Polly Harvey’s contradictory sure, but the complexities of her character and where she is right now are expressed with an honesty and intensity few artists can ever even begin to think about mustering.

Minimal and huge at the same time, desperately sad in places, thought-provoking and ethereal in others, this is an incredible milestone of a record.

Fiercely intelligent, heavy as fuck, powerful and utterly concise, it's a perfect reminder of the potency of great guitar music and a kick up the jacksy of rock bands everywhere. Yup, it's that damn good.

Intelligent, melodic, poetic and funny, so this is what Now sounds like eh?

'Aerial' towers over the vast majority of even this year's embarrassment of riches.

This is not just an album that can be appreciated by fans of the avant-garde, pop and rock alike but a genuine fuck you to the people claiming modern music has nowhere left to go.

Put simply: there isn't a bad track on 'Blood Mountain', which will be seen as the metal release of this year, on whichever level you care to mention.

I don't know when a voice touched me as wholly as Antony's does.

The album is a parasite, a pollutant, and should be kept well away from children and old people.

'Bang Bang Rock & Roll' is as clever as it is funny as it is entertaining. It's the most original independent album in years.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, here is an album that is going to be deservedly huge.

Confrontational, clammy, brimming with confidence... ‘Royal Society’ is as majestic as its title implies.

This is so good it makes us want to do one of those superlative deploying pull quote things that journalists often stick at the end of their reviews: this fantastic piece of work is already a strong contender for album of the year.

No one musical entity, or group in the world comes close to the sum of their parts.

The band have colonised the rich turf at the intersection of meticulously structured mope-rock and free-flowing three-chord pop, where moments of resignation cosy up alongside twinkling hopes for the future like Winehouse to the sauce.

It is that love, devotion, and unfaltering belief that makes 'Permission To Land' such an essential listen, and such a joy to behold. It is the sound of triumph.

Fierce and noble and fragile and genuinely moving, 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' is a lovely furnace of searing goodness made by some wonderful contradictory bastards.

This is Mogwai distilled to their essence, and the result is an album of huge power, emotional depth and feeling, with vocals submerged under a claustrophobic blanket of effects and guitars battling with viola, cello, violin and piano. It's just as Eno as it is S***t, and all the greater for that.

No great leaps of faith, no huge style shifts, just more of what we've come to love them for. But a bit more laid back and, erm, druggy? If that's at all possible.

'Mesmerize' is a frantic, frenetic brutal assault on the senses. It mashes up the most intense hardcore, the fiercest fire-starting punk rock with ridiculously complex riffing that’s like amphetamine prog.

The stuff of magic.

A colourful, incomparable colossus, a work of breathtaking, staggering genius and no mistake.

It's all good. Favourites switch with listens, and we can assure you that this record will remain on your deck all year.

This is a genius pop album, one on which pretty much everything fantastic happens.

Picking highlights from a release so well executed and downright ass-shaking is difficult.... 'To The 5 Boroughs' is a triumph.

Akin to Bowie's 'Hunky Dory', in its senseless but brilliant eclecticism.

This album is fucking brilliant – it made me want to cut my hair, paint the ceiling, fuck the postman and burn the disco down. So I did. Then I curled up in a corner, cried, and shat myself.

Elbow have made the most passionate, beautiful and downright special record you'll hear this year.

Few albums are this evocative, and 'Leaders of the Free World' is a thing of rare beauty indeed.

'Sound Of Silver' is the album of the year.

Like The Polyphonic Spree stripped of all their faux compound dwelling arse wittery, this is an unambiguous shot of serotonin straight to your head and heart.

2002's first REAL classic.

'See You Next Tuesday' is so good it should be the soundtrack to a smash hit Broadway musical.

In ‘Real Gone’s fearsome complexity of rhythm, lyric and device, Tom Waits appropriates like a shoplifter without much time, and creates something entirely his own. A new music.

'Think Tank' is an extraordinary record that pushes boundaries and sets new standards.

Great pop from a great band.

He doesn't plunder, he interweaves - stuff gets thoroughly snake-charmed into his densely-packed music.

Giant mutant rats are running about the place with gasmasks and guns. Their eyeballs are electric red, firing lightning bolts of acid, spit and shit and blowing up the place and the furniture.

It's a huge album, a beautiful album, a witty album, and above all, a Spiritualized album, through and through. If you like Spiritualized albums, you will love 'Let It Come Down'. If you don't, it may be time for a rethink.

Miraculously the lyrics never sound like the pompous shite they undoubtedly are. They fit the music and make the whole picture even more laughably and absurdly brilliant.

There's a confidence and a swagger that wasn't there before, Green uncapping the band who can convert his quirky sketches into clever, swinging masterpieces.

A fabulous record.

This is the sound, throughout, of a remarkable institution doing all the things they do best and sounding as alive as they ever have.

One of the finest albums of the year.

Björk has transcended any pop plinth she may (incorrectly) have been placed upon, to become, probably, our greatest contemporary female vocalist since Diamanda Galas.

It's about the best a studio grime album can be.

While Wayne Coyne has been carving out and presenting to the world the manifestations of his crazy mind for an age now, the possibilities have so often been superior to the finished article. That is certainly not the case here.

The pop album of the year.

Her voice is still like clear honey dripped on freshly baked bread, and almost sounds nourishing.

There isn't a bad song on this album.

Ten years after they first assaulted us, Mogwai remain as vital as ever.

This is no mere regression into a tried and tested formula for the Duluth trio. Each of these tracks is more than their trademark guitar, bass, drum soundscapes with delicate vocals hovering above the mix.

