On the evidence of this impressive debut album, [Howard] is a gifted and immediately involving singer-songwriter.

A batty, compelling, smart and unusual soundtrack.

There's a distinct valedictory tone to his customary musings upon life, love and the spirit, with one track titled "Amen" and another "The Darkness". But if it is to be his last communiqué, at least the old smoothie's going down swinging.

Be Strong, in short, is superb: a joyous amalgam of disco textures and dancefloor stylings which never fail to bring a big grin to your face.

The component parts of this record prove that indie rock may be 'dying' commercially but still sounds alive and kicking.

The full band which appears on The Lion's Roar enjoys the rare achievement of being saccharine-free, and serves to highlight the sisters' brilliant captured-on-tape chemistry.

In producing a focussed follow-up that completely transcends its litigious backstory, Chairlift have summoned a watertight case for the defence with Something.

This is an impressive debut and a solid step toward a more realised identity.

Ross and Reznor receive A grades for effort, and commendations for their execution of this most-malevolent of soundtracks; but Dragon Tattoo is such an exhausting listen that one might well switch to the music from Arthur Christmas before the fine, Ferry-penned finale comes into view.

Everything adds up to an unexpected and intriguing album.

He's delivered a sincerely meant yet curiously staid and pedestrian tribute.

The group's melding together of dance music, metal riffs, punk energy and vocals that sound English rather than Californian make A Flash Flood of Colour not only a compelling effort, but an appropriately named one to boot.

Repeated listens to Let's Go Eat the Factory reveal a paucity of the pithy lyric and classic riff on which he's [Pollard] built a deserved reputation.

An album of thoroughly contagious, albeit fairly derivative, Strokes-flavoured gutter-rock.

Ester is a collection best suited to after-hours reflection, a glass of red in hand and the TV playing only static.

This gem of a long-player – both sleepy and steely, mystical yet rooted in very real and universal themes – deserves all the plaudits that will hopefully meet its release.

It's spirited enough, neatly sequenced, but perhaps lacks the ingenuity to rework its influences into something that feels new.

Clear Heart Full Eyes [is] a work of understated beauty.

It's the performances and songwriting, however, which invite most acclaim.

Glimmer operates in a more reflective register [than Jacaszek's previous album, Pentral], albeit one that's finally no less draining than assaultive noise.

[The closing track is] evidence of a big pink heart and of these musicians' ability to transcend their beats-based mindset. In other words, time for the boys to really future this.

There's plenty of care taken with these covers, the players evidently keen to not tarnish their own memories of the songs in question.

This feels like an album by, for and about himself.

If only all bands had the guts and honesty of The Maccabees, maybe they'd get round to making third records as good as this.

Glowing Mouth is a polished, well-arranged album that could find a happy home in countless collections.

Watson's ability to create whole worlds, entire lifetimes in the listener's imagination, beyond the moment of recording, comes to the fore.

An indispensable guide to an iconic band.

Jarrett has separated the ingredients into bite-sized chunks. With an audience as ecstatic as the one at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, where his new album was cut in April 2011, this works to the advantage of both. Jarrett builds a rapport with his public, and they can more easily adapt to the changes of mood and genre as his ideas develop.

He merges his raw lyrical roots with No I.D.'s voluminous soundtrack, resulting in a decent album far more celebratory than his previous work.

Ecstatics proves to be only half the album it thought itself capable of being.

936 is a delight, a ray of welcomed sunshine as the wintry outside fades into shades of grey.

He does the classics to an accomplished standard – some perfunctory and forgettable, some bubbling deliciously – and everything is professionally packaged.

By the end of these 17 tracks the head is heavy with images of the Smash robots battle-rapping against a crew from whatever planet The Clangers call home.

There are better tapes, better performances--but the strength of this collection is proving that in whatever company, be it President or criminal, Johnny Cash couldn't help but be himself.

It layers on the schmaltz but stops short of choking the listener with sentimentality by revealing a wickedly singular wit and some snappy expectations-eschewing cuts.

This is the sound of the Noughties – electro enough without being harsh, interesting without being over-cool, quirky without being weird. Empire Of The Sun have cracked the perfect blend of fond reflection and sexy new frontier frisson. If this is what the future sounds like, then it's going to be beautiful.

Rocky's managed to keep it trill so far, but now comes the hard bit.

It's a bewitching album that gives pause for thought throughout.

This is primarily a celebratory set of greatest hits to appeal to casual and obsessive fans alike.

There's nothing bad to be said for Soul 2, and with Horn on production everything shines brightly like the first snowflakes of a new winter.

Louisville/Seattle trio has delivered an album that every fan of extreme music should own. Bravo.

This is an ambitious work, and all of its aims have surely been fulfilled.

It's a set that does reward investigation, perhaps not with lasting love but certainly first-few-plays impressions which will last into the New Year.

Finally Famous is sporadically fun but adds nothing to the ongoing evolution of hip hop, in the mainstream down.

A wonderful grab-bag of anomalous sounds that pilfers magpie-like from genre after genre as it charts its 41-minute course.

In Case You Didn't Know doesn't surprise, but it certainly fulfils.

It's a pleasant, head-nodding mood record which deftly pieces together a wash of sound; but the best moments are when there's a defining thread to follow.

In other words, it's a perfect match.

Although Glover plays the part of rapper exceptionally, he needs to do a little more to stop "n****s asking whether this dude's for real or not".

That warmth you're feeling come its close, try to hold onto it. It's a contentment few albums leave you with.

Biasonic Hot Sauce is a mesmerising album.

