Quite simply, Alight Of Night is one of the most breathtaking records these ears have been partial to in a long while, and even if Crystal Stilts never make another record, their legacy is assured.

She is intensely self-aware and, accordingly, is able to take all the inelegancies of youth--the stumbles out of nightclub doors, the clothes strewn across the bedroom floor, how apocalyptic that first heartbreak feels--and turn them into something exquisite.

The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs is a symphony in freedom, and a potent testament to Wye Oak’s ambition moving forwards, the possibilities for this band are limitless.

The Gotobeds are as incendiary (and/or combustible) as ever.

With its unfurled imaginativeness, Vega INTL. Night School is unimaginatively the album you would expect from Neon Indian by now--one that comfortably and sublimely manages to work inside and outside of the expectations set by their previous work.

Nash hasn't just tried to continue her legacy as one of the UK's most iconic, honest and innovative pop sensations… she has completely rewritten it.

From start to finish this is an unexpected adventure through the crossover, leaving the door of the VIP bunker open for us all to sneak in.

Nearly half the length of his debut, Big Fish Theory is tightly-wound and laser-focused, yet covers a huge amount of ground, simultaneously showcasing Staples at the most pumped-up and most fragile we’ve yet seen him. His word play is spectacular even when his flow isn’t at its most natural.

It’s not often you find music that lives and breathes with such conviction that you find itself swept away in the charm of it all. That Do Make Say Think have achieved this lofty standard yet again shouldn’t come as a shock, yet it’s testament to their enduring talent that, at every turn, Other Truths continues to surprise and enthrall in equal measure.

Beach House have created as profound an invocation of the sacred and the sentimental as you’re ever likely to hear.

Promise delivered, divided by expectations frenzied, multiplied by still-evident potential for future releases… equals a Pitchfork-style 8.6.

While getting the most out of this work takes a couple listens with at least one (simultaneous) read through with all your concentration, it’s worth every second and every bit of energy.

What is different, however, is the focus the band have found. In the past, there's been an unfortunate tendency to take songs a chorus too far, but that doesn't appear to be an issue any more.

This is a superb album by three supremely talented musicians. More than that, it is an ideal reminder of the perfection that--even in today’s digital climate--can still be reached through letting three such talents simply play in a room together. Undoubtedly one of the true highlights of 2018.

Individually as good as much of BTC, the bonus material is almost as listenable as the album itself.

Far from succumbing to the simplicities of a simple mash up record or a standard mixtape, Edan has created a flowing, evolving piece of music as liquid as the basslines he’s so fond of sampling, that has never yet failed to bring a grin to my face.

Though there’s a paucity of joy to be found among proceedings, other aspects of You Are The One I Pick (even the title’s a barbed double entendre!) actively compensate.

This is the exquisite album we were promised, and perhaps an important one.

While Dulli’s working from his usual palette of muddy grooves, guitar-scree and leering swagger, the new album sounds more urgent and lucid in intention than its predecessors.

With their third album, Liars have succeeded in creating the near-impossible; a conceptual work that speaks to the emotions and the intellect simultaneously.

A Weekend In The City is the aural adaptation, a digital manifestation, of what it’s like to be a twenty-something in Britain, today. It’s dirty, dishevelled, unsure and paranoid; fearful, easily distracted, boisterous and ashamed; reckless, wild, nervous and terrified; graceful, thought-provoking, clumsy and contradictory. And it’s very nearly perfect.

As a document of the way Belle And Sebastian have grown up in public to the sturdy staple of indie pop they now represent on a global scale, 'Push Barman...' is an essential collection of work that simply cements their status as one of the most inspirational musical collectives to have embraced punk's D.I.Y ethic since the late 1970s.

It’s a little bit adventurous, capable of surprising sidesteps, but remains safely at home in Electrelane’s own engagingly individual aesthetic.

It is a record marked by a weary wonder at the departure of something huge from the world – Victorian invention and enterprise, the ages of steam and discovery, the impossible cruelty of empire, all fading into a half-remembered dream.

The album showcases their massive creativity and playfulness and is a fitting testament to the power of pop music to move your heart and head as well as your feet.

Get Tragic, quite candidly, is a virtually perfect record. There’s nothing about it that’s out of place. It draws on the best parts of the band’s past history, catchy choruses, glam-rock guitars, electronic riffs that don’t leave your mind for days, mind-blowing lyrics--all combined with a glamour that lurks at the edge of the hometown you escaped, as the sun slowly sets.

Enough variety is here, and it all fits together as beautifully as Let It Die did.

The social context of this album is not necessarily crucial to its enjoyment; you can just as easily take it all at face value, as a gorgeously woven soul record that will doubtless be able to shift shape to suit all manner of listening environments. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter which angle you take with Black Messiah. It’s a masterpiece from all of them.

One of the most hauntingly beautiful records you'll ever hear.

