This is an album that's best aired on headphones, at critical volume.

One of 2011's most absorbing, affecting and downright brilliant LPs.

The message is, essentially, Times are hard, but let's make things better. As honest and uplifting statements of intent go, it's hard to fault – just like this album.

The vivid nostalgia remains, with these all-original cuts sounding like they could easily have been laid down back in the golden ages of the 1950s and 60s.

A fierce, melodic affirmation of sadness and grief, love and lust, attachments formed both strong and precarious, Young Man in America is a marvel of a record from start to finish.

The result a stunning, profound, moving and soulful record.

Shorter is firmly at the helm, yet benevolent enough to play the background when needed. The rhythm has taken him far.

Enjoy Kaleidoscope Dream for the rarity that it is: an unerringly consistent, very good pop record.

Throughout all this, though, lies a sense of warm experimentation that should feel familiar to fans of Deerhunter's unique brand of ambience-loving indie-rock. Halcyon Digest is simply another solid entry in the discography of a mighty band.

The result is an album that will make many a listener feel like the cat that got the cream.

It is unnervingly delicate, endlessly distracting and ultimately addictively tactile as it sneaks under your skin.

What can't be denied, however, is that the album easily deserves its place in the hearts of those who admire fellow fuzzy-edged slackers Superchunk, Pavement and Guided by Voices as much as those new to the game, who'll find echoes of the band's sound fizzling through modern-day collegiate grungesters like Milk Music or Gun Outfit.

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.

It transcends the boundaries and expectations of its genre--even those previously set by the very band that made it.

Shields pushes and prods at musical boundaries in a similar way to Talk Talk's 1986 masterpiece, The Colour of Spring.

There's little coherence... but the best moments are breathtaking.

Vintage touches and modern twists combine on an irrepressible soul record.

The voice is still there, as is the attitude, and Auerbach has done an excellent job bringing an artist who will never be out of date into the 21st century.

Hecker's latest seems to ultimately be about making peace with our mortality, and as such is his most powerful album yet.

There’s enough ambition here to elevate The Mavericks’ comeback above the perfunctory.

One brilliant rock song follows another, defiantly leaden in construction but stalwart in performance. Rarely does such simple rock sound so satisfying.

Gojira is one of the finest bands of our generation, and with L'Enfant Sauvage they've created another album to suit such a reputation.

Shaking the Habitual is something else, but it’s hard not to find that profoundly exhilarating.

It's one of the best things you'll hear all year. Bring on the next two.

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

Bawdy, smart, big-hearted and mischievous, Mermaid Avenue is simply all about a personality that is rich with life.

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

Driven by Simon's uniquely percussive acoustic guitar, and with his world music leanings embedded naturally rather than overtly, this beguiling album shows him to have lost none of his ability for finding universal truths within the guise of introspection. It's a profound statement from a master of his craft.