A stunning debut then, and one that will make Fleet Foxes one of the most sought after bands of the year.

It all adds up to the sound of a band developing and maturing nicely, without ever losing sight of what made them so great in the first place.

Electric finds Pet Shop Boys more daring and accomplished than most pop stars half their age.

So much of the delight of listening to music comes from the lyrical, our tacit affiliation with the rage, wit or pathos an artist wishes to project. This record goes some way to appropriate the perception of being wordless, hushed by the beauty of the world we inhabit.

This may well be Holter’s most accessible album to date, but it’s this very approachability that renders it all the more intriguing, drawing you in with open arms. Stately and serene, it’s a wilderness that begs to be inhabited for some time, a country you’ll be reluctant to leave.

There isn't a duff track to be seen, and you get the feeling the whole thing's been meticulously planned and orchestrated, with a mindset of giving us a record to cherish, something to put on when the chips are down, and that rare thing, one that will almost certainly be loved in equal measure many years down the line.

MASSEDUCTION is nothing less than an absolutely towering achievement.

It’s more conceptually consistent, more musically accomplished, more of pretty much everything that she’s ever done before – and what she was already doing was verging on masterly. Filthy Underneath is already a contender for Album of the Year, and it will take something truly exceptional to beat it.

Liars have not only been reborn creatively, they’ve emerged with by far the most accessible album of the band’s illustrious career to date.

In short, every song is an earworm, and Lianne La Havas’ third album is haunting in the way only inspiring music can claim to be; a beautiful ghost to soundtrack your life to. ... Truly captivating.

Double Negative is an album that will endure for a long time. It’s a thrilling development that proves how Low continue to release music of extremely high standards, restlessly creative and never content to stand still.

A beautiful, dramatic, idiosyncratic album from a beautiful, dramatic, idiosyncratic band.

Opening track Last Breath is worth the price of the record alone. It provides the album’s title, all the more poetic when encountered in the grief-stricken context of the song: “I didn’t understand how beauty holds the hands of sorrow / How today can outshine tomorrow.” The production here is wonderful, with crystal clear dynamics and a real contrast between intimate and sublime.

Brash, poetic, and romantically obtuse, even from the grave Alan Vega is as challenging as he is charming.

Origin: Orphan is even more extraordinary; a howling, mechanistic piece of post-rock in the vein of Godspeed You Black Emperor!

A genre defining release and a welcome return to boundary surfing music.

It's the big numbers, when Hegarty steps up to the microphone, that reveal Hercules And Love Affair as a project that captures not only the full range of moods on a night out on the tiles, but also the full range of human emotions from the start of a night to its end.

Having produced one of the albums of the year with just her second effort, it’s incredibly exciting to ponder where she’ll go from here.

There isn’t a weak track on show. It makes Plowing Into The Field Of Love a truly impressive piece of work.

Luminous, all told, is a sure-fire summer soundtrack from a band who are far more cerebral than they’d have you believe.

A superb album.

Entanglement is an album that needs to be considered alongside genre heavyweights like The Blue Notebooks by Max Richter or Englabörn by Jóhann Jóhannsson. It’s a timely reminder of how high modern classical music can reach.

The use of the church organ is a particular masterstroke and it imbues Hecker's compositions here not with grandiosity, but with a sort of faded grandeur that chimes brilliantly with his familiar themes. It also offers a superb range of texture and sound, sometimes attacking and aggressive, at others soft and warm.

This is such a great, great record for so many reasons.

If this is to be the band’s swansong, they’ve left behind something timeless and quite beautiful.

Their seeming insanity only adds to the magic.

What we’ve got now is a world full of millennials that have grown up to make art about these injustices. HMLTD have done just that, focusing their trials and tribulations through a magnifying glass to burn us mere ants. And oh, how I love a bit of self-immolation.

It’s a towering achievement, building on what has come before while expanding it in astonishing ways. This is undoubtedly one of the best albums of the year.

Her instrument has aged with her like a fine wine, like Iggy Pop, or like Mr Jagger himself. It’s completely her, completely unique. The new version is gleefully bleak and unwieldy.

Contemplative and unstable, the record is a 12-track paean to the benevolent act of taking domestic solace in retreating. ... William Basinski is back within his element, and we should take all comfort in that.

The 16 tracks here aren't just duplicate recordings--with sudden new depth we are able to complete an emotive, triumphant musical triptych.

