They’ve made an absolutely magical record--the jagged edges of their past have been smoothed by the sea, making Teen Dream a soft shore gem in the crown of the great chronicles of youth.

My Maudlin Career is the kind of record that exists to reward those both mad, and sad, in love.

Let's Get Ready', Mystikal's fourth LP and his first Billboard chart-topper, is one wholesale fighting muthaf**ker, a full theatre of opportunities to offer the world outside. Women? Mystikal will take you down for one. Or, preferably, two. Reputation? Come see about him. Neighbourhood? You don't wanna go there... Mystikal is the fightingest bastard and his grin's never wider than when he's putting the hurt on.

'Remedy' is probably as good a dance album as anyone from these Isles has produced this decade.

They’re a shaggy-haired, surf’s up pop band and painfully vulnerable all at the same time.

The album's more subdued moments--like the disarmingly sweet navel-gaze of 'Simple As This', or the folksy arm-around-the-shoulder reassurance of 'Note To Self'--are its most remarkable ones, where Bugg's voice, usually accompanied by little more than an acoustic guitar, takes on a preternatural wisdom.

The album is beautifully structured, leading from spare and shimmery beginnings into harder, weirder and more varied territories, all those snippets and elements and personalities crafted into a shifting, subtle whole that quietly captures your attention from start to end.

That it’s Portishead’s best album yet is little short of miraculous.

There's going to be a hearty scrap between this lot, Muse and the Monkeys when album of the year time comes round.

Low have always sought to make music that can both swell the heart like a gospel tune and capture the amplified absence of a funeral parlour. It's difficult to imagine a more perfect expression of their vision than this.

Much like the title of his debut, Indiana’s curious ringmaster Stith is a contradiction in terms. Don’t be put off--he’s a contradiction worth losing yourself to.

It still defiantly goes against the grain, but also explodes with immediate, attention-grabbing riffs.

For those of us who still believe in music's power to redeem, 'Funeral' feels like detox, the most cathartic album of the year. [5 Mar 2005, p.49]

It marks the dawning of an era of British music that isn’t just for the casual petrol shop consumer, but stuff so important that you can give yourself to it completely. This is the album that’s going kick open the door for all the great British bands that’ll sweep through in their wake.

Josh Homme and his all-star pals prove the virtue of taking your sweet time on a record that’s as self-assured as it is damn sexy.

Daft Punk have pulled off a brilliant wheeze by re-inventing the mid-'80s as the coolest pop era ever. And not even the officially approved retro-kitsch cool of Madonna's lukewarm excursions into post-Daft terrain but all the bubble-permed, sports-jacket-and-jeans excesses they can muster.... Mostly, though, 'Discovery' is simply fantastic pop...

'Capture/Release' is fresh, unique, original even; its oh-so-contemporary reference points are revisited with such punk-rock vivacity and hell-for-charity-shop-leather vigour that they might be the first band you’d actually believe when they roll out the old "no, honestly, we were doing this long before we’d even heard of Bloc Party".

Time will tell how Primary Colours stands up to the likes of "Loveless" or "Psychocandy," but right now, this feels like the British art-rock album we’ve all been waiting for.

This album is an onslaught of brutal drumming and bowel-loosening riffs, occasionally leavened by surprisingly delicate vocal interplay.

One of the reasons Major Arcana works so well is because it’s addictive and fun, which could explain how these characters got into such a mess in the first place.

There's no possible way of having this much fun without getting the chorus of Handel's 'Messiah' drunk on peach schnapps. [4 Feb 2006, p.29]

Burial’s success has brought with it imitators, but with this EP he’s outwitted them all by introducing a gloriously widened palate to his music that is both instantly familiar and shockingly unlikely.

Holy Fire brings new words to mind. Sharp. Emotive. Massive.

DIIV need you, and you sure as hell need DIIV.

It's thrillingly obvious that Junior Boys have made one of the year's best albums. [31 Jul 2004, p.41]

A stunning LP that, in a just world, would do for Roky what the "American Recordings" series did for Johnny Cash.

An astonishing debut of cosmic country noir. [28 Aug 2004, p.57]

Confident, bold, ambitious, bunged with singles and impossible to contain, ‘X&Y’ doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it does reinforce Coldplay as the band of their time.

