Stepping away from the noise and taking an evermore artful approach to heartfelt pop is a bold, brilliantly smart move and on Bark Your Head Off, Dog the results are borderline magical.

Through the Windowpane maximizes and intensifies every moment, every muttered word and every touch of emotion.

While Matt Bellamy drowned in pretension and tone-deaf bombast, Stickles astutely embraces the grandiose, distilling his troubles into some of the sharpest songwriting of his career and a spectacular display of ownership.

Where Everything Everything’s previous releases were as bonkers-crammed full of a surfeit of different stylistic tics, flourishes, embellishments and more not only from song to song within each album but even in every individual track, here, a definite sound and style has been settled on.

The Beatific Visions is one of the most enthralling, deceiving and delightful albums of recent times.

Shelter from the Ash is another masterpiece.

With the likes of 'European Super State' and 'In Cythera' emitting a clubbier vibe amidst their industrialized beats to bring The Singles Collection... up to the present, it serves as a timely reminder why Killing Joke continue to be held in such high esteem.

This is a wonderfully zealous experience, bristling with realised potential and fulfilled ambition.

Illegals in Heaven is not an album you ponder about-the words and the grooves stab your brain and tap fountains of hormones. Blank Realm have done it again, and together they’ll take on the world for love.

Mark T. Smith from Explosions in the Sky and Matthew Cooper of Eluvium have come together as Inventions to construct something that leans on the ingredients of their day-jobs but is simultaneously exactly what a combination of both acts should sound like and somehow greater than the sum.

Silent Alarm's not 100% filler-free - the forgettable 'So Here We Are' could have slipped out the back with little protest - but the autonomy, creativity and sheer, elastic beauty that spans this debut more than justifies the rapidly accelerating hype that Bloc Party are currently generating.

This is a far more stripped down, stream-lined record that remains just as essential and urgent as all their output so far with little to no compromise.

With Compliments Please, Taylor reclaims the path that the industry had laid out for a pretty girl in an indie band--and she proves, with ample sauciness and class, that strong independent women aren’t just riding trends to cash out. This is metaphorical gold.

Nearer My God is daring, flamboyant and consistently thrilling. It won’t make Foxing the biggest band in the world, but it probably should.

Nevertheless, despite its impending theme of hopelessness, Suicide Songs delivers on every level--not least of which is highlighting Jamie Lee as one of the finest wordsmiths of his generation.

From the start, fifth album Mono No Aware strikes a different tone--one that personally gets me right in my soft spot.

As a debut record, La Vie Est Belle / Life is Beautiful is bold, beautiful and brilliantly honed.

the overall sense is that they [The Roots] have reignited him [Costello], the combination of one of England’s great lyricists and production from arguably America’s most forward-thinking band resulting in a crisp, funky, even dangerous sounding album as political and as relevant as anything this year.

Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II represents not only the most overt and successful attempt to capture the patience, subtlety and fluidity of Earth's talented cast, but also the most accurate document of their patient, stoical and determinedly psychedelic ethos.

This is a brilliant, understated, wonderfully crafted record from a band who it feels have been building up to this moment their entire careers.

Individual instruments are easier to identify, and NIN now sound like more of an organic unit that's augmented by machines and electronics, rather than driven by them. It also contains some of the most accessible and light-hearted numbers that Reznor's produced in his career.

What at first appears to be aggression is actually 100 per cent anguish, and the prevailing sense is that, like Black Flag, every ounce of that angst has been funnelled into edge, bone-crunching rigour and the sculpting of their largely unprecedented style into austere angles.

Hinds are here to have fun, whether you like it or not. They may not push past boundaries they are comfortable with, but they have identified the qualities that make them special--carving out their own niche in the modern music spectrum of loveable lo-fi embedded with off-kilter charm.

It’s melodically strong enough, and bursting with so many ideas that it feels incredibly timeless: futuristic and classic all at once.

There’s a zip and kick to it, with big melodies (huge in the case of ‘Blk Stallion’) and clever turns of pace.

Once more, Ellery James Roberts finds himself with a unique project that may well burn so intense that there are no corners left to light.

It’s a very strong album, one that I found myself wanting to listen to over and over again. Highly recommended.

Ultimately, Men’s Needs… is brighter, sharper and just plain better than anything The Cribs have produced to date.