This is a Spiritualized album down to its marrow, replete with the Velvet Underground-meets-Brian Wilson melodies, symphonic crescendos and widescreen riffs that Pierce has made his own since the beginning.... and [it's] a great one.

This is a raw, unfussy rock record that forsakes gloss or studio tricks for instinct and urgency.

The Wild Hunt is a heady and enthralling work, its impressionistic nature bolstered by levels of charm and confidence found all too rarely in these modern times.

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.

With the multitude of guests, perhaps this would be better as a DVD. When experienced as audio only the ears are forced to make some wild and sudden adjustments. But maybe that's one of this disc's perverse attractions.

He reaches beyond his home state for a broader sound, and the results are remarkable.

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

It's at once a work of larger ambition and greater focus than its predecessor, beginning brilliantly and continuing in the same manner for its entire length.

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

A shimmering, lovely thing, this debut is also full of adventurous spirit.

The most unmistakeable sound on Teen Dream is that of a band truly finding its own voice. In so doing, they may just have minted the new decade’s first essential album.

Nobody's Daughter, despite its lengthy and troubled gestation, is a rich and emotionally searing addition to that canon, effortlessly besting her haphazard solo album.

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

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

It's nice to hear a female artist singing so much from the belly, even, at times, with a stirring kind of anger – as in the rollicking Peace Signs.

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.

This album doesn’t bristle with the sonic daring of Dangerfield’s usual work; instead, it offers love songs, largely unadorned with stylistic quirks or brash arrangements, a document of a life pulling into focus.

This is the sound of the Noughties – electro enough without being harsh, interesting without being over-cool, quirky without being weird. Empire Of The Sun have cracked the perfect blend of fond reflection and sexy new frontier frisson. If this is what the future sounds like, then it's going to be beautiful.

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

Good news: Lights is an expectations-passing collection that should see fans of the singer's material to date elevating her to superstar status.

The Dark Crawler shows just how varied a grime album can actually be.

Toro y Moi goes longer and harder than before, and the results represent an accentuation of the elements which appealed in his prior work.

Their songs are very nearly as good as the tale behind them.

ess gritty, less grimy, and more digital in its overall sound but no less inventive than its predecessor, Lorn has thrown down another musical challenge that's well worth rising to.

This is dark, feverish garage rock as it's meant to be played.

It would be a crying shame if a record so accomplished, relevant and unifying never gets to be heard. Because, right now, this album is necessary.

So faithfully have Collins and his confreres recreated the Sound of Young America--shimmering tambourines drowning out drums, bass compressed to a fat, distorted throb--that it's hard not to be swept along.

Throughout, the lyrical clarity and emotional honesty of the band shine through, creating an album that is as much uplifting as it is in parts bleak.

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

Neighborhoods could easily have been a disaster--that it's not, and actually a very successful endeavour, is worthy of substantial praise.

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.

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.

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

Boys Don't Cry works superbly as a companion piece to Seasons.

It's a soulful, self-contained delight.

She doesn't seek to graft herself onto these songs; instead, and with considerable skill, she draws out from them new layers of wit, tenderness and melancholia.

This first album have produced something so beguiling, it's clearly been time well spent.

Overall this is an impressive album that could prove a game-changer.

Muchacho is a vibrant, evocative LP, and a welcome addition to the Phosphorescent catalogue.

As far as second albums go, it is a brilliantly bold, robust work, showcasing real development and the kind of graceful erudition that places Regan squarely ahead of the curve.

This raucous collection of three-minute knee-tremblers, however, is as close as it gets [to a live show]. Swilling whiskey and spitting gravel, over-driven and over here, this is aural Prozac for the 21st century.

With The Killer, Shed hasn't reinvented the wheel, but he has captivated us with his sonic mottle, daubed onto the classic edifice of techno's irresistible structures.

For those hankering for the lost summer of 2012, solace could well be found in the rays of musical sunlight that burst out of every hook and melody of By Your Side.

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.

It's the group's most ambitious offering yet, a collection that bites harder than anything they've previously issued but which is equally eager to kiss everything better.

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

When a lunar time capsule next needs a musical artefact of almost indeterminable age, Kode9 & The Spaceape are your men.

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.

This is an affecting and intelligent record: neither Folds nor Hornby should be shy about suggesting a sequel.

It's got its faults, but MDNA isn't just a good pop album, it's a good Madonna album too.