In an age where even Britpop corpse-botherers Brother trumpet their desire to collaborate with Odd Future, the Monkeys have made a record heavily indebted to late-'80s indie and a small group of white, male '70s singer-songwriters: Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen.

'Icky Thump' is brilliant, there's no way around that.

The nerve of it all is breathtaking. Turbo-beats poke up a gospel-jazz revivalist meeting, a mariachi band wanders into the hazy disco sashay of 'Broken Dreams', a Gary Numan sample gets bludgeoned to credibility in the Van Helden-esque pogo of 'Where's Your Head At?'.

Syro is amazing: bug-eyed, banging rave that sounds quintessentially Aphex while not quite sounding like anything he’s done before.

It has the reckless spirit of a record that hasn't been over-analysed, but with an intense flurry of ideas from someone in the absolute prime of their creativity.

Wild Beasts have undergone a sea change, and this beautiful album is a treasure that deserves plundering.

The ultimate rare treasure. [24 Sep 2005, p.47]

Muse have made a ridiculous, overblown, ambitious and utterly brilliant album, with more thrills than their previous three put together.

PJ Harvey's best album since 1991's 'Dry', a return to the feral intensity of that remarkable debut.... The clarity of the electric guitars played by Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey is enough to make you fall in love with elemental rock all over again.... You could quibble Harvey has absolved her responsibilities by making an album earthed in the New York sound of 20 or 30 years ago. But when rock is so invigorating, so joyous about love, sex and living, all arguments are null and void.

An outstanding (dare I say ‘perfect’) debut.

The Seldom Seen Kid is a stunning record, a career-best from a band whose consistency has seldom been matched by any British indie band this decade.

Like Justin Vernon before him, with Lost In The Dream Adam Granduciel seems to be heading for things far bigger than anyone could ever have expected. This is one War On Drugs that might just succeed.

The lyrics, meanwhile, continue to move FOTL up two or three rungs of excellence.

This is an album to fall in love to, to break up to, to drown sorrows to, or to bounce around to. One-hit wonders? Well, the wonders part is right.

So contagious is their enthusiasm, you could start thinking that black-clad nihilism has kept music to itself for way too long.

An understated classic: a triumph of delicacy over decibels. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

Sonically, it was staggering.

‘Room On Fire’ is a refining and tinkering with The Strokes sound, a carefully calibrated attempt not to fuck up too early in the face of untold temptations. The results are still sleek, sexy and thrilling, with a tantalising promise of even better to come.

By celebrating what it is to be a freak in 2004 they've made a debut that's unique yet uniting, deep yet designed for the dance-floor.

Slightly less lo-fi than previous efforts--although as it blends together Slayer, Japanese noisecore and warp-speed prog intricacy, sound recording fidelity is a relative concept. [5 Nov 2005, p.45]

It is miles better than 'Innerspeaker', and quite possibly the best album released so far this year.

A reverence-inspiring return.

A real-life pop record. Well, not pop in the Girls Aloud sense of the word obviously, more in the drop-dead, fuzz-box brilliant 'Here Comes Your Man' sense. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]

This is wild music, a celestial cabaret that absorbs and unsettles.

Girls are genuine drop-outs, bona-fide freaks who’ve made a record far removed from the predictable cycles of the music industry. Now that’s a real story.

The emotive finesse of ‘Cherry Blossoms’ might further the calls for a shoulder to blub on, but chugging full-band showstopper ‘Ramona’ shows Yellen’s songwriting to be as rich as his voice.

Cooked up in a session originally meant to spawn a batch of B-sides, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed instead debuts 10 songs that outstrip LC!’s debut album at every turn.

One of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest.

The eloquence, barbarism, tenderness and sweat-drenched vitality of 'Elephant' make it the most fully-realised White Stripes album yet.

It is its author Kieran Hebden's best work to date and confirms the prolific young soundmeister as a major talent.

It's every ounce of Idlewild's potential fulfilled at once.

This is an album of genuine depth, one expressing the nervous conservative shockwaves which charge through party kids once they start to come down.

