CD: Calvin Harris - 18 Months

Pop is a silly business in so many ways, but even so I don't think I ever imagined that when the year 2012 came, the globe's charts would be dominated by a dopey-looking middle-aged Frenchman and a lanky grouch from Dundee. But here we are, with a billion radios blasting a new, ramped up, amped up, obliteratingly popular kind of dance-pop, with David Guetta and Calvin Harris the new overlords, each with megastars on speed-dial.

Where Guetta is the bland enthusiast, never less than 100 percent on-brand, Harris is a cantankerous sod and perpetual square peg, and that's maybe reflected in his music being that crucial bit more interesting. OK, the melody lines are almost comically simple, their one-finger blips lumbering up and down the major scales, and the rhythms rinsed with industrial bleach to remove any last traces of syncopation – but the compression of the sound, while fierce, is vastly subtler than Guetta's all-loud-all-the-time migraine house, and best of all, each song has a character of its own.

“Bounce” with Kelis [3] and the mighty “We Found Love” with Rihanna [4], both here, are a case in point, the ping-pong melodies somehow addictive, the production full of tweaks and twists that subverts its own blaring, mall-noise aesthetic. There's plenty more that's great: a lumbering “China” with Dizzee Rascal, the sugary fizz and clanging pianos of “I Need Your Love” with Ellie Goulding [5], the joyfully moronic indie guitar riff of “Feel so Close”, even “Sweet Nothing” with the normally ghastly Florence Welch [6]. There's a lot that total guff too, of course, not least the screeching generic trance blurt of “Drinking from the Bottle” with Tinie Tempah [7]. But unlike Guetta, the sonic variety is enough to make skipping the odd track seem worthwhile – this narky and bloody-minded Scot has, once again, done pretty good.