'Hate' is gloomy without being self-indulgent, and grand without being pompous.

As long as you are open, you will love this album. It will be as important to a lot of people as 'The Queen Is Dead'.

The View are a study of all the essentials of British rock & roll.

'By The Way' is pretty much 'Californication' part two with a deeper exploration of the nu melodic Peppers, a classic LA record that somehow combines the melodic rush of the Beach Boys and Mamas and Papas and hints at the dark underbelly of the city of angels just like Love did way back in the late sixties.

It really is like they've never been away; their glee and enthusiasm can be heard coursing through every bar.

Turns out what the world was waiting for really was those that saved guitars finally making a record that truly reaped the rewards of their efforts. Is this it? OH GOD YES!

What's beyond doubt is the magical blend of the surreal and the fantastical that made 'The Unseen' so memorable is once again in the fullest effect on this showcase of fearlessly skewed production, dense organic vibes and hemp & helium-fuelled raps that make up this smoked-out saunter through the back streets of the cosmo-according-to-Lord Quas.

'Fundamental' will not only be rated up there among the Pet Shop Boys finest albums -- it's also arguably the best electro pop record we've heard in years.

You've heard all this before, but it still sounds glorious.

Make no mistake, 'Don't Be Afraid Of Love' is so much more ambitious and downright joyful than we had any right to expect that it's a flooring jolt to the system long after the first listen.

Restraint they were always good at, but now they're masters, and the melancholy that swelled up all over Young Team like a particularly ripe bruise is here for all the world to see in 'Rock Action''s damp eyes.

It's exactly the album we all demanded from them, but moreso.

Where 'Parklife' was exuberant and almost knowingly callow, 'The Good, The Bad & The Queen' is weary, confused, almost mourning for what once was.

'Hypnotise' is full on, paranoid, insane, intense, terrifying, and it's telling the truth too... dangerous stuff in other words.

What's so remarkable about Morrissey's writing on 'Ringleader...' is a seeming greater comfort with the more upbeat subject matter than with his usual morose metier, and what remains of that is executed with an exceedingly hammy fist.

The album sees the band moving on from the Libertines-aping chord structures of their debut and pushing in new directions.

This is an album on which EVERYTHING ace you can think of in indie happens.

The Raveonettes genius is that they pay homage with such style, passion and grace that it's virtually impossible not to be converted to their cause.

Stripped of the Pumpkins' pomp angst and invested with a new pop-rock sensibility by fellow cohorts David Pajo and Matt Sweeney, in Zwan Corgan has simply formed the perfect band.

This is heavy pop at its very best.

The whole thing makes for a masterclass in enigma and economy.

One trick pony's they may arguably be, but they've done the same trick twice and pulled it off.

LCD Soundsystem have set 2005's bar very high indeed and they sound like they’ve barely got started.

Of course Cohen can’t sing, but what matter that when the words are so rich?

Shimmeringly perfect.

'We Are The Pipettes' is perfection.

One of the most important rock bands ever meets one of the best, and guess what, they've only gone and knocked out a bonafide masterpiece. It's 1993 all over again, but it's also 1970 and 2002 and beyond, because an album this classic transcends any pigeonholing.

What need for artless posturing and sloganeering when you have music so powerful, so ugly, so revolting, so incredible?

Gone are the hippy, dippy platitudes of their do-good daisy age; replaced by the most bullish beats, the snakiest rhymes and the overwhelming sensation that you're listening to the undiluted thoughts of the three most intelligent men in hip-hop.

Lanegan's lyrics are poetic, well thought out and devastatingly honest, making this more a serious artistic account than some braggadocio bullshit. And then add to that the fact the music is just fantastic.

Everything feels bolder than before, more assured of the rightness of singing from places that most lyricists fear to tred. In textures and words alone, 'Open Season' is a country mile ahead of any of the supposedly heroic guitar debuts knocking around in 2005.

This album is jaunty, scruffy, carefree and accomplished.

But the use of the twin-pronged vocal attack as an instrument in its own right is never relied upon to be the sole weapon in Blood Brothers' arsenal. Intelligence is mirrored in the deployment of the music behind it.

FC Kahuna have aimed scandalously high with this record, and they've not been found wanting.

A tour de force of infectious acid techno and head-rush-inducing electroclash and, as likely as not, this year's essential dance purchase.

Fourteen listens deep, this is still getting better. All but a rap classic. You know, Kanye's good, but really, fuck that. Ghost for president.

From the opening few seconds of 'Rain On Lens' you just know this album is going to be a classic.

It seems - for the first time, perhaps - he's made one out of love for the artform alone rather than with the added motive of letting off a little barely-suppressed rage or feeling he has scores to settle, either with the industry or himself.

The sheer enveloping bliss elicited by hearing the album in one sitting (especially in public – 'Faking The Books' is a headphone masterpiece and no mistake) leaves one wishing it were a whole lot longer than its taut 40-minute duration.

A geek's wet dream.

A collection of skewed pop classics that draw as much on the contemporary R&B of Timbaland as they echo the darker side of New Order.

This is music that relies entirely on feeling, and while not for everyone it is music at its most impulsively, spontaneously creative.

This could be one of the most important records of the year.

It may surprise you, but 'One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back' doesn't suck... at all.

A showcase of complementary flavours that burst out of the electronica ghetto.

Everything sounds more accomplished, more intentional than previous efforts. Most important of all, though, 'Drukqs' is an unpredictable (yet compelling) listen.