It's the (insert made-up genre here, including the word 'progressive' and/or suffix '-core') album of the year.

You won’t hear a more exhilarating, dizzying record for a long time to come.

‘Nurse’ is the closest to creating a landmark on parallel with ‘Daydream Nation’ they’ve come since that particular record's nameday in ‘88, and in it’s dense textures it maybe signals the extinction of the antediluvian No Wave idyll; a Robert Zimmerman trip that somehow got mixed up with Joni Mitchell, Black Flag and a conceptualist oddball.

Colin Stetson is matchless, his record glorious, and you’ll likely never experience silence as dramatically as the moment when All This I do for Glory concludes.

Arguably the most influential rock album ever recorded... everyone that matters – and many who don't – between Bowie and Radiohead cites it as an influence.

Where Subtle use many words to convey many things, I will use one: perfection.

Past, present, and future rest patiently before Hoop, and she’s weaved them all into her most endearing album yet.

'Cuckoo Cuckoo' is another moment in which Animal Collective reach a new level of compositional mastery and broaden their territory.

One of the most illuminating facets of The Cutting Edge is what an unequivocal testament it is, both to the layered ingenuity of the session musicians and Dylan’s self-ordained composing pursuits.

It's practically a compulsory purchase.

It’s a vivid and beautiful painting that you can walk into; a magic window into another world that I'd be happy to get lost in, and never come back.

A remarkable record that simply demands your attention.

Stunning and dizzying, Sung Tongs’ strangeness will spin around your head for months to come.

Syro sees a master craftsman return with renewed inspiration. And while it might not technically be James' most innovative album, it way well be his best: his most complete and engaging under the guise of Aphex Twin.

With Pastoral Bernholz, excavates beneath the superficial lush turf of England’s green and pleasant land to reveal an angry mix of ancient and contemporary pus-filled sores.

If you’ve any interest, whatsoever, in rock music in any of its subgenre forms, you need to afford Blood Mountain some considerable attention.

The focus is all in forcing just a tiny a glimpse of the endless vastness of life outside of our species. Plonk yourself down, and wait for it to wallop you.

This is an important--a very important--piece of work that will stand the test of time. It’s also an utter blast to listen to and live with.

I Am A Bird Now is a beautiful, emotive, glorious, and sometimes sinister album that will top many a critic's list come the end-of-year polls, and justifiably so.

In fact, if anything time has only the strengthened the chemistry of the band, distilling its essence in to something much purer than its base product. In a year of excellent records, American Football have quite possibly made the best.

With his debut record Jamie T has--whether he meant to or not-- sound-tracked perfectly the condition of being, as described in Michael Bracewell's book "England Is Mine," today's ‘suburban dandy.'

The xx lay out all of their pieces beautifully. There are no extraneous parts. Not a second that they didn't intend. As a result, songs like 'Tides' or 'Chained' unfold as naturally as a ripple of wind.

It’s beautiful and utterly captivating in its own way and, after all the band and Lytle have been through, that’s triumphant enough.

An Introduction to Elliott Smith constitutes a worthy glimpse and gateway into a discography that has enchanted so many over the years. There are 14 songs here; 14 finer you'll seldom hear.

For all the remarkably fluid dialogue in Constant Image, none of that would matter if the songs didn’t connect in the first place. And reader, boy do they! Songs like 'Punching Up' and 'Pressure' sound like lost gems that popped up on your local college radio station.

'Mercury' from 1993 is widely regarded as AMC's finest moment, albeit their flawed masterpiece. This new album is right up there with it, and 1990's 'Everclear', too.

An extremely compelling, beautifully articulated, bonafide masterpiece.

Visions of a Life is a phenomenal achievement. It has captured on record the thrill, angst, sadness and uncertainty of being in your twenties and not really knowing what’s going to happen or should happen. All of it is never anything less than intoxicating, heartfelt and effortless.

It is utterly engaging, totally absorbing and, well, absolutely essential.

