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

There's more to digest, and WALLS' personality becomes more evident.

It's coarse, awkward and at times lacks air; but the stubborn nature of Splazsh's development leaves you parched for more.

Talk About Body is a long, long way from the oblique post-shoegaze blur of chillwave, witch house, ill-bient and experimental dubstep at the cutting edge of the alternative.

There's still only one Stevie Nicks – witchy, mystical and romantic.

It's the achievement of their fourth studio album that this giddy mix hangs together as an endearing whole.

Although the parallels with Bonobo's peers are obvious, his fourth album doesn't just sit in their shadows. Rather, it's an inspiring example of how, free of pressure and publicity, he has blossomed into something beautiful at his own pace.

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

Good Things is sufficiently accomplished, in fact, to at least temporarily banish the clouds of financial doom and gloom to the horizon.

Albarn has done his research but this is no dry slice of worthy academia; the way the spirit of each style interlocks is brilliant, and he continues to pull memorable melodies out of his (Elizabethan) hat.

The ideal album to soundtrack wistful contemplation on balmy summer days.

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.

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

Wray and Walker’s transatlantic pairing is beautifully natural.

The results are expectedly analogue of warmth (exceptions: the 8-bit insistence of No Distance's bleeps; the crackle-and-squelch of Unknown Host), but just as enveloping as the best today's modulator manipulators can produce.

It's when the outfit really attack their instruments, however, that sparks start to fly from the Wild Flag sound.

The resulting album is an intriguing mixture of the ancient and contemporary, with every track sounding different: electronica mixes with traditional African styles, reggae with funk and more.

Much has been made--often unfairly--of Gray's awkwardness and lack of convention. But after several stabs at clumsy conformity, it finally feels like it's something she's embracing, and that's massively evident here.

The rest of us will succumb happily to Grinderman's sick skill and wonder why rebel teens don't make dangerous, dastardly rock'n'roll like this anymore.

Seven albums in, Jimmy Eat World are still going strong, and Invented is an enjoyable record. But it also fails to dispel the concern that the band's well of ideas is about to run dry.

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.

Free Time improves when the band tones down the simpers and demonstrate the lessons of 30-odd years of playing as a touring punk band.

This album's a string-driven thing swinging between bravado and bleakness, and always beautiful.

He sings with such soulful conviction, fitting the wizened candour of these strong, memorable songs like a battered leather glove.

Streamlining has done them good, as has ignoring the need to be as brainy as possible, with classy and effortless-sounding results.

The result, invariably, is that they hold the attention like a movie that keeps tantalising you with strands of plot then flashing back and switching the viewpoint. Some may find it irritating, but many more, you suspect, intoxicating.

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

Reinventing a genre they're not, but Nedry are certainly evolving trip hop in an enticing fashion.

Not a record to play through seamlessly but one to skip and cherry pick, Out of the Black is about selecting the monsters, and cranking them out at the volume they deserve.

Repeated listens of this finely realised album are therefore an enjoyable must.

Antibalas is musical democracy in action, and an inspiring example of a band practicing what they preach.

With the band now considerably more settled, the release of Disconnect from Desire is confirmation that SVIIB's meticulous balance between the spiritual and choral has reached a confident, polished plateau.

The same sort of eccentricity that sees Matt Bellamy pegged as a loveable boffin is well intact, but it's the sheer depth of the sound that drags you in like ultimate gravity. Also intact is their underlying pop instinct.

Go-Go Boots is one of the best examples yet of the separate yet complementary skills of the Truckers' three leaders, melding styles and switching moods but retaining an overall feel that's distinctly theirs.

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

This greatest hits comp (selected by BalkanBeats' DJ Robert Soko) showcases their party tunes such as the breakneck signature romp through Hava Naguila and the blistering flugelhorn ska of Khelipe E Cheasa... as well as their successful ventures further afield.

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

From album to album, The Bad Plus continue to evolve and improve.

It's this tightrope between bruised self-doubt and fun blasts of noise that gives Wolf's Law its emotional heft.

The Montreal-based artist has again delivered some fascinating and healthily progressive music on Visions, her third album.

Whilst Festival Bell lacks the visionary presence that made 1969's game-changing Liege & Lief so influential, and established the group's pre-eminent position in the folk-rock firmament, this album nevertheless confirms Fairport's reputation as an ongoing repository for quality songwriting.

A significant step forwards then, and all just a click away.

These are strong, conventional songs full of clever flicks and feints, deliciously produced by Ed (Suede, Pulp, White Lies) Buller.

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

The results are, almost inevitably, meditative and cinematic, but also, more unusually for music of this so-called 'post-classical' stripe, rich in melody and genuinely haunting, numinous atmosphere.

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

Collapse into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event.

It's potent stuff.

Battle Born is a belter, an album made for bedrooms, stadiums and old-school denim jacket patches alike.

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

These four tracks--perhaps movements would be a more appropriate term--feel entirely alive, a spontaneous weld of anxious beats, the odd squirl of guitar and distortion, corrupted vocals and deep, chasmic bass.

Substance is favoured over production sheen throughout the album, with every element of each track having a definite function and no sonic fat or filler allowed.