There’s still a lot to love about B&S, but there was something magical, otherworldly even, about them during this period that this compilation captures perfectly.

Remarkably, with this astounding debut, an unassuming 21-year-old from SW2 has revitalised a forgotten form to make one of the finest forward-thinking British pop albums of recent memory.

Their most focused, energetic pop record since 'Radiator'.... Certainly, 'Phantom Power' shows up Radiohead's timid adventures, while giving The Coral something to aim for too.

A miniature classic. [14 Aug 2004, p.49]

The Adams of ‘Love Is Hell’ has gone out to make an album that actually is classic rock ‘n’ roll rather than one that can simply impersonate it, and sound convincing. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]

A masterpiece.

Seems that after all the pale imitators, Radiohead finally have a competitor worthy of healthy comparison.

Taking Mangum’s recorded-on-cardboard lo-fi folk epics as their ground zero, TRAA turn in the best alt.debut of the year.

'Smile' stands up with any of the great music of the 20th century. [25 Sep 2004, p.63]

Every tangled note of Option Paralysis drips with honesty and endeavour, and it shines like a beacon of integrity in a world that's been focus-grouped into the dirt.

The funniest, most refreshing British debut in years.

Here's music for the twilight hours - feverish, contemplative, nostalgic. It resonates with the force of a thousand passionate post-club conversations in darkened, smoke-filled rooms, of intense, doomed liaisons, of youthful arrogance undercut by fear and failure.

Bono's genius is that his inner monologue is so huge and heroic that it matches the scale of the music. And, even more so than on 'All That You Can't Leave Behind,' the music is enormous. [13 Nov 2004, p.55]

This is murderously good stuff. [25 Sep 2004, p.64]

What you have here is the most agonisingly voyeuristic listening experience in rock, ever. It's also some of the most exhilarating and brilliant rock'n'roll of the past 20 years. [7 Aug 2004, p.46]

Album of the year? It's definitely a contender. [7 Aug 2004, p.49]

The Child Of Lov may have started off as a shadowy enigma, but now is when Cole Williams lays his cards on the table. Turns out he was hiding a royal flush.

All told, it's incredible this is a debut album. Accomplished, yet subtle, it works perfectly as a whole in a way all the production skills in the world couldn't replicate.

Let's Stay Friends arrives as a startling cannon-shot message of brain-thawing intent.

Stripped of all the sonic flotsam that usually surrounds them, Animal Collective come into their own--if you can ignore the chatter to listen with innocent ears, they surpass ‘good’ and remain bewildering.

They’re too wilfully mad to emulate Tame Impala’s success, but if you’re after a freaking out, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s outrageous noise deserves attention.

Once I Was An Eagle sets a high bar.

In spite of all the terror and uncertainty, it's the warmth that lingers.

Where 'The Remote Part' was their 'Green'-esque lunge into the spotlight, 'Warnings/Promises' is their full-blwon 'Out Of Time' spectacular. But with less twangle, more teeth. [5 Mar 2005, p.50]

Soul music full of remarkable sonic ideas.

Rips is a reminder of rock’s glorious communal potential.

Their world - sexual, drug-filled, and occasionally paranoid - has become progressively darker, and as such we find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

An album which radically extends the Franz musical palette.

By any criteria an astonishing work.

While this is clearly not the record Smith intended to make, it's still an immensely gripping and cohesive piece of work. [23 Oct 2004, p.47]

Overall, you get the kind of lush musings that’ll soundtrack all the pivotal moments of your wayward summer romance. Blissful.

Put simply, this is fantasy pop, performed to perfection.

The angriest, least compromised, most utterly justified pop record in years ?

When your nightbus home is beset by phantasmagorical drunkards with beady, threatening eyes, when your ears are bashed by mendacious line managers and eyes beset by the violence of news/advert/news, then this incredible album is your passport to a better place.

Showcas[es] Rufus as one of, if not the best songwriters of his generation. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

For all his fragility, Avi is as good a songwriter as anyone who's ever traded under Sub Pop's logo. And that's quite a claim.

Complex and artful, there’s no need to understand fugues and canons to appreciate this--its utter perfection and joy is self-evident.