At its best, album four matches the duo's darkly seductive early material.

It's a beautiful end to a touching, tragic album.

Harcourt is a singer of uncommon charm, and Lustre is a welcome reminder that when he's on top of his game--which he is for roughly half the record--you'll want for little else.

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 is all grandeur without any grace.

Transit Transit is full of the sort of implausible leaps of imagination that normally only happen in your sleep.

Maybe it shouldn't be altogether surprising that Knoxville is brimming over with bravura displays of improvisational nous. Similarly, it would be hard to find a finer study of the suppression of the ego; each musician's signature sound serving to continually complement, but never saturate, the artistry of the others.

Berberian Sound Studio and Broadcast are a perfect match, and this soundtrack--something you may not want to listen to alone if you keep hearing a weird noise outside the window--gives you an idea of how magnificent this band can be.

But heavy as the rhythms are, Mala's deftness of touch means the Cuban contributions are never entirely overwhelmed, and when he pulls more elements into the mix the results are often stunning.

It works to the strengths of each, allowing Negro and Barwick their own spaces to shine while sculpting an overall, engrossing ambience around the pair.

One of the most deeply satisfying debut albums of recent times.

This might not be the most forward-thinking LP you'll hear this year. But the emotion and honesty on display are qualities that will never go out of style.

Ash Workman and James Ford keep the production consistently intriguing, and repeated listens reveal fresh nuances and ideas. This is new music worth hearing.

Submit fully to Centipede Hz and it will infect you, quite deliciously, for the foreseeable.

Songs as bold, honest and passionate as these shouldn’t have any trouble fitting in.

The pace is slow, the mood is solemn verging on the sepulchral.

True Loves delivers on the fantastic promise of its title-track, comprising a commendable listen for those demanding defined individuality from their chosen songsmiths.

So wonderfully compelling is it all that it's easy to miss how seriously impassioned Maus can be.

These guys have defied the odds to deliver a collection that's all gold and no albatross.

[I Bet On Sky] is arguably the equal of their 80s heyday.

Dirt City stands little hope of entertaining the masses (again). But its maker has outdone himself, presenting variety with commendable cohesion and experimenting where others might've chased trends for overdue commercial returns.

It's a pure, you're-only-as-old-as-you-feel joy to hear British hip hop's most original and inspiring voice hitting his peak as he approaches his 40th year.

As morose meditations on the miseries of fame go, it comes across like a rap version of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories or Deconstructing Harry.

Although Mind Bokeh can be expected to be a wilfully eclectic pick'n'mix affair, what he's actually going to pull out the bag can still surprise.

In The Music Scene, Blockhead has made both pretty melancholic tracks and straight-up thump-the-desk bangers bedfellows, and for that the new decade should be eternally thankful.

In lesser hands, such 'fusion' elements could have fallen flat, but Aurelio's obvious talent, and Duran's sterling musical arrangements, instead yield an impressive album that simply sounds better which each new listening.

Indeed, everything sounds so good from a purely musical perspective that the record perhaps doesn’t showcase its lyricists as well as it could.

As ever, whatever the material, Wilson's smooth but husky-toned vocals are highly distinctive, especially when combined with a delivery that savours every word while remaining loose and languid.

Write About Love is a cracking pop album and a fine addition to a great band's already impressive catalogue.

A mighty voice of formidably expressive multitudes, here given room to roam, and to roar.

Callahan has gifted us perhaps his most subversive set to date: an album less about apocalypse and ruin than it is upheaval of the positive variety, and one of the most contented and rewarding of his career.

Through its songs he conveys truths about this country in a way that few other English songwriters, if any, are able to do.

This is a typically odd, zany album, but that's precisely what makes it so good -- because Wolf Parade's twisted, crazy, surreal world becomes yours, and it feels both absolutely normal and absolutely right.

Mathambo leaps about on a hotplate of styles, rarely dwelling on a groove for long. Move with him, though, because it's worth the breakneck effort.

