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.

What they’ve made is a bold body of work that sounds effortless and odd and sophisticated. What they do next is likely to be stadium-filling and bonkers and brilliant, but it matters little when what they're doing now is so sensational.

There's no romance on this album. Nothing shine a stark white light on reality. As they always have.

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.

Her voice sounds so goddamn fresh, spontaneous, uncompromised. There's an intensely visceral quality to these performances that is so utterly compelling.

With Spaces he goes one further--successfully channelling the chills of an actual performance, and making a genuine connection with his listener even in recorded form.

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.

This is an organic, homegrown creation that sounds as though it's had a lot of time and love invested in it; lend an inquisitive ear and find yourself instantly besotted.

Though by no means as manic as previous Deerhoof long-players, this is a intriguing record which stands up next to the bewildering excellence of Runners Four.

Kveikur is as melodic and, in places, as fragile as anything the band have released before.

Representing UK production at its best, SBTRKT's self-titled album is playful yet gritty.

His work until now can only be seen as preparing the ground for this body of work, an album so satisfying, accomplished and beautiful.

It’s more immediate, more instantly gratifying and more technically proficient, but there are also dark, difficult corners which hint at hidden terror.

These songs are timeless. These songs are addictive. These songs are great. Why can't every album be like this?

Mumps, etc. simultaneously feels like a fresh start and consolidation for the band; it encapsulates what makes them so unique while subtly expanding and pushing forward their sound, and as such must be viewed a real triumph.

This record is a testament to its creators’ endurance. It has also resulted in an absolute creative peak.

Like its predecessor, Now Only lays profoundly bare Elverum’s grief. But although it is often an excruciating listen, it also finds room to step, however briefly, outside of the agony that marked its predecessor, if just for long enough to suggest that Elverum is, somehow, beginning to find some relief in the unbearable.

It is arresting, but not desperate for your attention like an invalid. Coming down or getting up, Coracle will do the trick.

Prisoner isn’t a heartbreak record--it’s potentially the heartbreak record, for my generation at least. Turns out sadness really is quite the currency.

Not since Mansun's "Six" have I heard an album twist its songs into a musical Lombard Street--and I can already picture the audience screaming its approval in the break--before a wall of static and synthesizers takes us home. And home is a little nicer place to be after taking a ride on Spirit If...

The whole thing is put together with such love that nothing ever feels like a burden, nor an obligation. First and foremost, this is an LP which can be enjoyed by anyone. You don’t need to know the album’s backstory to be swayed by its charm.

Album two may see an outline of refinement established, but for now their doldrums meanderings are more exhilarating than many acts’ most-accomplished must-haves, making this a two-from-two contender for a top-ten year-end finish.

Plumb is a good bet for the end of year polls already.

This is a modern masterpiece, it's as simple as that.

Divorced from the accompanying visuals, the exercise proves less engaging overall. In context, however, it is legitimately hypnotic and soothing, as if Bob Ross was reincarnated with woodwork on the brain.

This emotive disc balances a hushed intimacy and vast expanse that places it in a unique sonic terrain.

Achtung Baby is worth the admission fee alone and ultimately a must-have addition to anyone's music collection.