Stuck in a time warp they may be, but singer-guitarist Craig Fox, drummer Patrick Keeler and bassist Jack Lawrence (the latter pair better known as the rhythm section in Jack White's Raconteurs – Lawrence also plays with White in The Dead Weather), revel in their chosen genre with such mellifluous joie de vivre that it's hard to deny them their retrospective orientation.

On Old Yellow Moon, in that hokiest of country traditions--the boy/girl duet--an old alliance triumphs with charm.

To further the point, the album's 10 tracks total just 34 minutes, so listeners will snap out of the dream rather than disappear with it down a wormhole. But the blissful summery mood hangs around for ages. If you don't want summer to end, or you're a SAD sufferer, then consider Skit I Allt the best and cheapest antidote on the market.

Stelmanis, bassist Dorian Wolf and drummer Maya Postepski have created something that plays as a carefully balanced, organic whole, like an inadvertent concept album. That's more a testament to the skill with which it's been put together than because it lacks standout moments; in fact, half the songs here could be released as singles, as Austra are as melodic as they are melodramatic.

It's a union that just keeps on giving, with the steelier, more focused Hawk the best they've given yet.

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.

An album to relax into, over weeks and months, this is one many will be coming back to whenever stress levels flit into the red.

He's a pop artist of substance, and as such brings a touch of class and sufficient flavour of another genre to the mainstream to make music that's interesting and lasting.

Five swoony songs, sung beautifully, no duffers, and plenty of knotty lyrics to try and unravel. Another job well done.

Sometimes this build-up can establish a cocktail lounge atmosphere, but in most cases its emotional resonances hover on the right side of poignant.

While slightly more subdued than before, the pint-sized sparkplug proves she can still churn a stimulating groove, and doesn't need cartoonish gimmicks to do so.

They sometimes feel as second-hand as The Black Crowes, but The Heavy's capacity for rabble-rousing is a potent strength, which in music – if not always politics – isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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.

It’s Thomas’s guilt-free love of mavericks past that lends such evocative warmth and unusual spontaneity to a fascinating album that could have been pure self-indulgence.

Consequently and unlike most covers records, If I Had a Hi-Fi (which, rather neatly, is a palindrome) sounds wonderfully fresh and easy, but also yields some unexpected pop trinkets.

Flash, brash and brimming with an irrepressible anarchic vigour, more than anything, Bring Your Own is a thing of unfettered joy.

The album demands to be heard in a single sitting, in a contradiction of the digitally shuffling age.

The Shape of Things is, by some margin, Foxx's best album since Metamatic, the 1980 solo debut that has become one of modern electronica's sacred touchstones.

Intensely individual without being overly self-indulgent, TOTEM offers an at-times madcap, at others beautiful but always-rewarding insight into Ryat's mystical and eccentric world.

It’s an album whose ingenuous, often nakedly honest songwriting offers an emotional fist gloved in arrangements of seductive velvet.

Nobody would expect an eighth album by a band 20-plus years into its career to sound this fantastic, but time away has obviously helped re-energise the brothers into crafting this triumphantly grand return.

It has the feeling of a band progressing in their own rights, under their own terms.

For all its capricious cherry-picking of the historic benchmarks of sensuality and synthetics, there's still a sense of genuine invention that permeates the whole album.

Delivering on that precocious promise, Rose's debut long-player actually reins in her EP's feistier extremes somewhat to deliver 10 tracks of timeless, simply adorned (albeit by some dextrously restrained Music Row stalwarts) song-craft which, while they certainly doff a 10-gallon hat to the country canon, never seem constrained by Nashville tropes, old or new.

There are around 20,000 records like this released every year by female troubadours. But there's something just very right, and really quite splendid, about Get Well Soon. It could well prove to be a timeless little wonder.

Instead of shadowing the pack, this album puts them right up the front.

You wouldn't expect soul from a Glen Campbell record, but it takes many forms. A veteran who needs help to express his memories of a life less ordinary, but ironically sounds on the top of his game, is clearly one of them.

Explores the dark, suburban-gothic shades always loitering beneath their surface glimmer.

If this were an EP, it would be captivating--Everdell's voice is certainly commanding--but, spread out over 11 songs, it loses some of its hold.

Goodman casts a spell on the listener with Sees the Light.

With high-concept sounds and an ace sleeve, Again Into Eyes is a bold debut, and an extremely rewarding experience.