Her songwriting is not greatly altered: tunes most often travel at an energetic tempo, with melodies shining through the thickly applied reverb and helping the likes of Know Me to soar. The presentation, however, recalls the Cocteau Twins during the album's most abstract moments.

n the fourth decade of his career, Foxx has released an album which easily equals the high points of his rich back catalogue.

Scott's permanent air of wonder, and respectful, well-crafted arrangements, allow him to get away with even the most fanciful of tales.

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

It's perhaps too subtle and intricate for a marketplace accustomed to being bashed about the bonce by rave-fuelled RnB – but if your palate fancies some tuneful sweetness, Youth will melt in your mouth.

Their music is full of joy, of sensuousness and sensuality, of acid wit and ambitious creativity.

Sadier pulls this off 11 more times, crafting music that makes politics sound like the sexiest thing in the world.

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.

The British producer’s fifth full-length is a worthy successor to his celebrated 2010 set Black Sands.

A genuine great leap forward, Defamation is a cracker.

Despite these weaker moments of Is Your Love Big Enough?, it's La Havas' gorgeous voice and gifted string fingers that'll make the biggest impressions. This might not be a home run straight out of the gate, but it's an extremely promising first swing of the bat.

Despite the anthems being on a tight leash, repeated listens reveal this to be one of their best albums.

Rock like rock shouldn't be: a rock that your parents wouldn't just love, given a chance, but one that they'd ask you to play again, louder. It ain't right, obviously. But it rocks brilliantly.

The creepy, icy elements of Black Heart's music here underpin the warmer atmospherics of Pinback's electronic indie aesthetic, meeting in the middle to create an album that constantly shifts--or even merges--seasons yet which is, at the same time, entirely cohesive.

Although Stronger with Each Tear may not be one of her greatest works, it ensures that Blige remains as relevant as any of her more recent contemporaries.

On its own terms, it's a lean, mean success – and questions about longevity can probably wait until the follow-up.

Few records in 2010 will contain songs quite so mind-bogglingly broad, playful, beguilingly pretty and intense as these slowly unfurling ensemble pieces.

Such lofty posturing could have easily ended up sounding like the ill-informed scribblings of a sixth-form politics student, but H-p1 is more about mood, feel and texture than lyrical conceit.

Between the bounce of the lighter numbers and the ache of the sweet ones, there's all manner of winningly realistic insights veiled underneath the music. This debut is a joy from beginning to end.

The players here use that joyful experience to forge exciting new traditions.

Take a finger to your fast-forward button, however, and without Jones' handful of mediocre performances, Rome breezes past with all the tinkling, indefinable intent of a lost Michel Gondry film score.

Florence, Santigold and the usually brilliant Danny Brown do little more than tick boxes, and ultimately Long.Live.A$AP fails to match its hype with a coherent trend-setting statement.

They’ll soon become enraptured by what accompanies these highest-of-profile pieces: music that embraces the listener with a silken touch and seduces them with a beguiling beauty that, still, sits prettily beyond the clamour of convenient categorisation.

This should have been a fiery celebration of three decades of waving the ragged punk rock banner; instead, it's a laurel-resting plodder.

GEM is far from a masterpiece, but it's the work of an intriguing young artist still shaping a distinctive voice. It's hard to know if the pleasure is in listening to it, or imagining where she might go next.

Essentially, this is some of the most consistent songwriting to come from Australia since the loss of The Go-Betweens, and some of the most arcane performing available anywhere outside of Arcade Fire.

White Rabbits concoct something both contemporary, cultish and catchy as a cod net.

She's full of vim and vigour, mixing tender character studies with doe-eyed love songs and impassioned protest pieces.

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.

More serious but still jittery, and not without detritus, this is the album that will decide the longevity of Los Campesinos!.

Unfortunately, most of 20/20 falls into a rut; it sets the mood, but then fails to create tension.

He knows great stories can be found in even the smallest moment, and that is something worth cherishing.

