Even if "Hypnotize" is simply more of the same, with SOAD operating at such astonishing creative and emotional heights, it'll still leave every other metal band on the planet scrabbling in the dust.

It’s the way “With The Lights Out” fleshes out the plot that makes it so compelling.

This is a record that will happen to you, and when it clicks, the realisation that As I Am is a genuine classic is overwhelming.

There isn't a second's worth of music here that doesn't come mink-swathed in note-perfect retro sound, or a song that isn't worthy of it.

Most artists are well-aware of the pitfalls of the difficult third album, of course, and try to disguise their on tour / hotel room songs - but when has Mike Skinner ever been most artists?

The most obvious comparison for 'Tomorrow Right Now' is Roots Manuva's 'Run Come Save Me' and the UK's bouncement brigade. And the comparison is a favourable one all round.

Yet cartoon and divorced from reality as it is, his vision is so vivid that it never fails to seduce and fill you with the uneasy sense that maybe, just maybe, somewhere his disturbing dimension of bums and misfits really does exist.

Simultaneously laid back and bursting with intensity, 'Lost Horizons' is a film score inviting each of us to direct our own personal movie.

It easily stands comparison not just to the stars Jay-Z has been forced to compete with since 1996, but to the all-time greats of hip hop history.

It's startling that a commercial rock band could sound this blood-and-oxygen vital, this meaningful and mighty six albums into their career.

Not since Springsteen's "Greetings From Ashbury Park, NJ" has an album carved poetry so successfully from the dirty streets of America's greatest cities, or has a lyricist dealt so skilfully with the themes of addiction, failure and snatching redemption a split second before passing out.

Stuffed full of collaborations, the duo has created a multi layered, analogue driven, polished yet powerful long player.

This is a very, very good record.

It may be a scrappier collection than the exquisite, Tindersticks-in-aspic perfection of "The Hungry Saw", but somehow it adds up to something greater, the album as a whole bristling with creativity and the joys of trying something new.

Prepare to be beguiled.

Veirs here is at the peak of her game, and as refreshing as a lungful of oxygen.

'Wonderland' is magnificent. An album full of cracking tunes, potential singles and a new found lust for life from one of the best bands of the last ten years.

Free from the trappings of hype this is simply a great album. Rock 'n' roll: just like they used to make.

If March's "Fishscale" was his "Highway '61 Revisited" or "Innervisions", "More Fish" is "John Wesley Harding" or "Fulfillingness' First Finale". It may lack something of the lustre, but it's still a gem from a master operating very much at the peak of his powers.

Everything is that much thicker, more weathered, generously exaggerated and significantly less innocent. It pays increasing attention to composition and classy song structures and yet more to pulling them apart and lassoing passing listeners with the strands.

'Elephant' is already this year's most crucial purchase.

The good news is that The Polyphonic Spree still make sense stripped of all visual gimmicks.

It's not all brilliant, but there's enough of brilliance here to convince.

"Icky Thump" is really a very odd record indeed, but then, oddness of a particularly bravura nature comes naturally to them.

A far more sonically ambitious statement than its predecessors, perfectly fusing organic sounds with production techniques that are usually the preserve of underground dance producers or R&B mavericks.

'100th Window' is every bit the production masterpiece its predecessors are - in places harkening back to, if not quite matching, the collective's glorious debut.

Written, arranged, performed and recorded by Blake in his bedroom, the album isn't just a good collection of touching songs, it's a complete world of his own; a mood, a moment, a sound that's uniquely his. Just as a future classic should be.

'The Argument' is the sound of a band stretching out and thereby consolidating their position as a unique entity.