Difficult, certainly, but not without its charms.

This is mostly a brutal-sounding, and often brutally funny, record full of odd surprises.

There are lugubrious shades of Tom Waits and antipodean gothfather Nick Cave here, but Nux Vomica has its own type of elegant, seductive power.

It's mostly fast and unfussy, convincing and committed.

Luna is a psychedelic delight.

This is a beautiful album. Moving rather than maudlin, uplifting rather than depressing.

Mozzer's ninth solo album is still a good solid guitar-rock record, even though it's his worst since 1997's career nadir, "Maladjusted."

Fabulously moody third album from British production duo whose roster of gloomy vocalists now includes Richard Hawley and Jason Pierce alongside regular collaborator Mark Lanegan.

Raising Sand is an album of deep, dark Americana, a scintillatingly stitched patchwork of country, R'n'B and singer-songwriters that represents what Plant describes as "the America I have always loved musically."

Perhaps Made in the Dark's greatest achievement is to keep back a bit of mystery for itself above and beyond the enveloping sense of destiny fulfilled.

Chicago's veteran alt-rockers haven't sounded this much fun in ages, their seventh album balancing their easy-going and experimental sides.

This second album (featuring Grizzly Bear's Chris Bear and Chris Taylor) is a sumptuous sequence of symphonic meditations on memory and loss that somehow manage to give a more expansive twist to the already elegiac mood of Arcade Fire's Funeral.

On this relaxed and cohesive set, Van's band fall into simple and graceful grooves and play like a proper group, not hired hands.

A cosmic, contemporary Human League.

A trippy marvel.

It's an undeniably impressive range of talent and, for the most part, Shock Value pulls off every trick it tries.

The Golden Mile is more substantial: a very well-made rock record of perfect length (about 45 minutes) and contradictory catharsis.

Female duo Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes make stark, witchy electronica that's subtle and exciting, their mantra-like voices drawing you in like a sinister nursery rhyme, with melodies breaking through their oblique, half-muttered lyrics like beams of winter sunlight.

The closer you listen to the jazzy guitars, Beatles touches and easy, shuffling rhythms ... the more it transpires that Tweedy is simply allowing the songs sufficient room to speak up for themselves.

That The Crying Light vibrates with confidence will be no surprise to anyone who witnessed last year's remarkable shows at London's Barbican.

This is the sort of album which is destined to be talked about in hushed tones by people who can remember exactly which improbably funky Manfred Mann tune it was that Kieran Hebden once put on a compilation. But it deserves a much wider audience than that.

Easy Tiger is his most rounded creation.

It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this.

The chatter of modern culture might make such a response to 7/7 unfashionable, but such a thoughtful voice, and so deeply felt a record, shouldn't go unheeded.

There's the odd jarring note but Bare Bones remains a work of high class, deep feeling and, let's not forget, magical singing.

The result, typified by the rousing 'Oh! Vanity' and emotive 'This is the End', is a melodic and hard-fought triumph.

Smith's rock poet muse is certainly alive on most cuts, her deep voice declaiming, yipping, soaring, and investing old lyrics with fresh dignity and rhythm.

With bands like Vampire Weekend so keen on appropriating the polyrhythmic thunder of their African peers, it's only fitting that these childhood friends should often sound like art rock sensations from Brooklyn.