Allen has fused together a uniquely acidic brand of pop, and the icing on the cake is that brutally barbed tongue.

All we need to know is, he was a master and this is his masterwork.

Ys is an exceptional piece of art in the broadest sense - give it the chance to grow on you.

Musically, the album is a triumph from first to last.

Goldfrapp and Gregory have made an album as hummably lovely as it is knowingly referencing of a certain tradition of neo-psychedelic English whimsy.

Its hedonistic groove carries everything before it, and reminds you that 'rock'n'roll' doesn't just signify a sound (and fury), it signifies an attitude towards risk taking.

Such an eclectic, ambitious record might be expected to sound disparate, desperate even, but instead it's a set of distinctive, strangely addictive songs.

The hipper-than-thou trappings mean people are talking about H&LA, but it is the record itself which is a deft delight.

Praise indeed but then these hard-nosed softies are unique and this, make no mistake, is their "Definitely Maybe," the quintessential noise-pop set of the modern age.

Drastic Fantastic feels neither brave nor raw; Steve Osborne, working with Tunstall for the second time, has produced an album of flawless pop hits.

The Pet Shop Boys' best album in over a decade, sitting neatly between their previous career highpoints of Very and Behaviour.

You know, deep down, that the These New Puritans set is the one that you'll be listening to in a decade, enjoying the fact that you can never quite decipher its codes, and probably being amazed at how many more commercially successful records it inspired.

This exhaustive project is the most impressive retro-fest of recordings, photographs, video footage and digiti sed memorabilia ever assembled.

The Canadian septet are the greatest art rock group since Talking Heads stopped making sense.

From production to persona, rhymes to flow, Public Warning is almost flawless.

The great thing about this follow-up is the way it builds on that foundation without lapsing into self-consciousness.

One of the most surprising and magical records for which Damon Albarn has ever been responsible.

An album packed with tuneful songs that would sound great coming out of radio speakers.

Virtually every song sounds like a leave-taking, though the overall mood is reflective and restrained, in places almost easy-going.

On the evidence of Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Arctic Monkeys are playing at the very top of their and everyone else's game.

Even by their own exuberant standards, though, AC's ninth album is a dizzying knees-up that makes most music, indie rock or otherwise, sound both bloodless and pathetically timid.

Crucially, Sam's Town sounds like a complete collection, with a far better strike rate than its predecessor.

Love vindicates the Beatles' status as master musicians and conceptualists.

Forget her peers or even ex-Eurythmics - think Dusty or Aretha, albeit of SW2, instead. 19 has been on constant repeat for several weeks now and will be, I suspect, for the rest of the year to come.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a well-written, well-recorded, mainstream rock record.

The result splendidly combines piety with celebration and musical tradition with creative boldness.

An outstanding musical creation... that nods to almost every known genre of American music, and some that have yet to be named.

Backed with the gusto of big horns, Young's guitar is once again a thing of wonder on this track, now slashing and burning, now playing transcendent dance riffs.

Beautifully sequenced, Jarvis makes the case for albums as opposed to downloads.

There's hardly any doodling or misfiring to undermine the sheer vastness of Stadium Arcadium.

Adding a plaintive beauty and combining it with coke-ravaged, mid-Seventies, Spector-ish AOR and some playful studio trickery, the album is a raw, introspective and melancholic delight.

Rockferry is a fantastic album of burning blue soul.

It remains extraordinary this ability to jump from Tom Lehrer to early Tom Waits.

It's a way more focused album than usual.

Now, more than at any time since his first few folk albums, he sounds like a traditionalist. He's walking down that same road that Sonny and Cisco and Leadbelly walked down.

This is easily Costello's most instinctive, least self-conscious record of original songs in over a decade.

Entertaining and rabble-rousing, daft and deadly serious, it's a fantastic record, with almost limitless appeal.

London Zoo provides the perfect showcase for its colourful menagerie of MCs and singers. And the Bug's no-nonsense clank and grind production fosters a rare intensity of focus on this album's higher purpose, which is to take the eloquence of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Michael Smith's Eighties dub-poetry, and blast it into digital hyperspace.

Here the folk legend rings in the new with songs from the old, sensitively produced by Joe Henry.

It's a bravura performance on both men's part.... A thrilling return to form.

It really shouldn't hang together but somehow does, and effortlessly so, without ever seeming gimmicky.

Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein.

It's also about love, loss, the British urban landscape, laughing at yourself, great guitars, exciting chord changes, tight rhythms, the Stones-Who-Kinks-(Small) Faces-Clash-Jam-Smiths-Happy Mondays-Stone Roses-Oasis-Blur history of Britrock, rich, simple production, songs with layers, a really good band and a singer who has relocated his voice.

Med sud I eyrum ... is a beautiful collection that blows Sigur Rós beyond the place they come from, geographically and musically.

Thankfully, Bones is neither a heated-up knock-off of Fever To Tell nor a fan-alienating abandonment of their signature sound. It is instead, a supremely confident 12-song cut that has a remarkable weightiness.

Hell Hath No Fury is as lyrically kaleidoscopic as it is conceptually monochrome. Track after track flays the central theme, but with such consistently inventive language it seems almost churlish to dwell on its moral bankruptcy.

What lends Proof of Youth a whiff of genius is its ability to evoke exuberant innocence without making your teeth ache.

Liars might have moved a little more towards the mainstream, but they're still a long, long way from easy listening.

