[The Cherry Thing] serves as a reminder that Neneh Cherry is a certifiable musical treasure.

A treasure chest of riches that provides considerable new perspective on the band's processes and progress through the years.

Segall pushes things towards 11.

There's a sadness, a backwards-looking air to Tarnished Gold that's new. Once the Sparks' hallucinatory trippery signaled youth's endless possibilities. Now their songs, even the new ones, are filtered through a golden, dust-moted, late afternoon light.

This current incarnation of Swans swim across the salty sea of the group's three-decade strong catalog, executing a balance of grind and grace that casts a new light on old classics.

One of the best records of the year.

The finished product is a beautifully fluid fusion of dub, jazz and micro-house zone-outs that continues to exemplify Oswald's two-decade strong aptitude as one of the great masters of repetitive groove theory.

What we have here is another excellent Chris Smither album, reason enough for celebration.

Researching the Blues is a goddamn gem, crackling with energy, that totally celebrates the pure bliss and joy that rock 'n' roll can, and should be. In short, it's everything that you were hoping it would be.

Jamal continues to spin gold from the bench of his baby grand with Blue Moon.

Live at Billy Bob's Texas is proof enough that he's still living up to his rep as one of the original Outlaws of Country, sitting firmly beside Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Simply put, Tracer is a lovely, melodious, engaging work of electronic music that will play just as well in the bedroom as it will on the dance floor.

There were many musical spirits in the room when White and his Spacebomb band went to recording the seven farmhouse-soul spirituals found on Big Inner, but what ultimately renders this record truly special is the band's ability to synthesize all these elements into something that is uniquely their own.

Silver Age is another peak in a career full of them, and it's due to the quality of the material Mould uses to construct the suit, rather than the classic cut of the design.

The music on this remarkable record creeps up on you, and subtleties abound; with Burns' vocals mic'd very close and much of the instrumental flourishes occurring deep in the mix, it's an intimate affair.

On the group's third full-length Love Will Prevail, Ragon earns his rightful place alongside the works of the underground icons he flips for profit.

Meat and Bone stands as quite possibly the band's best album to date. The Explosion breaks everything down to its root and reconstructs it all in a perfect way; it should show a generation of cool kids that may have missed him the first time around that Jon Spencer is among garage rock's main guitar slingers.

This follow-up is even better & louder, on par with the dizzying heights of her old band.

For their third album together, John Elliott, Steve Hauschlidt and Mark McGuire bring the same sense of fearless adventure to them modular synths, creating a seven-song cycle unlike anything in the Emeralds canon yet.

While none of the songs are deeply political or poetic like the wartime bands that predated Tame Impala, they are no less poignant and often delve into a reflective sadness of longing to belong.

The Odds show that Fugazi doesn't need to reunite in order to make music that still very much matters.

Weird, raw and beautiful all at once.

Yin & Yang is an earth shattering 45 minutes of street urchin dub punk that not only reveals This Is PiL for the anti-climactic milquetoast sham that it was, but re-establishes the true soul of Public Image as it was originally intended by the vast sum of its initial parts.

The lift-off and liberation come subtly, bearing the masterful marks of men who've learned the value of compositional patience (it's no coincidence that Cave and Ellis have also forged a successful partnership as film scorers). This, ultimately, makes the emotional devastation you experience once the record has spun all the more remarkable.

There's a warmth and life in these songs that goes beyond tribute or reenactment.

Hurricane is her first new album since 1989, and it's her best ever.

Tha Funk Capital Of The World, is one of his best ever records as a front man and one of the most outrageously funky records released in years.

GOB is heavyweight hip-hop from one of urban England's brightest new talents of microphone mastery.