In producer David Fridman, whose psychedelic instincts have added glow to everything from Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev to Creaming Jesus, MGMT and Sleater Kinney, Lovely Eggs have found a collaborator who understands that warmth, weirdness and wit can be melted into walls of queasy noise to quite gorgeous effect. Between them they’ve made something genuinely glorious. There’s nothing funny about that.

The new record by Vampire Weekend is the best alternative pop album you will hear this year. Unselfconscious, technically brilliant in a way that crucially you will never actually notice, shimmering with beautiful, strange melodies and just a small smidge of actual bonkers.

Historian feels like a universe that exists before time, somewhere to reach up to when you need to express something greater than yourself. And Dacus shows us the way, with grace and patience and the quiet confidence of writers twice her age.

Laurel Halo’s most ecstatically esoteric effort to date, which, in the case of this artist at least, is another way of saying that is both her best and her most joyously listenable.

When ambition is your only criticism, you know you’re probably onto something quite special.

It is, in a word, magnificent.

As for the deluxe aspects of this release, the record sounds about as good as it always did.

Occasionally, rarely, a record comes along that restores our faith. If this is the future of pop-music, then sign me up.

Out of all the stellar releases in 2014, this collaboration is the one which is most likely to stay with us all, and the one from which the most new conclusions will be made as years in the future, we’re still dissecting and seeking to understand the stories and emotions captured therein.

Gang Gang Dance, however, have found their voice in a world of retro revivalists and fly-by-night trendhoppers. It's whatever they want it to be, and it's awesome.

The weight of it all means it could be quite impenetrable for some, and it nearly crashes under it's own heaviness sometimes--but for those of us with a melancholic heart, this could be our record of the year.

A wonderful surprise.

The 19 songs form a 39-minute-long cohesive whole which looses its meaning once shuffled or reorganised. What could come across as a mash-up of jam sessions slowly reveals its internal coherence.

A most wonderful storm of a record indeed.

The band has pulled off the difficult trick of sculpting a record concerned with weighty, complex themes and made it sound like the breeziest, most effortless thing in the world: a collection of fleet, shimmering pop songs; a master-class in sonic splendour; a bold, beautiful and brilliant reinvention that should surprise as many as it will enthrall.

Primary Colours is a reminder that young British bands can actually progress to brilliant new heights, and perhaps, just perhaps, the occasional surprise in these media saturated times isn’t as endangered a beast as previously thought.

The list of reasons to be angry have grown exponentially in the brief intervening period, so it only makes sense that Mirror is the way it is. Staring into the abyss is rarely this stupefying and spectacular.

This is the sound of a gang who've never been tighter, and a postcard of their journey that couldn't have captured them at a higher peak.

Picking out highlights from a treasure chest overflowing with golden nuggets is a tough call, but Inspiral Carpets' 'Theme From Cow' off their unsurpassed and impossible to find Plane Crash EP, *8Kitchens Of Distinction's shoegaze prototype 'Prize', Thrilled Skinny's introduction to fraggle 'So Happy To Be Alive' and Mancunian oddballs King Of The Slums**' 'The Pennine Spitter' are just four of many reasons why this compilation should be high on every music completist's shopping list.

Intelligent indie-rockers, look nor listen no further for your possible album of the year.

Where Andrew Bird succeeds so fervently with Noble Beast is in endowing it a vital, quixotic sense of humanity.

Diehard fans needn’t worry that Autechre have diluted themselves in that respect, for Oversteps is still a challenging listen, and one which reveals endless layers of new detail with each spin. But it’s also their most instantly rewarding – and arguably best--album to date.

It’s a record without a weak link, that doesn’t outstay its welcome, and excites you about the possibility of seeing it all played live.

'Capture/Release' may not be the jolliest record in the world, but perversely, it’s damn good fun and a heck of a lot more.

As the title suggests, it's a record which marks a transition for The Roots but which, like the America it addresses, is still aware of the burden of the recent past.

She writes beats and creates streetwise slithery DogPop with b-lines and brawn and occasionally shows us that wide-open vulnerability is as vital and visceral as virulent heartsteppin’ sin-sharing.

Hurrah for all those who delight in confounding expectations, especially when the results are this unexpectedly, paradoxically delightful.

The coherence of Tempest is the hypnotic key to its charm.

It’s the often perfect synthesis between lyrical content and production on OB4CLII that makes the album simply sublime.

On A Bedroom Wall is a work of music that won't be matched this year for its pained beauty.

If you’ve even the slightest interest in ‘heavy’ music, you simply must make Saturday Night Wrist an integral part of your record collection.

This is an intellectual jaunt that reveals the beauty of pop music, both musically and lyrically.

As its title suggests All Nerve is never a passive listen, it shifts you, touches a nerve, and leaves a timely mark.

Wells’s piano is still the most dominant instrument on display, and Moffat is still crafting haunting tales of ageing regret and frustration. There is, however, something bizarrely hopeful about The Most Important Place in the World at times.

Total Strife Forever is that scarcest of things; a masterly record which walks a unpredictable line musically yet remains entirely consistent in quality.