The sequencing seems illogical on first listen, but someone as dab-handed as Ward surely intended this, and the rollercoaster becomes easier to digest with each listen.

Meat + Bone operates with the same lean, restless energy JSBX always display in concert: at their best, no band sounds this alive, unable to sit still for a second.

On much of The Old Magic, he's Richard Hawley unplugged.

It's tastefully done, and possesses many hidden textures and contours; the more you get of it, the more you like it.

For any bootlegging rappers with cerebral ambitions, this could represent the greatest thinking man's beat tape of all time. To mere listeners, it's an enveloping temporary distraction, more than fulfilling its purpose of whetting anticipation for El-P's mic-wielding return.

Despite the bounty of overdubs, however, there’s little self-indulgence to There Is No Enemy; Martsch’s overloaded approach might scream ‘prog’, but he also possesses a perfectly-disciplined, ‘pop’ songwriting sensibility, with every lengthy instrumental coda married to contagious choruses and melodic barbs that lodge in the mind.

This is a pop dance album par excellence bristling with positivity, tunes and ideas.

101 blends the quirky, the audacious and the touching to confident effect, emerging as a fine listen for all seasons.

If there's a weakness here, it's in the lack of variety to Smalhans' structures and sounds, the emphasis on arpeggios and keyboard lines that arc ever higher.

The performances are terrific, and although the songs are from the more obscure end of the Western Swing repertoire, with the exception of Corrine Corrina and Right or Wrong, it’s an excellent introduction to this music--a delightful blend of country, swing and jazz.

It's not an album fans of Prekop's signature drowsy vocals and woozy choruses are going to warm to instantly. Not that it's entirely unapproachable--far from it, there are luminous passages and lulling, almost cartoonish refrains to be found among the synthetic scree--merely unexpected.

As a standalone listen this is an interesting development of the stylistic restlessness that's driven Rose's progress so far.

As methods go it can be messy, but it also throws up some interesting hybrids.

Opting to produce themselves on this latest studio album happily hasn't dimmed their offbeat charm; it's a tuneful, diverse and often witty addition to their discography.

It's remarkable how purist a reenactment of three-decades-old LA hardcore this record is.

It's a sturdy set of mostly new material mixing Afrobeat and funk with traditional influences.

Ultimately, Looking 4 Myself reveals Usher as lost within the genre pick 'n' mix as he ever was; but inbetween its shortcomings, this seventh album sees him beaming proudly through a new and exciting sound.

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

On Shangri-La YACHT have proven that no matter what the concept is, it always comes down to the music.

A record that doesn't deviate from what the listener might have already expected from an artist might not sound like an engaging one, but Fields most certainly is.

An outstanding debut album that's been a long time coming.

Tatum has nevertheless produced an album that, despite its obvious glances back at the past, is smart, sophisticated and of its own pop moment.

Black Light, their sixth album, finds them enlarging their repertoire to relax into wider influences. In the absence of a frontman they are aging well.

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.

Cole World reveals its maker to be a technically superb rapper with great production skills, albeit currently exploring rags-to-riches tales lacking in consistent vigour.

With its high-minded lyrical concerns, its family-sized choruses and its authors' buoyant pursuit of what, in lesser hands, could be a restrictive musical form, True North is a superior addition to Bad Religion's already towering body of work.

The resultant pieces feel so alive that you can almost sense the pressure of Frahm’s fingers alighting on each key as these solemn improvisations begin to weave their magic.

He’s come close to his aim of making this album more than a curiosity, but the real impact can surely only come from seeing his orchestrion in action.

Propellor Time is, in short, another fine Robyn Hitchcock album, proving that, almost 35 years into his recording career, his gift for crafting such perfectly-imperfect, winningly-askew pop as strong as ever.

Despite the array of producers lined up--Including Danja, Darkchild, Polow da Don and Swizz Beatz--Diddy has corralled their work into a tight, coherent whole that's absolutely packed with ideas and creativity.

With so much good here, it's foolish to dwell upon a few relative missteps.

It's deceptively powerful stuff.