In shedding his layers of pain, Pearson reveals his heart: broken and bloodied, but still beating, still fighting. We share and revere in his redemption, rarely has something so physically fragile sounded so mighty in its emotional resonance. A truly magnificent record.

Opener ‘Breathe’ raises shivers with its breakdown and descending strings, ‘Flowers’ has the queasy intensity of My Bloody Valentine and makes elegant use of space and balance, while ‘JOY’ is a throbbing fuzz monster, all desperation and thunder. Again and again the trio wrap drama in something shimmering and glorious, like aural pigs-in-blankets, weaving intricate and catchy lead lines and rattling snare fills between huge pillars of sonic emotion.

To call it album of the year at this stage wouldn't so much be pre-emption as an actual understatement.

It is a stupendous work of art. R.E.M. are essentially a band that work on an emotional level, and this is their most emotionally articulate record: sad and painful, but also funny, raging, exultant, yearning. That it was an enormous hit is a slight distraction, 25 years on. But the music wins out.

The album is the real star here, sounding as fresh, vital and universally accessible as ever 25 years down the line.

The new album, Relationship of Command, is one of the most amazing collections of music I have ever heard.

Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art-rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way towards justifying the amount of gushing praise that's been heaped upon this album since its September release on Merge last year. The fact that the music is so paradoxically life-affirming and euphoric makes it much easier to write, what now feel like, trite hyperboles.

The result is what separates indie music from the contemporary mainstream: an actual album, a 40-minute body of work with a sense of cohesiveness that isn’t designed to be broken down into Spotify playlists or end-of-year 'best of 2014' mixtapes.

For anyone interested in music that works both as art and an intensely new exciting experience--this is easily the best album that has come out this year.

This is bliss, it's that simple.

It is untouchable and timeless.

Not only a deftly realised, enchanting meditation on time and its vagaries, the record is effectively a celebration of what we, as time’s denizens, are able to accomplish within it.... Divers is a colossal achievement.

A record this willing to go the absolute distance to challenge expectations yet entertain and move so consistently should equally be heralded in such high regard [as Screamadelica], which in time, this will.

One of the most assured, unashamedly danceable albums that we’ve heard for quite a while.

Pearl Mystic just happens to be one of those records that embodies perfection.

All Things Under Heaven is on another level.

It’s a crisp, clear makeover that gives the record a greater definition and focus without piling on the polish, tightening it but toughening it too.

Jherek Bischoff does not mess around. It’s amazing to see an artist make such pure, uncompromising music.

Seriously: this is one of 2007’s finest LPs, no question.

It's an exceptionally accomplished piece of work that should place Matchbook Romance at the forefront of the cutting edge, POST-emo scene.

A two-hour odyssey of similar proportions to The Seer, this is an album that emphasises rather than establishes Swans' reconfirmed position at the top of the experimental rock tree, but that doesn’t make it any less of a thrill.

It’s continuously changing, perfectly timed, evenly spaced--an impeccable album.

It's an absolute must-buy release.

This is ageless music, and utterly, one hundred per cent essential.

It’s spellbinding.

This is one of the most rich and accomplished albums of recent times. Essential.

Well, Elverum clearly needed to vent this stuff and to share it with the wider world and you’re unlikely to find a more powerfully eulogistic record released this year. Arguably ever.

It might just be one of those rare treasures which keep us reluctantly, unstoppably, coming back again and again.