With one less guitarist, bass lines lie exposed more often than before; the riffs that should sheath them are scorched, ripped, patched. Even without reading into the lyrics, songs like 'Running All Over the Wicket' stab with enough Melvins-ish menace to draw blood. And where other albums offered some reprieve from the violence (like 'City of Exploded Children' or 'French Lessons'), there’s no rest in sight here.

Occasionally shrouded in sadness but with happiness always beating from its core, My Maudlin Career lays bare the sweet melancholy of love.

Paramore feels far more human and honest than anything the band have committed to tape to date, and even at its most intense, the record feels intimate (or at least like a gig happening in the back corner of your mind).

At times hypnotic and otherworldly, it's a soothing, unsettling and challenging listen.

Both a likely contender for the finest indie rock record of the year, then, and a breathtakingly chaotic venture far beyond that genre's remit.

A record that will endure beyond this year, this decade and the rest.

While Erickson provided the 'text', Sheff had to present it with the right level of reverence, being careful to highlight, and not undermine, this record of struggle and redemption.

There is an energy to Cry, Cry, Cry that simply got lost in the storm Apologies created. After some time away to re-group, it seems, Wolf Parade have re-found that spark.

This is music that challenges and provokes.

This collection of his most ambient and interesting soundtracks is presented here in a contemporary art crescendo; and features the good, the better and the synthesized from his artsy endeavours.

With the current renaissance of the one-man band genre, it's pleasing to see that we now have a modern-day figurehead worthy of rock’s glorious past.

In There is Love in You we see one of the last decade’s most early pioneers reminding us all that he’s still just as important as ever.

The focus is there, the execution is there. It’s a record that delivers, satisfies, challenges and is occasionally sublime.

Two Dancers, then, doesn't so much follow up their debut as announce Wild Beasts as one of our genuinely special bands, one that can compete--in terms of both musical and lyrical ingenuity as well as sheer pop nous--with any US act you've seen talked up in the music press this year.

Furman has not lost his terrific way with a tune, a rhythm and a lyric, this time often paired up with odd sound effects or quirky instrumentation that just make it all the more compelling and moreish. Although the subject matter can be heavy (and all the better for it), it is presented in fabulous slowly-building pop tune wrapping.

‘Probot’ is the full length dream of a teenage metalhead.

If... you’re already a fan, this is definitely worth a listen, not only for the interest value, but for the multiple songs which are simply brilliant Bad Seeds moments.

With its mix of Tamil pop, Baltimore beats and, yes, funk carioca Kala succeeds best in pulling genres together to make something both unique and identifiable --a 'hip-hop' record that explores what it means to sing about "hip-hop things."

It’s just brilliant.

The cumulative effect--somewhere around being lifted into the heavens by sunrays--is at odds with the continuous black clouds that come before. Yet it’s a necessary chink of light to conclude a journey so oppressive you may just forget to breathe through its duration.

Mutual Horse is a feast for the senses, demonstrating Miranda’s potential. She is truly an underrated artist with exceptional talent and imagination.

The work of three individuals arriving at the peak of their powers, it’s likely to be the band’s OK Computer, their Music For The Jilted Generation, their Dark Side Of The Moon – the record that everything they produce subsequently is immediately unfairly rated against, ‘til time’s own sands sit still.

The achievement of The Seldom Seen Kid is that Elbow manage to be both incredibly consistent and perpetually improving.

This is a terrifying, wise album.

On One-Armed Bandit they’ve mutated into an even stranger beast; a chimera constructed of parts from wildly different musics that somehow work as a whole and which should only really exist in the most fevered imaginations.

Ultimately Thing is an album that exceeds expectations, not to mention revealing new trajectories with every subsequent listen. Whether a heavy indulger or casual fan of electronically based music, it's hard to envisage a better record than Thing emerging from any of its sub-genres this year.

Every Valley is certainly an important and timely record, but happily it's also an extremely satisfying and moving one. While it may not have the obvious scope of their breakthrough record The Race for Space it has something important to tell us about the times we live in and the hard, heartbreaking lessons we should all be learning from the past.

Treat it like a work-of-art, you might be moved to see shapes too. Treat it like a comeback album, and you might find you miss the point. Open your minds, your ears, your energy--and it will show you incredible sights.

It’s broodingly mechanic, and yet harrowingly human; it’s truly Bristolian, and neither futuristic nor nostalgic; it’s simply and unignorably now.

In the final assessment what we’ve got here are a set of pop songs that are almost uniformly brilliant, captured in a fashion that harks back to the band’s beginnings, presented beautifully and with pride.

Look beneath the surface sheen, then, and you'll see gratefully receive This Gift as the best, most complete, Sons And Daughters long-player to date.

It is a towering, complex achievement and startling progression to boot.

That music so majestically restrained in pace can make your heart beat so quickly is a testament to The Besnard Lakes’ focus and ability to coat each millisecond of track time with an utterly captivating sound without ever becoming clogged up with their myriad ideas.

If Cathal Cully's aim was to leave the past behind then he's succeeded resoundingly, and created one of this year's most ungainly beautiful records in the process.