This early-Roxy-Music-meets-late Led-Zep-style third studio album finds the band stepping back from total impenetrability with a pithy, eight-song, 76-minute set, guaranteed to restore the faith of those whose confidence in this grand enterprise was waning.

Like Animal Collective, Lennox pulls off the trick of being simultaneously poppy and abstract, winsome and deranging.

This album's every percussive aspect has been honed to impart the maximum amount of pleasure.

This Is Alphabeat feels like the story of a band having embarked on an ambitious experiment in classic pop, having pulled it off, and having turned in something of a modern pop masterpiece to boot.

A unique combination of masculinity and creativity, Let's Stay Friends is proof that few bands rock quite like this.

The result is a flawless (post)modernisation of heartland rock that wears its lovelorn pessimism proudly on its ruffled sleeve.

It's an effortless success, from the opener, Ruby, big on melody and plaintive harmonies, to the dream-like Bells of Harlem, moving river-slow to a brushed snare and ending this quite terrific record with a meandering coda of wistful strings.

It adds up to a light-hearted, sometimes poignant elegy for the American working man and his music.

The dreamy 'Cold Desert' is the perfect maudlin end to this short, sharp, 42-minute, no-filler album, revelling in every miserable blues-rocker cliché as Matthew's guitar goes all shoegazey and then briefly threatens to turn the whole thing into a 'Purple Rain' wig-out.

Despite its complexity, every twist and turn of The Drift is absolutely compelling.

Essential.

Britney has delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's 'Shock Value' and her own back catalogue.

BSP have every right to feel content. After all, the almost men of sylvan, jagged rock, the pride of Britain's bookish, bird-watching bohemia, have made an album that's deserving of their swagger. Do you like rock music? If not, here's the perfect place to start.

At its core, Cross is loud, restless, and daring. A creative tour de force, Justice have unleashed an era-defining album for the children of acid house.

Confessions... is vocally sharp and (at times) lyrically breathtaking, but it is difficult to imagine this album working without Price's involvement.

Overpowered's bubbling, sensual, and soulful glitterball gems effortlessly tap into the perennial glory of feeling lost and lonely at the disco at the end of the world.

Slime & Reason, then, is yet another gutsy work from a deeply honest artist.

Damaged is a transcendent record - poetic, mysterious, witty, wise and at times so musically grand that it changes the colour of a room and the weight of the air.

For Emma, though only nine tracks long, is as beautiful, bleak and intimate as anything 2008 is likely to throw up.

It's Not Me, It's You is a wonderful record, and, better than that, a pop album brave enough to have a go at defining the times.

Kings of Leon have spent much of the past couple of years in potentially soul-sapping support slots on extended US stadium tours by the likes of Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam and, most significantly, U2. But rather than be ground down by that experience, they've used it as the jumping-off point for a bold expansion of their own parameters.

Complex, melodramatic, ambitious, vain, beautiful and frequently magnificent - Release the Stars may not yield many chart hits, but it feels like an album that will endure.

Untrue crackles with high-tension, excitement and yearning.

It's the kind of rollicking, party-rockin' fandango which, genuinely, nobody has the spirit or wit to put together these days.

It's occasionally like a dream collaboration between Bill Hicks and New Order, with Giorgio Moroder producing.

As wonderful as it is unexpected, Dirt Farmer is a strong candidate for comeback of the year.

Largely extraordinary... They write ornate and soaring conversational love songs, full of heart, bittersweet observation and unashamed street-level Englishness.

The quality veers wildly, but every so often he hits upon a great song. 'Just As You Are' in particular sets the smoothest of melodies and a haunting cornet solo from Wyatt against the most world-weary of lyrics.

Their third album offers an advance on the ecstatic dance punk of 2003 debut "Fever to Tell" and beefy rock of 2006's "Gold Lion," boldly pushing synths centre stage while sacrificing none of their vitality.

Eighteen months touring and producing themselves at home have toughened the bands sound. And broadened it.

The loose, spontaneous nature of the exercise means there's the odd dud, but there are far more hits than misses. The result? A dead concept is temporarily revived.

Offend Maggie is head-spinning bliss from beginning to end, and proves that the quartet are the best prog-rock post-punk Afro-Oriental art-pop folk-jazz band in the world.

Hypnotic repetition, mysterious soundscapes and recurring lyrical codes render this debut utterly engrossing and totally essential.

More Stravinsky than the Saturdays, this is still way more fun than the latter.

You get the sense they don't know exactly what they're aiming for, and the resulting mish-mash of crude energy and unfocused ambition leaves the listener gloriously befuddled.

It unquestionably adds up to a pop record sharp enough to be the bratty but irresistible younger brother of Lily Allen's "It's Not Me, It's You."

Euphoric, feelgood electro-pop of the indie rather than chart-topping persuasion, with the Massachusetts quartet's debut substituting lost-boy yearning for outright hedonism.

Ultimately, there is something refreshing about MGMT's lack of cynicism and the winning way in which they fuse hippy and punk ideals.

Her new dance album – her 11th – is a brilliant collaboration with the likes of Basement Jaxx and the Scum Frog.

Here lie gorgeous tunes that are lithe enough to cope with the little bursts of sonic madness that flit around like overproduced Eighties butterflies.

The result is writ large on this brilliant second album, which welds his drifting soundscapes to fractious, rapturous techno.

Skins have been shed, batteries recharged and the traditionally difficult second album dashed out with apparent ease.

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.