Terrifying yet magnificent horror from a group getting doom metal so very right.

Whatever the treatment of his songs, Holly's knack of pairing of simplistic, catchy melodies with understated--almost flippant--melancholy always shines through. As such, over 50 years since his death, this is a wonderful testament to his songwriting prowess, longevity and legacy.

Whatever your take on the chillwave phenomenon--that brand of overexposed, Polaroid pop mining childhood memories kick-started (arguably) by Animal Collective's influential album Merriweather Post Pavilion--it's a conversation that's happened, and Equatorial Ultravox does little to further the debate.

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

He clearly relishes the heightened emotion of his source material, the album wisely avoiding cheap campiness in favour of respecting the music's rich sense of drama.

Here the daughter of bossa nova creator Joao Gilberto has made an album that either drowns in its own sensuousness and sentimentality.

In some ways, this is one of their most beautiful releases in a career that has never been short of elegance.

It's when the ceaseless forward momentum of old hijacks Pop Negro's new structural nous that the most rewarding moments arrive here, the aforementioned Soca Del Eclipse, Ghetto Facil and Muerte Midi highlights of an album that's among the year's best, and that, while immediately enchanting, will take years to unravel.

This album, Mark Ronson's "imaginary follow up to Rio that never was", is their best for 18 years.

Seventy-four years on, he has recorded what is surely the blues album of the year.

Bones is a fiery yet melodious modern rock album made by a band who may come to regret their name should they survive to become old hands.

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

Gracious Tide, Take Me Home is a luminous, lilting, lovely debut album, and a perfect mood piece as the nights begin to draw in.

Dear God… is as engagingly weird as anything before, but flows so much better by incorporating the customary sonic terrorism into verse-chorus-verse songs, rather than breaking off for performance poetry about living in the shadow of suicide, or (say) war as legitimate barbarism for jocks.

It ["Getting Rest"], like much of this fine and not at all "difficult" second album, is undeniably impressive, but it leaves you with the ineffable impression that the best of Wes Gonzalez is yet to come.

His evocative, heartfelt, pin-sharp lines hit compelling grooves, all twists and turns, grin-inducing couplets and weirdness.

This latest collection offers a tantalising glimpse of how Hendrix's genius might have progressed.

One mighty fine rock'n'roll record.

While the reins of pomp have certainly been reined in somewhat, it's hard to shake the suspicion that Suck It and See is further evidence that Arctic Monkeys are still Britain's best guitar band--albeit one that'd be even better if they ever decide to truly lunge into the unknown.

Ahmed has pulled together a supporting cast with sufficient cutting edge that it comparatively endangers the razorblade impact of his original compositions.

There's a kitsch appeal, but this stuff [from disc two] belongs in a different world from the marvellous early disc.

There's no getting away from the fact that WTC 9/11 simply doesn't have the structural cohesion or magnitude of Different Trains--a comparison which Reich fans will inevitably draw.

Simply stuffed with rollicking tunes.

No Gods is a significant statement of intent. Despite its nihilistic title, it's an album that brims with vitality and could well be Sharks' ticket to the big leagues.

With its hurtling, remorselessly breakneck pace this isn't an album you listen to as such; rather, you grapple with it.

The latest Lamdin offering, billed as Nostaliga 77 and the Monster, is a thoroughly intriguing instrumental set, staffed with an impressive line-up of leading British jazz heads.

While kin is solidly crafted throughout, there's nothing to justify the lofty artistic conceits surrounding it.

Replete with moments of jubilance and tranquillity, cataclysm and contemplation, it feels like the successful culmination of everything the band have been aiming towards over their career to date.

Both in words and music, this album works by letting anger and warmth share a platform. In this respect, listeners already au fait with this splendid band should find plenty of cheer.

The overall impression remains of a bunch of clever chaps who are able to avoid over-intellectualisation and weave bags of charm and fun into their complex pop songs.

More selective souls may find themselves reaching for the fast-forward button, as perhaps the original plan would have yielded a more cohesive whole.

That lang is a greater and more radiant talent than the rest of the Siss Bang Boom combined is obvious, but so is the fact that in mysterious ways this strange marriage has helped her find her feet and voice again.

So while Rant may be a stunt album for The Futureheads, it's an exhilarating stunt, and one that more than whets the appetite for whatever it is they choose to do next.

