The type of punch Metronomy now pack is differently varied, and instead of relying on catchy melodies, its excitement and originality is now more broadly sourced.

Now we're meeting a new side of the veteran guitar god – a gentle, delicate and altogether more acoustic Mascis.

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

Uncomplicated, subtle but memorable songwriting that might well have been played and recorded in a bedroom studio on Holloway Road.

Everything is meticulous, not a note out of place--but this studied delivery is successfully supplemented with resounding soul, proving infectious indeed.

It might not encourage repeat plays, but to dismiss it as a racket is to do it, and its maker, a huge disservice.

It assures us all that Meshuggah can still bury their copyists while leading the way when it comes to intelligent, thoughtful and undeniably brutal heavy metal.

Sure, it's a little disjointed, a little indulgent, but when Boxcutter's best beats connect with welcoming synapses, the effect is like mainlining fizzy pop on a summer's day: brilliant, bright, jumpy and jovial.

How Do You Do is another solid step in the right direction for Hawthorne, who shows that soul music is universal and devoid of colour, as we all can relate to difficulties and heartbreak.

This band's gradual edging over the precipice of mainstream acceptance has been richly deserved; now, everyone should hear this dragon roar.

Guitarist Stuart Braithwaite has certainly outstripped the generic post-rock style he helped to inspire, and does justice to some of his more direct influences--My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields and Robert Smith from The Cure, to name two. Extraneous touches, such as the occasional keyboard parts contributed by Barry Burns and the electronica-style glitches threaded through 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong, also ensure that Special Moves is a varied 75 minutes.

It is dreamy and languid, warm and inviting in turn; a soulful work by a talented young singer-songwriter that hints at a bright and beautiful future.

A zingy fusion of disparate styles.

The Sea, produced as per the debut by Steve Brown and Steve Chrisanthou, is no self-indulgent lack of tunes-fest. Even at its bleakest--"Closer," say, or "Love's on Its Way," where there is "blood on the streets"--the music and melodies draw you in, and even when they follow their own lushly orchestrated circuitous path, they seem to dare you to drift away.

The accompanying music is folk-pop with just enough quirky edginess to keep it sounding fresh.

It's another Hukkelberg album to treasure.

Free of the orchestral addendums of other live tours, and unshackled from the studio finesse, the band ignites on several occasions, when they grasp the epic strands of their DNA.

Still, it’s a largely terrific return that retains all of the weirdness and edge of their debut but allows the tunes to win through at the expense of unnecessary glitch and red-raw distortion.

Only behind such a distracting smokescreen could Damon Albarn get away with conducting a project as sprawling, daring, innovative, surprising, muddled and magnificent as Plastic Beach: not just one of the best records of 2010, but a release to stand alongside the greatest Albarn’s ever been involved with and a new benchmark for collaborative music as a whole.

Kelis's honey-husky voice slips easily into the hypnotic repetitions of dance music vocalisation; she uses the classic language of love songs and the soaring declarations of generalized euphoria particular to house music.

While his customary playfulness in dissecting matters of the heart and cerebellum is a reassuring hallmark of Love From London, the album also proffers a brooding, politicised, sometimes incensed Hitchcock.

As musicians, Wolf People gel together like a charm, and have a distinct advantage over a great many modern hard rockers by having a drummer, one Tom Watt, who beats away with a swinging funkiness, like the finest hairballs of 40 years gone.

Tracks like I Still Got It reaffirms that this dude, even at 61, is "cool and dangerous" – and back, back, back.

The outcome is impressive, and throughout he remains true to himself and his esoteric style.

Although not unanimously blinding, Dream Attic is replete with the kind of deft flourishes and considered wordplay that fans of the singer will be more than familiar with. Chalk up another triumph, then.

They have delivered another album which is at least 70% corking. It's just that they're much better when on stage, playing these tracks while scaring the life out of you.

An engaging diversion down a road which might be worth investigating further.

It's a shame the band don't stretch out a little more on some of the songs. Even so, if Cotonou Club isn't quite what it might have been, fans should bear in mind that the reformed Orchestra Baobab didn't really hit their stride until their second "comeback" recording.

Unique: rarely meant, but here the only possible description for the sounds these four remarkable players emit.

