This deluxe 45 track edition - compiled by Robert Smith - features 24 previously unreleased tracks & 4 new to CD tracks across three discs. And that's not to mention their four tracks that appeared exclusively on the mail-order cassette 'Lost Wishes', released in 1993, which have never appeared on CD or digitally, the previously unreleased song 'A Wendy Band', a previously unheard mix of the epic fan favourite 'From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea', five rare 12" mixes, and an unheard live version of 'End' from Paris Bercy in October 1992.

Review: The Cure have a lot of iconic moments from throughout their career, starting with the angular goth rock of their early years right through to their long-standing position as headline treasures of British alternative music. Originally released in 1992, Wish marked their move towards a poppier sound, and 30 years on it still ranks as their most successful album to date. This reissue gives Wish the pomp and ceremony it deserves, letting perennial classics like 'Friday I'm In Love' shine anew for lifelong fans and newcomers alike.

Review: The Courteeners mark a decade and a half since their landmark debut album St Jude with this new reissue across several different formats. As well as including all the original tracks from the album as it was back then, this version also has a brand new single 'It'll Take More Than A Weekend Away To Fix This Mess'. The tune was actually written at the same time as the album and was recently recorded in Manchester. The album hit number four in the album charts back in 2008 and contained three Top 40 singles, 'Not Nineteen Forever,' 'What Took You So Long?' and 'No You Didn't, No You Don't.'

Review: St. Jude is known as the Christian patron saint of lost causes, which is ironic, because The Courteeners' musical career over the years has been anything but. This reissue celebrates the 15th Anniversary of the Mancunian band's debut album, and features an exclusive crock of more recent recordings made in L.A. Festival-ready indie pop is clearly set to make a comeback.

Review: We've been treated to reissues of everything else from PJ Harvey's spectacular catalogue, so it's only right we get a chance to savour the deeper cuts that shape out the persona of the high priestess of alternative rock. Gathering together an exhaustive 59 B sides, demos and previously unreleased tracks, this six-LP box set takes us into the heart of Polly Jean's writing process, showing the raw power in the songwriting when it's just her voice and an overdriven guitar, and showing us the broader possibilities of songs which didn't make the cut for the studio albums. This is a true treasure of music getting the authoritative release she deserves.