Carey's gallant use of drum boxes and occasional, restrained glitchy sonics – like on the carousing Pickup Truck and undulating Into Tomorrow – round out Mason's sound, bringing a raft of rousing fresh dimensions to his previously straight-up folksy stylings.

It's a downbeat record that reclaim's dubstep's original dark energy and experimental imperative.

It's perhaps a bit long, and there may be too much repetition for some – but persist and Drokk is quite the engrossing, and sporadically discomforting, listen.

This is a great album: smart, thrilling, bouncy, imaginative, sussed, melodic, fiery, punchy, passionate, repetitive, and immersed in the technology of 2010 but the ideology of the 60s and late 70s (and early 90s Olympia, if we’re going to be exact).

The mood is what's irresistible. Sashaying through a bunch of tunes that showcase his craft, Haggard sounds laidback and happy. And the bounce spreads right through the band.

For the most part, Hill's stubborn sonic bravery earns margin for a handful of bum notes, leaving Face Tat among the most rewardingly challenging listens of 2010.

Overall, Black Radio surpasses the excellence of Double Booked, which is a brilliant album in its own right.

This is at heart a fun, dirty, insincere, cheap-thrill-laden pop record, with the raunch-riffery of Band of Skulls and lyrics which could be drawled from the mouth of a Bret Easton Ellis character.

Musically, it's both moody and approachable.

Spalding is too able a musician to botch this template, so the obvious enquiry is: does she bring sufficient personality to the table to avoid being derivative? For the most part, yes.

Original it isn’t, but it trades innovation for let-loose fun, and wears its influences proudly.

Her most vivid and enveloping achievement to date.

The subject matter may be familiar territory, but this is no comfort zone.

Clocking in at 36 minutes, this long-awaited solo debut is an impressive exercise in the integration of an expectedly wide range of aesthetics, revealing first and foremost a thoughtful composer with a skilled producer's ear.

Elling's individualist vocal reinterpretations are well worth hearing.

Things remain pared back, but an ambition nurtured by classical training keeps things interesting.

A little of this niggling frustration sticks, but for the most part Exister subsequently reveals itself as a more positive, uplifting record than its predecessors, adding something new to the band's eight-strong studio album canon.

What remains is an adequate compilation of nostalgic sounds, largely void of Clark’s unique voice. Greater consistency would have worked wonders.

Childs and Blake have created a record of outstanding songcraft, which salutes rock's past with a carefree spirit and its head in the clouds. Go Jonny, go, go go.

Veirs' offering has a lustre and sleepy delightfulness that owes much to her lilting charm of her voice and her ear for a sublime melody.

Simple, slightly silly but splendidly affecting, it's a telling suggestion that Arnalds will retain her endearingly obtuse edge, whatever language she favours in future.

Ultimately, there are only two stars [Doom and Jneiro Jarel] that matter on this terrific album.

It's full of the kind of heavy textures and atmospheric nuances that explain exactly why Johnson is also a movie soundtrack composer of increasing repute.

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.

Past Lives are prog incarnate; yet dissection of their work here reveals a far simpler formula than what initially presents itself. The four are restricted to some degree by their make-up, with Henderson handling much of the multi-instrumentalist demands, but the ideas are solid.

In creating a work which pretty much unfailingly sounds like it could have been made 25 years ago, Future Islands have rejected a lot of current sonic trends--only for their sound to land fashionable-side-up anyway. The tunes are the thing, of course, and the tunes are good.

The dizzying craftsmanship evident on this debut LP is never an obstacle.

Over-familiarity with Barnes' recent oeuvre aside, the material on False Priest just isn't as strong as the songs that comprise those other records.

This see-saw, between exquisite gloom and bruised hope, is part of what makes Piramida so powerful.

Super Furry Animals frontman's third solo LP captures his creative wanderlust.

Although fourth album Mines, released three years after its predecessor, retains Menomena's trademark virtuosity in production, here the band's complex, monolithic sonic structures are supported by a consistent emotional foundation that elevates the songs to new heights.

Despite the genre signifiers there's more than enough personality of their own here for Cults to transcend both their blog hit wonder and the timeworn sound they lovingly homage.

If this T-Bone Burnett-produced album isn't a standout, it still has plenty going for it.

They seem to have stopped trying to subvert their pop nous and accept what they do best, and for the most part it works a treat.