As an exercise is sounding totally, defiantly alive, it is a complete success.

You might not want to run into Daughn Gibson on a lonely night, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t listen to him push things forward with such noirish flair.

‘Devil Inside Me’ is the album’s earworm that you’ll end up humming, and ‘Solstice’ is a pleasingly overblown proggy epic, but much of the rest is competent yet uninspiring, and the novelty soon wears off.

The Blackest Beautiful is a strong, focused record from beginning to end.

This is warm, sleepy music that buzzes like a fridge. Best heard lying down.

The quintet deliver a sincere emotional punch.

Discipline plummets you into the band’s shadowy world but remains loveable--like a brighter, warmer Savages.

They mean well, but there’s something conservative about them.

Love the way cricket brings out people’s most eccentric traits? Then love this.

Tides is ambient in the same way as a water feature in a garden: soothing at a glance, but ultimately boring.

Truths rarely come as beautiful as this.

It all ends not with a bang, but a shrug.

Gratuitous filth, basically. It’s funny, but also a pity, because Yeezus is so tight, so bold, that with a few tweaks Kanye could’ve made his rock for the ages. As it is, he’ll have to settle for one of the best records of the year.

Yet another ’90s micro-genre gets the hipster revival treatment on Montreal duo Solar Year’s snazzy debut.

Right from the silly, scary opener ‘RRRR’, it’s daft, hypnotic, erotic, evil and unhinged all at once.

It’s not Flight Of The Conchords quality but, hey, at least it’s not The Midnight Beast.

Though occasionally too florid, this bass cat’s on the path to majesty.

They may never recapture their ‘Dirt’-era majesty, but AiC’s second act is turning out very nicely indeed.

Ultimately it feels short on substance, with the sort of atmosphere that can drain through your fingers.

There’s a lot to love about music that’s as head over heels in love with youth as Soft Will is.

Bosnian Rainbows finds Omar in controlled, more conventional territory than he has been in a while. There’s structure, sub-four-minute songs, melody. It’ll never be Nick Grimshaw’s Record Of The Week and it’s still prog, but it’s a punky prog that at least feels like it is actively trying to make friends with you.

The album begins to lag toward the end as the slower tracks drag their heels, but it’s still an impressive debut.

An utterly charming album.

Ultimately, however, it’s hard not to notice that the production outshines the delivery.

When the energy levels fall off entirely on the maudlin piano-powered closer ‘Never Again’, Idiots' early signs of promise seem a pleasant but distant memory.

The four-piece’s debut is a forcefully soulful affair.

Immunity is expertly paced, and as good for coming down as it is for coming up.

There are a couple of duds, (‘Book Of Love’, ‘Please Say No’), but, as forlorn closer ‘You Were Right’ ably demonstrates, few bands do heartache with as much majesty.