This is a matured and musical hip-hop duo and whether it is the fine contributions by Tom Waits and Tunde Adebimpe on separate songs, Ant’s soulful and majestic music, or Slug’s illustrious and poignant story-telling; it’s all superb.

Whilst at times Cool Planet could have benefitted from more of the cohesiveness that marked out Motivational Jumpsuit, its detours and greater collaborative ethos also give Pollard, Sprout and co. greater room for ongoing creativity.

Fortino has created an album that is easily one of the year’s most moving reflections. It’s that life is all but lost and Fortino’s take on things are spectacularly delivered.

This album is too good to dally over, because it's so good, jaw droppingly good, not a false note in the bunch kind of good.... Record of the year stuff.

While a few songs are leftovers from Angles and some were churned out “like the good old days” as they put it, Comedown Machine is a terrific release to The Strokes first five albums.

What they do best is produce exceptional electronica for people that don't have the patience for extended instrumental passages and require things like vocals on regular intervals. With that precursor, The Understanding is probably one of the better electronica records to come out this year that thankfully doesn't involve MCs from Def Jux or was composed on a laptop.

The members of Blitzen Trapper have a lot left in them and they’ve just hit their stride with their last two albums. Black River Killer EP is only further testament to their amazing talents as a band and of the kind of determined soul that prevails against all odds.

It's hard not to listen to this album and to think that they've mined this territory already in 69 Love Songs.

The brilliant new album Dark Light Daybreak sees Now It's Overhead mixing the smoldering and beautifully layered guitar sounds from 2001's self-titled debut with the haunting synth-pop beats from 2004's Fall Back Open and taking them a step further by including more intricate melodies, polished arrangements and even grander guitar-scapes.

Essentially one long postcard from the very edge of loneliness and sorrow.

This is an excellent release from an already accomplished band.

This album is not a quick or necessarily easy listen, but it is one of the better ones that I have had the pleasure of listening to this year.

This is big rock, powerful, aggressive, and impeccably played and produced.

Worlds Apart is easily the most accessible album for the band.

There is no shortage of experimentation here.

While Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped is a five-song study on what the keyboard instrument is capable of, at least it's rendered through the hands of a skillful musician, with a tenured history for delivering compelling music.

If you're looking for a less structured, more experimental 764-Hero-style band, these two guys do it quite well.

While at first some of Repo will undoubtedly seem oriented towards those with an attention deficit, it is in every sense of the word a “grower.”

A lush, captivating, and dynamically vocalized album on the mellower end of Butler’s usual stylistic spectrum.

Overall, there is sufficient sun-kissed pleasure on Varshons to extend the patience of Evan Dando-devotees a little bit longer but not enough to surpass past makeover masterstrokes.

Woodsman are at the very least an inventive group of musicians, but the balance between their songwriting abilities and their wilder excursions into improvised sound isn't quite equal, although this creates its own dynamic throughout the album.

The record sounds tailored for mass consumption, which means every song packs a melodic doozie and indomitably contrived storylines about soldiering on while our world threatens to spin off its axis.

Overall, there is a very cloud-like vibe, reticent of stammering into a mysterious blend of genres.

All Harm Ends Here is undoubtedly the band's defining release, a true gem of understated songwriting and melancholy rock.

Mondanile isn't rewriting any of the rules here, but he does show that he can stand on his own as a pop songwriter perfectly well, and frequently does so in an addictive fashion.

Spring Tides is a success partly because it is consistent in sound and structure, but it still manages to slip through a variety subtle mood changes and elicit several emotional reactions from its listeners. Jeniferever should gain some fans with this.

The way that Howling Bells constructed Radio Wars relies on strong melodies, hooks, songs, songs that aren’t really there, ideas not quite developed.

These songs sound more like parts of songs that have been extracted from something bigger and more fully realized.