Ringleader Of The Tormentors is the sound a man with a new sense of purpose, and in this extraordinary record he's produced a masterpiece.

Trick may well be his masterpiece, combining all the elements that have made him such an enduring and much-loved musician over the years to create a genre-bending classic.

It’s a rare skill to be both silly and devastatingly tender, and it’s all here to revel in.

It is a key work – a significant milestone – in the grand history of not only Sanders’ career, but the whole free jazz style he helped pioneer. ... This is a truly joyous album, and a purely pleasurable experience.

Against all odds, the completed Mezmerize/Hypnotize project is actually greater than the sum of its parts - in fact it quickly becomes impossible to think of it as anything else than one epic piece of work.

Trail of Dead appear to have dropped the noise, and bought out the tunes.

A wonderful album, undoubtedly a career best and an exemplary case study in how to respond artistically to a life-changing event.

This mature, nuanced performance of Berlin communicates the human tragedy of the story, leaving behind the chilliness of the studio and using the medium of the stage to its full dramatic advantage.

It is, quite simply, one of the essential albums of the year.

while Silent Movie felt like a minor departure, this record still manages to sound deeply connected to its predecessors.

The recordings here are ideal for longtime fans, whose only gripe might be paying for material that they already own. But this is not a big problem when you consider just how many rare tracks you get for your buck.

It’s an exquisite, softly delivered wonder of an album which contains many of the things that he’s excelled at over the years while leading The High Llamas.

What Perfume Genius started with Too Bright was strengthened and solidified on No Shape and has been brought into full focus here, and nurtured to full bloom.

The Car, the band’s seventh album (and is the exact same length as their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare to the second) is another step further into the cinematic world they created on Tranquility Base. ... This band have continuously captivating for nearly two decades now, and Alex Turner must be a generational talent. So clearly this is a great album.

Gloriously free of filler, it would be an easy and enjoyable task to eulogise every track on Changing Of The Seasons but it seems a little brash to over-stamp opinion on such an individual and immersive listen.

Evil Urges represents the creative peak of a band that has shown glimpses of greatness in the past and will hopefully continue to evolve in the future.

It’s the album that disproves the myth of the ‘Mercury Prize Curse’ and also consolidates Dave’s reputation as one of this country’s most important and impressive young artists.

With mystique to spare, it's a record to cherish.

This is Public Image Ltd at its best. This record is good. Outrageously good. Better than a record of an artist of Lydon's vintage has any right to make.

But for both ["The Heinrich Maneuver" and "Mammoth"], and indeed elsewhere, it's the way in which the elements of the track click into place with a Swiss watchmaker's precision and artistry that really hits home.

In a year that's already been rather special for great albums, Merrill Garbus may well have produced the finest record of the year.

This is the debut record of the year so far, which has effectively raised the bar by which other bands will be judged in the future.

It is also one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful albums that I have heard since its predecessor.

Untrue is complex, stark, tender, blurred and breathtaking. Burial has managed the impossible and improved on his faultless debut.

Throughout Ants From Up There, they seem to revel in the creation of different atmospheres rather than the laying down of hooks or choruses.

It makes for a wonderfully life affirming record, capable of humour, joy and reflection. Every home should have one.

What Folklore ultimately achieves in its narrative of escapism is reinforcing the notion that Swift isn’t one of the greatest twenty-first century artists because her work is autobiographical, or because she leaves cleverly crafted clues leading up to her albums (although these are all interesting elements) but rather because she is, first and foremost, a storyteller. Folklore is sad, beautiful, somewhat tragic, a little bit off the wall, but most of all it feels free.

With the original foursome reunited it's as well that Midlife dwells mainly on the music they made together. As a playlist of what Blur were and capable of, it suggests a band with few peers.

Yes, it can be painful, but there’s a beautiful catharsis contained within Ghosteen that makes it one of the most essential records of recent times – a lifejacket for anyone surfing that dreadful wave of grief.

Widescreen ambitions should never be criticised, and as Prelude To Ecstasy ends with Mirror, a Cheryl Cole torch song with Nick Cave intensity and Bond-theme bombast, you have to conclude that this album is big, and it is clever.

The Underside Of Power is righteous, vicious and vital. If the world is a stage, then at the moment it’s hard to think of a better house band than Algiers.

It's lyrically depressing, but if you're down in the dumps about the ills of the world and frustrated by a lack of personal achievement, there's surely not a better companion piece to have to hand as you wallow.

