At Night We Live is the best and the most confident album of their two-part career. It is also, admittedly, more commercial-sounding, but there's no shame in that if it's done with integrity, dignity and passion.

Even during its less-memorable moments, this is an album that maintains its atmosphere, and Elson is an engaging narrator (although there's no trace of her Oldham roots to be heard).

Some might find all this misery, whether it's stripped back like Sweetness or as explosive as She's Building Castles in Her Heart , a little masochistic for their tastes. Those, however, who have followed Hinson's career since 2004's debut, The Gospel of Progress, will be relieved by a compelling return to Gothic American themes which repays their early conviction that he is a unique songwriter capable of converting lyrical gloom into musical glory.

Despite occasional flashes of brilliance it’s a patchy, derivative work.

Fans of the band, and those with a rustling liking for a certain kind of beard-here-now Americana, will devour this like a bottle of the Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler referenced on the last track.

Brimful of air guitar moments and other guilty pleasures, Brothers is pleasingly diverse and diverting, with barely a duff track.

it's disappointing that collaborative projects featuring prominent artists from these fields haven't yet delivered a worthwhile album. Marley's 2005 release Welcome to Jamrock was a step forwards, but Distant Relatives represents an accomplished attempt to go further, fusing traits with few discernable flaws.

Though Compass initially seems like the least interesting song on the album, that’s the beauty of the surprises in store.

Her enviable clarity of tone and the disarming beauty of her vocals lend Love and Its Opposite a dreamy, if uncomfortable, sort of truth. But blithe, sunny romantics are advised to keep a stiff drink (and a hanky) within very easy reach.

There's little crowd-pleasing electro or fashionable dubstep on Higher Than the Eiffel, but Audio Bullys have made a welcome, well-produced and lively returning album that delivers the goods far more often than even fans could have expected.

The result is a dizzying fusion, marked by its lofty ambition and stunning central performance.

The Foundling isn't a lot of fun, but it tells a very sad story with bleak eloquence.

Claudia's timbres, eerie and winsome in equal measure, prove its greatest strong point. The combination of clarinet, accordion and vibraphone fashions an electric whistle and whir that squares the circle between 90s indie science frictioners Stereolab and 60s proto-proggers Soft Machine, making it clear that Claudia is a jazz group questioning the divide between genres and points in time.

Sea of Cowards works hard to dispel those not-unjustified notions of The Dead Weather being Jack White’s third-best band. What’s even stranger is that they appear to have succeeded, in spite of the fact 80% of the record proceeds from a fairly lumpen blues template which at first glance would seem to suggest a continued dearth of inspiration.

Its charms are subtle, its grip soft and easily shrugged by those who choose to pay it only passing attention. Live with it a while, though, and High Violet rewards patience with songs that colour one's waking existence, becoming vivid night-time narratives when curtains are drawn.

As a transitional release, however, Night Train points to an even bigger and brighter future: it mostly sounds like a band happy to enjoy the freedom of chalking up 10 million album sales, and everyone else can take a running jump.

Latin, the band's third album, is something of a side-step from its predecessors, Holy Fuck (2004) and LP (2007). It's less brawny and statelier, perhaps in part due to its producers Paul Epworth (Florence, The Rapture) and Dave Sardy (Black Mountain, LCD). But it might well be the closest the band has got to sounding as visceral and as rich on record as they do live.

This is electronic psychedelic-groove, flush with drama. Neither space rock nor alt-dance but flickering somewhere on the cusp of both, it should win back deserters while glamouring new converts.

Phosphorescent's contribution to the new-folk cannon is an impressive and rather lovely addition.

What saves Grey Oceans is the occasional good idea: the Eastern-tinged Smokey Taboo mixes tablas and wilting strings with Bianca's woozy, half-rapped vocal to impressive effect, while the very peculiar Fairy Paradise is, more or less, Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy as remixed by Paul van Dyk.

Their debut album will probably not be a Shins-esque licence to print money for the label, but it's a minor triumph as a grab-bag of punky jams.

This is lush, involving music that takes stated influences and sculpts them into something genuinely there.

The contrasts are ecstatic, setting in stone just how remarkable a comeback New Young Pony Club have pulled off. The Optimist is a super-smart pop album at the top of its game.

Heaven is Whenever is good for the exact reasons Hold Steady records always tend to be good. Such dogged consistency suggests it's doubtful Finn and company will ever come out with a startling masterpiece that frees them from Springsteen's shadow, but it also implies they're extremely unlikely to make a bad record.

This latest record also goes some way to proving that, while he may be an old dog with a pickled onion for a head, Mark E. Smith and The Fall are still capable of learning the odd new trick.

Though clearly as replete with imagination as they are with personnel, Broken Social Scene would benefit from the attentions of a less indulgent producer.

Because in constantly mutating just when you begin to pin it down, drawing everything around in before rearranging atoms before your very eyes, Cosmogramma proves itself time and time again as mind-meltingly boundless as a black hole.

Like much of Together, it aims for The Beatles, hits ELO, and sounds like the people responsible mightn't have thought that was a bad thing.