One of 'dance'-in-2012's very best albums.

This third studio album struts in on a crest of rollicking beats and wearing the kind of snarl that even in this new century is likely to delight fans of balls-out, raucous rock‘n’roll.

Recorded in a week in Reykjavik, this is music inevitably imbued with Iceland's stark grandeur and glacial eeriness; even if Wallentin's strident but wounded vocals retain a distinctive bluesy quality (albeit a blues closer to the funereal ceremonials of Diamanda Galas than Muddy Waters).

The strongest tracks here stand tall, ensuring Monch remains a powerful rap force.

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.

It's the most uniquely sublime, meticulous and heroic 40 minutes of 2011.

Malo is busy carving out the new genre of sincere south-of-the-border melodrama. It's all delivered within a classic 40 minute album length. The perfect pop punch.

Palermo Snow is a confident collection that delights in bringing together a still-formidable technique to exercise and enjoy itself in the company of a good tune.

Out of the Game is very much a master class in restraint. Rather than straining for the big choruses, here Wainwright intones over smooth backings, horns and the gospel harmonies of Brooklyn soul-stirrers The Dap-Kings.

These are personal tales told using a well-established and communal language, and coated with close harmonies as delicious as a homemade carrot cake from a craft stall.

Taken together, Frisell's run of Nonesuch albums has been one of the most consistently excellent bodies of work in recent decades. Now, Beautiful Dreamers extends it further. The future looks bright for this trio.

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

Nine songs and 47 minutes long, their album debut feels like wandering through desert plains and darkened streets, tumbleweed at your feet and in your brain.

Predictably but not to its detriment, Signed and Sealed in Blood delivers a mix of rousing rock songs and enough jigs and whistles to get a singsong going at one of their famous St Patrick's Day shows.

It's just one eye-opening surge of splendour, like the first gasp of a newborn baby taking in the world for the very first time. The difference with this album: that sense of wonder never fades.

Boy-girl group pop-rock that's polished and pleasing.

Even though the initial delight wears off relatively quickly, this is still a weird and largely wonderful insight into a band equally capable of frustration as they are innovation.

The album's long-term problem is will it have any meaning or relevance once the election is done and dusted? Well no, probably not in thematic terms; but the scathing humour of Going to Tampa is timeless and the thunderous Guantanamo, the sort of song Springsteen must wish he'd written, will remain a classic whoever's in the Oval Office.

Byrne and Clark have managed to not only meet but exceed expectations, and created one of the year's smartest albums in doing so.

The Cherry Thing is more than just a welcome return – it's an essential album.

It is, simply, a thing of beauty, its hook quotient the highest of The Decemberists' discography.

While the other songs, intelligent pieces of art that they are, may intrigue, it's disappointing that only one song here compels us to really feel anything.

Psychedelic, kaleidoscopic pop... heady and brilliant.

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.

Some of the straighter songs can seem a little underwhelming – for example, A Prelude to Pilgrim Street is a decidedly flat glam blowout. But such lacklustre moments are few.

This debut is all creepy, crawly kinds of fun, and we already want more.

So while Hardcore... is a shift of speed, downwards, it's only a gear change rather than a signal that the whole journey's coming to an end.

So Les Revenants has, by virtue of finding perfect inspiration, become one of the more satisfyingly coherent and rangy of Mogwai's records.

For all the minor detours, Through Low Light and Trees is consistent in proffering a dreamy, timeless music which could have been recorded at any time in the last 40-odd years. That in itself is a kind of recommendation.

A little bit of cheese is a small price to pay for an album this likeable, accomplished and charmingly unfussed about being cool.

The state of the art recording ensures that this is another unmissable feast of song from an artist seemingly unstoppable in her continuing quest to present something new to her worldwide audience.

You'll wish you'd been there. You'll wish it would never end.

It is both a captivating listen and a terrifying one: Powers was 22 this year, but his voice carries all the experience of a man thrice his age.

Despite the echoes of their past on this second long-play set, Digitalism's perfectly timed return is more about fondness than contempt.

The result is a bolder, brighter record than their debut.

A worth-the-wait second LP a decade after the New Yorkers' celebrated debut.

This is music with a pure heart, a clean conscience and the snap of a steel-spring trap.

