Even for those who already have both of the previous volumes, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions is a fascinating look at one of America's greatest writers.

Nouns is truly psyched, soaring sound.

13 Blues… scores 10 in almost every sense, but to award such an accolade would imply this is a record never to be bettered.

Having greedily sucked the Tapes blog dry of every note I could find without so much as a by your leave to the chap generous enough to share his creations with a bunch of strangers, I waited for Seek Magic's release tingling like a tuning fork and hoping he wouldn't pull a Big Pink on me. He didn't. Seek Magic is probably my favourite album of the year.

A majestic return that doesn't just fill in the gaps, but points unflinchingly towards future horizons.

Apocalypse is very literally a rewarding and difficult second album, with its roots in tragedy and loss and its furthermost fronds in hope and moving forward, an album that challenges listeners with an incredible level of subtlety, hidden depths and wash of openly expressed emotion.

Thankfully, One Thousand Pictures was well worth the wait.

The album has a conceptual and sonic unity that goes a long way to explaining its greatness: The Lioness isn’t a collection of songs, it’s a state of mind, or a state of the soul.

This is not background music to relax to, though there’s something undeniably calming in its beauty. It’s music to be consumed in, sink into its depths and float on its updrafts. To revel in its celebrations and mourn with its grief and feel all that it means to exist within universal existence. If that seems excessive, well sometimes hyperbole feels justified. Stop, listen and be in love with the world once again.

Fans expecting moving, but wearily delivered, post-rock may be disappointed with that position, but it may just have seen Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra produce a classic. At the very least it is the culmination of a discography that has always been leading to this as its high point.

Truly, Wide Awake! is a success all round--the joyous sound of a band taking everything that makes them great and amplifying it, toying with it and producing something even greater.

In other words, it’s exactly what a Pavement retrospective should be - a heavily slanted, palpably enchanted slab of richly flawed anarcho-pop.

For now, let’s revel in the fact there’s a record that swings from sumptuous sprawls to ear-sizzling riffs.

Throughout these eight tracks, she intuitively navigates within the dark and mysterious space of her psyche: an undomesticated, sometimes precarious landscape bustling with flora and fauna. With that rare quality of sounding both grand and plaintive, Fohr’s voice is accompanied by a prowling organ on ‘Brainshift’, as if scrutinising the terrain up on a hillside.

This record is as on disco and early house's dick as much as Britpop was on The Beatles' and The Kinks'.

Hookworms never come across as arrogant, showy or self-indulgent. They have managed to follow a logical musical progression which will undoubtedly blow many minds.

Benji contains some of the most evocative songs about mortality and youth that have ever been written.

With Peanut Butter, Joanna Gruesome have raised the bar.

It’s raw, human, stripped of all excess and laid bare--and it’s quite possibly the most beautiful thing the band has ever released. Near perfection.

The Infinity Machines strain occurs in eight stages, each with varying intensities of drone.

An exquisite album by anyone's standards.

Wells and Moffat have created a stunning album that assures us of the death and decay that is to come, but equally, they tell us, as long as we are still around, there is life to be lived, and music like this to be heard.

Set Yourself On Fire could become your favourite record, and Stars should justifiably be many people's favourite band.

Sleater-Kinney are one of the great rock bands and No Cities To Love is the perfect comeback: a treat for die-hard fans as well, a perfect introduction for newcomers--and what a journey that’ll be.

There’s a master at work, no doubt about it, but he’s already living in the future writing complex symphonies, letting the rest of us know that everything’s going to be ok.

Whereas before in their career the four-piece seemingly tossed myriad elements about with little to no regard for the actual acceptability of the composition at hand, here each and every piece – pieces that truly do flow into one another quite magically – sinks into the listener’s synapses silkily, short-circuiting them through disbelief rather than a simmering intolerance.

An album as beautifully conceived as If You Leave is one you follow from start to finish, riveted by the story it weaves and the emotion it bleeds.

There's an honesty of emotions, accentuated through the denseness and complexity of sounds.