Who would have thought the musical accompaniment to a film about a series of Idahoan murders could be so beautiful?

It's just that there's a bit of an identity void at the heart of the thing, a lack of personality.

Leaves listeners sadly wondering where a less-troubled Amy might have been able to take her incredible talent.

It's frequently fantastic, weighty, clever and emotionally involving, but strangely polite, and lacking in a sense of overall purpose and direction.

It's a raw and white-knuckled collection, one which captures the phenomenal emotions of the man's solo live sets.

To listen to the pioneering Tago Mago in 2011 is to hear the blueprint for much of the leftfield music of the past 40 years, and this reissue will hopefully inspire further invention for decades to come.

The result is a remarkable display of creative unity and a stellar masterpiece sitting alongside the group's best work.

But when he's in his element – ruling over frenetic beats with rhymes that cut right to the bone – it's clear that Yelawolf's star is sure to shine for the foreseeable.

They get full marks for effort but, unfortunately, not for the end results.

As an album, a glorious rawness and disregard for verse-chorus-verse simplicity runs throughout, but it strains for cohesion.

Quadrophenia is one of the few albums of its time that sounds as good today as it must have done then. For once, the term 'masterpiece' is not sold on the cheap.

A nebulous set of hyper-stoned musings on bass tethered together in the hard drive of one man's mind.

It's hard not to declare the record an admittedly limited success.

Ultimately, this extremely curious album requires several airings to achieve an improved view, and a confirmation of its secretive charms.

On El Camino, mariachi, C&W, gospel, psych rock, blues and soul all mash together into a warm and occasionally dazzling torrent; their appeal is less in fresh sounds as fresh composites of old ones, wrapped around classically dusty tales of errant womenfolk and addiction to love.

While the EP is not a complete overhaul of the band's sound – Falkous' semi-comprehensible mini-stories are alternately spoken and yelled, with frequent backing vocals; the bouncy New Adventures could have slotted comfortably onto either of their first two albums – there's an evident effort by FOTL here to avoid simply returning to what they know.

Captured here, however, the band is still full of the future, and as fascinating and beguiling as such things always are.

Admire the riches this national treasure has bestowed upon us.

It all adds up to a sassy, splashy modern pop album that rattles through its 10 tracks in a dash under 35 minutes.

This two-CD set is now a welcome addition to what eventually became Reid's late-period re-emergence following decades of hip multi-genre collaborations amid a veil of semi-obscurity.

Truly impressive, The Dø gracefully pull off the kind of intriguing "oddness" the likes of Florence Welch strain and wheeze for, and with better tunes.

A record that's easily as good as any punk release you'll hear in 2011.

Taken as a whole, this release offers enough revelations to suggest the original album is worth revisiting.

Though the additions don't enhance the original album's legend, nor do they diminish it any more than the fact that the band sagged once again into artistic complacency after its release.

Inevitably, this turns Here I Am into a bit of a grab-bag in its latter stages, but it's a grab-bag that only Tulisa Contostavlos could claim not to find some pleasure in.

Ryder-Jones has not only pulled off the unusual feat of writing a soundtrack for a complex and experimental novel, complementing the book's allure handsomely. He's also, with its sentiment and inventiveness, made it worthy of repeated plays.

Keepers of country's tragi-comic flame will clasp Lindi firmly to their bosoms.

There's a real intelligence about the whole album that looks to old-school hip hop and late-model disco, which were never too far apart, to provide a platform springy enough and familiar enough for the singer to launch her vocals.

Familiar tropes surface in the lyrical content (sexy times being the core focus), and musically it's a smorgasbord of European dance trends and contemporary RnB production, showy but soulless.

This is a perfect, 30-minute, 10-song album that demands to be treated as one long symphonic pop masterpiece.

Thanks to her breezy bohemian charms, even its knottier moments start to unravel with repeated listens.

By bypassing the commonplace put-downs of peers and proffering a very British take on pop-flavoured rap, is an accomplished and infectious introduction to some rightly rising talents.

It is one which doesn't so much shine, but glimmer with subtle brilliance all the way through.

For metalheads who like their music sharp and executed without recourse to compromise, then this is a contender for genre album of the year.

The surprise excellence of the songs and the music makes this the long-overdue fourth great Magazine album.

It meets expectations, and while surpassing them is something achieved only occasionally, this is a record that well complements a no-work state of mind.

The problem with The Fall in 2011 is straightforward, really. The band isn't very good. Or, to put it another way, they are very slick and versatile rock musicians, but they have absolutely no sound of their own.

Every Step's a Yes is a worthy partner to [Best Coast, Beach House and Wild Nothing's] records.

A depressingly compromised second LP from an artist yet to meet his early promise.

The production might be slick, but James relaxes into this framework, providing the necessary lived-in looseness.

It's actually on the brighter, bolder, faster numbers that Take Care comes alive.

As step forwards (via looking backwards) go, it's brave and for the most part it works.

The album only really reaches the heights Bush has set for herself when she appears centre stage.

Whatever the inspiration, everything adds up to 29 minutes that pack in more truth and melodies than many records twice as long. Terrific stuff from a songwriter of any age.

While it won't please those expecting a selection of aggressive dubstep workouts, Severant is a stunning debut that gives up more secrets with every listen.

The exceptional musicianship and impeccable vocals may not be to everyone's taste, but for 40 very happy minutes, you can revel in SJDK's very discrete world.

Get these cuts [I'll Never Let Go and Called Out In The Dark] out of the way, though, and Fallen Empires settles down and improves.