It’s a remarkable, joyous and life-affirming record, a testament to remaining musically open-minded and progressive, and very much confirms O’Hagan’s under-appreciated genius.

Somehow, from nothing, they’ve pulled off a surprising but oh so welcome return, and this record plays like a triumphant middle finger salute, coolly showing everyone how its done... and writing the first line on a thousand ‘album of the year’ lists before January’s even out.

It's much less forthright and immediate than Inverted or Chutes, but it succeeds in spinning a web that draws you in; once caught you just want to lie back and absorb its gentle bounce.

It might not be an easy listen at times, but make no mistake, this is a vital an important record and one that needs to be heard in order to make sense of it. A definite contender for album of the year and one whose impact will stand alongside Lou Reed‘s Berlin for years to come.

Beams is an uncompromising, forceful and darkly beautiful album from a formidable musical talent.

This is undoubtedly Liars’ most engaging work, and certainly the best Mute album since, well, WIXIW.

A record of many highs.

Its real strength lies in the fact that it implores you to return for repeated visits to a world riddled with other people's cast-offs. Ironically, it recycles nothing; everything here is box fresh.

It’s a stately and urgent reclamation of intent from all involved. If you expected a band with such a long and storied history to ever be elegiac or pedestrian that would be a grave misstep. Under Marshall Allen’s all seeing eye, they’ve untethered themselves from the oppressive gravity of their past and launched themselves head first off back into the furthest reaches of outer space from whence they first came.

Inspiring and ingenious, this is an album you shouldn't be without.

So minimal and calm is much of The Harrow & The Harves that Six Horses comes as something of a shock. It displays the same studied but honest approach to American folk music that characterises the whole album but adds harmonica and, yes, handclaps!

It has a daft title, and a few daft songs with hammy lyrics. It has variety, diversity and its heart on its sleeve. It has pretence, artifice and ambition. It has, basically, everything.

An album that feels alive and joyous in its creation and performance.

With Young Man In America, Anaïs Mitchell has created her second consecutive masterpiece.

Blue Weekend is Wolf Alice’s best work yet – a confident, euphoric, blistering 40 minutes that’s guaranteed to be on many people’s ‘best of’ lists at the end of the year.

Shore is a glorious, life-affirming collection of songs, a move to the centreground that shows his absorbing of musical influences is paying rich dividends. It has ‘future classic’ written all over it.

It’s rare that you get an album by an established artist that genuinely shocks and irrevocably repositions them. Blank Project is one of those albums. This is a hugely significant return.

Nothing quite prepares you for the sheer beauty of The Magic Numbers' music.

This is an astonishing album.

The Loon will stand up as one of the best albums of the year, and Tapes 'n Tapes as a jewel in the American music crown.

Fucked Up have created a masterpiece that pushes boundaries, takes risks and delivers huge rewards.

Frank is a superb debut album that announces Amy Winehouse as a major young talent. With hardly any weak tracks on here, it's frightening to think what she could produce in the years to come.

Grapefruit is an exhilaratingly exciting album.

With not a dot ball or an overthrow, The Duckworth Lewis Method is an unqualified success.

One of the freshest, funkiest, tragic and joyous albums in recent times.

This is about as close to perfection as a soundtrack can ever hope to get - perfectly capturing the emotional grit of Danny Boyle's onscreen drama, while successfully evoking a very Indian atmosphere for a very Western audience.

This compilation may primarily be valuable for illustrating the full length and breadth of Sylvian's musical progression.

Walking a fine line between being leftfield and hook-laden, Jaga Jazzist have delivered another selection of epic, psychedelic sojourns through electronics, brass and beats that consistently engage and excite.

A monumental, spectacular achievement.

Takk does what Agaetis Byrjun did by burrowing into the consciousness and snuggling down to bed there, purring. Each listen brings out another mood, another thought. It's gorgeous.

Ten Love Songs is an enormously creative, endlessly surprising album.

It’s an album that confirms the sound of an artist continuing to push forward, a unified expression of joy that is never anything but bold, playful and fun.

As from an unspeakable event a remarkable record has come. One that sits amongst Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ best. Skeleton Tree is full of grief, but full of heart too.

Heavy it most certainly is, but Daughter succeed simply by creating phenomenally beautiful music and heart-rending songs.

The release of The Next Day would have been one of the biggest stories of the year no matter what its quality--the fact that it also happens to be one of the best records of Bowie’s career to date just makes the comeback that much more triumphant.