Banhart is a complete antidote to all the consumer focus groups or hit-writers, too scared to tamper with the formula. He has stumbled upon a personal Eureka that says there're no laws governing what can be written about in song except self-imposed ones and he's taken that to his heart, and in Technicolor.

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.

It’s unpredictable, ridiculously clever, catchy as hell and as perfect a pop album as you’re ever likely to hear.

A bittersweet symphony that remains unparalleled.

Whatever all this means, Dragonslayer is an album to get your teeth into. As on the final chorus, it's: "a bigger kind of kill". You need this.

The Seer is the culmination of Gira's 30-year-journey; his finest two hours, if you will.

A work of formidable and pristine beauty.

With their debut Mbongwana Star have made a really classic record for the ages, and what’s more, one that could shape a whole lot of music to come.

Stetson is stepping it up a notch; inexplicably adding drama to the music that is already steeped in powerful emotional sensations.

The Money Store thrills like no other set heard this year.

True Widow have laid down an album so strong that I can't see anything usurping it as album of the year for me (or anyone else who gives it a few listens). And at the end of April, that's a mighty bold claim. But the glove is on the floor now, and everyone else will simply have to step up or cower away and hide.

Thirty years later and Appetite For Destruction still packs a visceral thrill; a combination of real attitude and proper songcraft that very few bands, if any, have ever combined so perfectly.

With this fine writing, you show us you, unguarded, complex, sincere, like a dear friend I’ve invited over for tea that I haven’t seen in ages.

If you only buy one album this year, make it Finelines.

It’s a determined, seductive experience, brimming with belief and completely torching everything they’ve done before. As of now, The Twilight Sad are basically untouchable.

Daze challenges the listener more than most dime-a-dozen electronic music.

The opening half of 'Penance...' alone blows every so-called rock act polluting our airwaves clean away, such is the savage malevolence that resonates within every single syllable that spouts from Joe Cardamone's mouthful of poison.

A truly elemental opus.

Halo cements itself into yr ears. This is logic in motion, and it’s dead beautiful to watch every piece of these puzzles fall into place.

It’s the closeness and the honesty which makes ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ a thing of awe.

Room remains Ought’s most beautiful--yes, beautiful--album to date.

Bluntly, if you consider yourself in any way interested in rock music and don't already own this album, you're doing yourself a rather large disservice.

Master is a record of real and rare magnificence.

With Highway Hypnosis, the cool kid sets the trend yet again--now floating almost entirely away from the bass, Moolchan cranks down the tempo for a decisively more urban flair that draws from the streets of Lisbon, Atlanta, and London in equal measure. And somehow, even with all this new swag, our sneaky protagonist loses none of the prankster wit that turned heads in the first place.

Overall, Still In A Dream: A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995 is an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in the genre. And while the omission of certain acts make it just fall short of being definitive, there's more than enough sonic gold here to compensate.

Brutally hip-hop with post-punk tendencies, Ratking’s debut album is a wonderfully dystopic record that is as progressive as it is anarchist. Ratking really is that thing.

This isn't a rave record. It was never supposed to be. It's a wildly varying catalogue of melody and energy that eschews genre and scene in favour of songwriting and awe-inspiringly beefy production.

There’s enough continental plate-shifting histrionics to keep any unsatisfied Godspeed! fans amused.

My album of the year - whatever year it is.

Bursting with new inspiration and direction, After the Party is the triumphant sound of a songwriting duo reaping the rewards of those sacrifices, a group of friends on an unstoppable streak of home runs.

He is, however, a radiant example of an artist with the ability at his fingertips to close the schism between the true avant-garde and the leftfield mainstream, and in this respect Until the Quiet Comes is the record to date we'll most likely crown his masterpiece.

Their best yet: it’s multi-faceted like no release before it (from the band’s catalogue), and each and every nuance is super funky.

In lesser hands, it would simply be an unfocused scrappy mess, but Braids have taken all this and managed to create one of the finest records of the year so far.

The instrumental skill that Deerhoof loyalists have come to love abounds, and front and centre is a resounding, absurdist joy.

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.