Like Arnalds and Johannsson, Richter is capable of eliciting profound emotions from the barest of foundations, and it's perhaps this that makes their music of such interest to alternative music fans.

With some judicious – let's have it then – tailoring, this is a sparky and affecting record, moving Swift on at a stately and assured pace.

Their 11th studio album is 40 minutes of gorgeous nothings, full of intricate curlicues of sparkling Colin Newman guitar and synth given beef by the surging rhythms of Robert Grey aka Gotobed and Graham Lewis

The Bride Screamed Murder, you see, all works when it really shouldn't, demonstrating once again just how the Melvins can somehow ensure their own very special brand of weird never quite becomes the norm.

It is the kind of record that might drift by unassumingly lest you lend it a careful ear, but really: the second you do, it rewards unequivocally.

Beam's songwriting retains a cryptic quality, but the feeling shines through, and however far Iron & Wine travels from its starting point, it still won't feel far from home.

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 a connoisseur's collection, steering clear of hits that have since veered into kitsch (like Release Me or I Can't Stop Loving You) to favour a handful of classics, some less-known treasures, and the title song--a charmer of Cantrell's own that sits snugly among the marvellous covers.

The whole thing's really rather magnificent.

The men are going to love it. But the women will still love Richard Hawley, too.

She's a quick-witted lyricist with a sharp eye.

Moving into darker, deeper spaces, it whets the appetite for further occasions when McAuley will fight the urge to rein it in for the dancefloor.

By calling their album Rough Carpenters, the Pickers are inevitably alluding to their creations as constructs of old timber, offered up with spontaneity and passion rather than precision. But it’s also a misleading moniker, for what is unquestionably the group’s smoothest ride yet.

Throughout this is an album of sufficient character, quality, daring and charm to ensure that its creator's unlikely march to the mainstream continues without interruption.

FFAF have produced another pop-punk special with Welcome Home Armageddon--and, thankfully, they don't look like stopping any time soon.

Thirty-odd years after singing about ripping it up, then, Collins is calling on the past to help him through. It’s working brilliantly.

It'd be easy to breeze through Give Up the Ghost on first listen and take away nothing but the beauty of it all. Yet it sucks you in, and with every listen a new line flickers into the fray.

What It Means to Be Left-Handed contains more ideas than most guitar bands muster in their entire careers and will certainly consolidate Pierce's core cult audience.

Unicorn is that rarest of things: a record imbued with genuine talent and emotion which wipes the floor with the majority of its makers’ contemporaries, while calling to mind the classic vocals of Karen Carpenter and the pioneering spirit of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Quite startling.

Yes, the videos still display awkward, cringe-worthy naivety that could inspire the next The Inbetweeners movie, but this music is a mature mix of jaunty and jaundiced.

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

If you can be persuaded to root around for long enough you might occasionally bump into the odd moment that made Thee Oh Sees' brilliant Help album of 2009, or 2010's lopsided Warm Slime, so enjoyable – slapdash songwriting, slovenly hooks and prurient flights of fancy.

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

Some pruning could have tightened all this up, especially as the band's songs speak volumes for themselves. Nevertheless, The Big Roar is a powerful signal of intent and a fantastic debut.

While Duppy Writer is sufficiently bubbling to temporarily sate cravings, there's still scarcely enough nourishment until a new album proper.

His improved state of mind, and the superior production on some of the tracks, does bring the music on occasion perilously close to the RnB blandness to which this is presumably supposed to provide an alternative.

The set is a masterclass in how to respectfully update and enhance classic music, and proves how vital and relevant 30-year-old music remains today.

In fashioning it so lovingly and with such care, Bowerbirds have come up with their best to date.

Hookworms could become something genuinely astonishing in a few albums’ time, and Pearl Mystic is a fine foundation indeed.

The biggest criticism that can be labelled at White Crosses is that its best two songs are its first two â?? a politely rousing title-track that sheds its skin at the first chorus, followed by lead-off single I Was a Teenage Anarchist. The latter handily epitomises everything that people liked about Against Me! in the first place â?? a brightly intelligent polemic, only this time itâ??s trained on the close-minded futility of scenester punks.

Clearly, the reduction in volume and scale has lead to fantastic musical growth--a fine, accomplished and emotional album that ranks among his very best.