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

Glass Swords shows just the right amount of restraint to prevent total disarray.

These 12 tracks have an irrepressible energy that is all Collins' own, reflecting his twin loves of punk and northern soul; while his lyrics, always wryly self-regarding, have an urgency and bluntness that would make them seem inconsequential were there not so much at stake.

It's easy to hear that they spent upwards of two years putting this album together, because First Serve is all about the joy of sublime musicianship.

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.

Outside is a celebration of his recovery--a great album on its own terms, and truly remarkable given how close it presumably came to never being made.

It's definitely a subtle magic TOPS weave here, and like all the best records, Tender Opposites rewards repeated spins.

James Murphy's (of LCD Soundsystem) decision to sign this shape-shifting creature to DFA Records makes perfect sense given her blend of art, electronics and mischievous humour, and while it's an undeniably alien world Rostron inhabits, it's an altogether convincing one.

All in all, it’s a refreshingly varied voyage.

Tremendous stuff.

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.

So, despite promising little, Turn Ons proves to be quite the diverting delight, albeit one you're unlikely to return to once a new Supergrass album arrives.

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

Here, he exorcises the turmoil with a focused set of sustained brilliance.

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.

By maintaining a ferocious appetite for streaming across territory few electronic musicians possess even a perception of, Autechre continue to test themselves and listeners alike with stunningly intricate results.

[A] sober, smart and his finest record since 1999's I See a Darkness.

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.

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.

Though born out of a fraught gestation period, this second LP is a thing of beauty.

The jaunty melodies and jagged incisors savaging them into bite-size shapes remain engaging for the full 45 minutes, proving that the loud and voiceless do not have to sound ineloquent.

This debut offering is strong, addictive and enthralling, the perfect accompaniment to any mood, any moment, anywhere.

On the strength of this richly felt, richly imagined album, though, lack of love needn't concern Hoop.

The Golden Age of Apocalypse seems specially made for a long, hot, daydream-filled summer. Here's hoping.

Just because it is not music that shouts about itself, that dazzles with pyrotechnics or showboating guitar solos, its profundity and emotional heft is nevertheless, and perhaps even all the more, striking.

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.

Bonkers and beautiful, Storm Corrosion leaves one wondering what this duo will come up with next.

Rooms Filled With Light never dips beneath beguiling. Most of the time it's really quite grand.

It's not particularly clever, but it is expectedly big: if you're a Carey fan with a stocking that needs filling this year, this'll perk you up better than any alternative speech or sherry trifle could.

There's not much more British than slightly freaky folk music. As if to prove the point, Erland Cooper has mined these pleasant pastures for a debut album of depth and weird beauty.

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.

This is a fully realised tribute to early 80s pop-RnB music, filled with candy-sweet keyboard sounds and beats that could be the work of a battered old Casio drum machine.

He has created a work of insidious beauty: creeping, pervasive and better for it.

Yet despite the melancholy mood, We’re On Your Side is far from depressing. Slaraffenland possess a wistfully melodic knack akin to The Beach Boys if they’d never managed to get off the Sloop John B, and there is much to admire in the multi-faceted arrangements.

An extension of the rehabilitation that the 63-year-old has undergone in the last decade, under the devoted guidance of family and friends, it's a record that both addresses and somehow transcends his past.

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.

This gem of a long-player – both sleepy and steely, mystical yet rooted in very real and universal themes – deserves all the plaudits that will hopefully meet its release.

Angry and socially conscious he remains, though. Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time, a sprawling, beautiful, brain-belch of an album, is an hour-long testament to this.

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.

The Radio Dept. have cleverly managed to conjure up music with a thoroughly minimal feel, despite this hive of activity instrumentation-wise.

While Mala retains an inquisitive aural attitude--there in its markedly electronic palette, and its squirly, scuffly sound--there’s also limberness to this set of songs, a feeling of them all moving happily together.

Essentially, jj have offered a more rounded, somewhat slicker version of what came before, and to the vast majority of listeners the comforting embrace it offers will be welcomed.

Always is one of Stewart's most accessible albums.

It's an exhilarating taster of things to come.

It’s a theme that recurs throughout the record, and, indeed, that defines the Four Tet canon: mesmeric, melody-laden music, with varying degrees of difficulty. There is Love in You should be a fine introductory course.

Ester is a collection best suited to after-hours reflection, a glass of red in hand and the TV playing only static.

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.

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.