[Silver Age is] a man doing what he does best.

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

It's a really, really good record.

A rich, warm, big-hearted and hilarious album.

However, as the album progresses, with its mix of violins, guitar, synths and fitful percussion, a paradoxical mood and feel is established – desolate yet comforting, glacial yet warm, remote yet intimate, never more so than on Summer Fog.

While sentimental on occasion, and certainly possessed by a lovelorn spirit that should connect with all but the hardest of hearts, The Law of Large Numbers never comes across cloyingly, its content ably handled and expressed with the same cliché-free purity The Delgados mastered.

This album is paced like a perfect DJ set--it reads the listener with incredible insight, combining the immediate and familiar with intense passages of warm-up, breaking to allow for moments of blank space and reflection.

Caminiti seems fully aware of the perils and pitfalls of the nu-new age, thwarting any such comparisons by rousing his near-ambient flows with radiant beams of six-string sustain.

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

Warm and confident throughout her second album, Hilson is becoming hard to ignore.

This is a terrific and subtly clever album, a(nother) spirited and worthwhile challenge by Paisley to the prejudices of both sides of country's enduring schism.

Occasionally augmented by beautifully restrained strings, there’s a kind of heat-haze shimmer evident, of a kind that gave Bobbie Gentry’s sound some of its mystery and magic.

The pair can knock out enormous, memorable hooks from limited resources, the instrumental make-up stripped-bare in the extreme, just drums and guitar. But scarcity of equipment never once hinders their considerable ambition and inventiveness.

There was always the hope amongst their fanbase that the band might give up on their commercial dreams, instead ploughing the oddness that always set them apart from the pack. Album number four delivers on that hope.

The Hunter, with its monstrous choruses, powerful percussion and jaw-on-the-floor fret-work, is sure to connect with anyone who's previously rocked out to their wares just as easily as it will absolute beginners.

This is an album that delivers more and more with every listen, showcasing an artist maturing with grace and poise.

A significant step onwards from their acoustic debut, Acrobats finds the trio developing a taste for the electric, which adds miles to their creative horizons.

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

On Further, The Chemical Brothers show no signs of fatigue, and the absence of any star names matters not a jot. It's better to continuously explode than fade away, or something.

Mainly, though, if Caitlin Rose is the future of Nashville and American country music, then it would seem that its future is in safe, appealing and mellifluous hands.

As with any festive release, the magic of A Christmas Cornucopia is best captured before the actual event itself, as come December 27 it will be as welcome as yet more turkey. But such is its quality that this collection could find itself becoming as much a part of the holiday season as arguments with loved ones, keeping receipts and watching the tree lights blur as you slowly drink yourself merry.

Stick with this 10-tracker, please, as while its first number isn’t the most arresting of curtain-ups, what comes afterwards is entirely captivating.

Algiers is a refined, consistent and beautifully textured set of songs.

When To Dust takes flight, you don't have to squint your ears too far to imagine Alice Russell as a worthy successor to that notional throne [of British soul].

The band have taken Bruce Springsteen's influence, twisted and distorted it and made a quite remarkable album that lives up both to its rebellious, riotous ambition and its rich musical heritage.

Here Come the Bombs is a rewarding and substantial offering.

There was a time when it seemed anything emanating from a Chicago zip code was essential. That time may have passed, but if you're in any way interested in atmospheric, exploratory music that creates worlds as it progresses, seek Boca Negra out.

A genuine great leap forward, Defamation is a cracker.

Just to Feel Anything doesn't disappoint, although those eager for meditative meanderings might feel detached from its propulsive, purposeful tangents.

Not surprisingly, this is a more demanding program than that of the trio disc, and although Shipp is not adverse to the occasional rhythmic groove, the solo music is often closer to modern classical than to jazz.

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.

While the technical prowess on display throughout this set is truly awe-inspiring--Mastodon might turn everything up to 11, but they never compromise the finer facets of their sound, and everything's captured here in crystal-clear clarity.

1977 may be a blip for this artist in regard to its genesis, but for anyone other than his ex-wife (and perhaps himself) it's an utter pleasure.

Seemingly, emo is no longer a moody sub-culture, as one can't help but smile when a record is this brilliantly bombastic.

High Places have moved on, positioning themselves on the fringes of the ongoing chillwave explosion with enough invention to outlast most of its central protagonists.

There are moments where Total does come close to a Daft Punk pastiche. But these are few and far between, and there's plenty enough of Sebastian's own character on show to make this one of the most enjoyable dance albums of 2011 so far.

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

Swanlights succeeds exactly where you might not expect it to: Hegarty sounds content, revitalised. This is a record that revels in a sense of joy.

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

ASIWYFA sound like they’re having fun shaping and performing this music, and you’ll want to be part of it.

The same could be said for Lapalux's production ability; this is a brilliant EP, but he's still to reveal his full potential.

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

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

Nevertheless, what the album lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in the length and breadth of Weller's imagination.

Musically, it's both moody and approachable.

With a signature sound established at the first time of asking, The xx's challenge was to both expand their palette and satisfy the demands of a huge audience. And through refinement rather than reinvention, they've succeeded in singular style.