Whereas the band's 2004 long-player was a studied exercise in melancholic understatement, melded to some mightily addictive pop hooks, this ten-tracker is an immediately gratifying affair that pulls not a single punch in the catchiness stakes.

That it’s a certainty for inclusion in critical end-of-year top tens is a given.

Here, Aereogramme have created something more than deserving of all the praise lavished upon it.

Live at the BBC is obviously preposterously big (I'm kind of relieved not to have been sent the accompanying DVD), but actually that’s kind of fine in the digital era – it’s not that old fashioned beast ‘the live album’, but a whole sprawling history to immerse yourself in, eras hurtling by.

A collection of songs as captivating, poignant and finally, ultimately, redemptive as any that Stevens has produced.

This is pop music with a real soul to it, and Camera Obscura have bared it magnificently.

It really is one of the best things he’s ever put his name to.

An album-long search for new ways to express old thoughts, and far from any prescribed formula of tempos and buggery that would entail techno or drum n’ bass or other electronic information media.

With a humble ten songs, Hynes banishes our woes and turns a shoulder to the glut of all too mundane music released this year, reminding us that someone can still make a perfectly influenced yet original collection of songs. This is how a record should be made.

Learning is a likewise bruised [as the album cover] and suggestive affair; of catharsis and rare, redemptive beauty, which ranks as one of the most uniquely endearing and quietly forceful debut albums of recent years.

Spiderwebbed is dreamy, it's beautiful and it's one of 2012's finest debut albums without question.

Live At The Cellar Door is a treasure chest that holds the glowing embers of a brilliant, already burgeoning career.

I Speak Because I Can is an album of elegance and brilliance. Marling has developed from her debut, and her voice has grown both physically and lyrically.

Despite the handful of standout tracks, what makes Hidden unique is the way it flows as a cohesive whole.

Avatar may not be as intense or as out-of-loop as expected, but its otherworldy mix of prog-rock and freeform more than lives up to the expectations formed in the wake of 2004's Blue Cathedral.

Årabrot are still unhinged. There’s still the sense that this is a dangerous band.... However, here we also see a side of Årabrot that’s ever more suitable for the fading, decaying grandeur that surrounds all of us: one that is increasingly sonically diverse and eloquent.

It’s one of the most thrilling and confident debut records of the year.

The third album by Glasgow’s Chvrches, Love is Dead, is the sound of your heart as it falls back in love.

It shows that jazz isn’t confined to the past, or dusty records, and is loud, vibrant, angry at society and has something to say. It shows that Onyx Collective can rub shoulders with any band and give as good as they get. It also shows that Onyx Collective can write music flawless music, as well as just jam the bangers out, and have fun doing it.

Uninterested in zipping from A to B, it is instead a moving, repeatedly devastating depiction of an artist who is still trying to figure out his place in the world as he moves forward in life, ever mindful of what we leave behind, the things said and left unspoken, the good and the bad that comes with trying to make it all make sense and the sobering knowledge that we cannot go back.

This is yet another example of Hot Snakes at the top of their game, except this time they gave 14 years in exile for other, lesser bands to catch up with them only to reclaim the throne with ease.

One can only hazard a guess as to what her next venture will sound like, but if whokill is anything to go by, tUnE yArDs' prospects are endless.

Animal Collective have made the album I hoped they’d make, and even that it’s autumn and summer’s over.

Each track contains a melodic or harmonic flourish, a synth layer, a moment of unexpected aggression or vulnerability which shows that, at the same time as delivering a potentially career-defining album, there is the exciting potential of so much further that Lily and Madeleine could go.

There’s no way he sounds 19.

It's astounding that AB can reel off so many downright enjoyable songs that it almost hurts.

As an album Candela has everything: it's energetic and adventurous but these adjectives are synonymous with Mice Parade’s constant journeying through music.

Form and function crystallize together here, and man does it feel so right.