A decade after he first set an impossibly hard act to follow, Jarvis Cocker has returned with an album that knocks not only his ageing contemporaries, but many of his descendents, for six.

Few artists can master the trick of capturing ambience and atmosphere without resorting to cliche. M83 are among the few.

The Fall are the best new band in Britain.

So few men have managed to touch our scabrous hearts in such a way. Cohen, Bukowski, Barrymore, Hulk, Waterman... Middleton, Moffat.

Yes, it's a shamelessly arch and overarching achievement, and, make no mistake, some of you out there will hate this record and want to have at it with badly corroded screwdrivers.

'Capture / Release' is an album that sounds very much like now, but it should way transcend it too.

Quite unlike any other chill out album you're likely to hear, 'Melody AM' takes low rider funk and splices it with 80s synth-pop ambience and analogue dub techniques to create a truly inspiring epic pop landscape which neither strays into questionable light classical territories, nor worrying prog rock terrain.

'I Com' delivers on all the promise that preceded it and makes quantum leaps of brilliance every time it's played.

Fearsomely post-post-punk, appealingly brazen, and ambitiously tight, they have indeed made The Album That Saved Indie.

This is a record that will so quickly get under your skin and fill your head with such a bounty of melodies that the only way to relieve the swelling is to joyously whistle them out.

What blessed bastardry is this? It's bloody brilliant, that's what it is.

Yes, it's the relentless energy, humour and versatility which makes this record stand out and apparently their albums are merely incidental compared to their stunning live shows.

Your new favourite record.

Anyone expecting any of the more experimental tangential qualities of the German group will be disappointed, as will anyone expecting intense lyrical workouts from Smith. Instead we have an extremely convincing whistlestop tour round current electronic music with a partially deranged, completely eccentric lexicographer raving brilliantly over the top.

The signature wordplay and musical ingenuity are as strong as ever here... but they're rolling with a far harder edge than you remember.

'Wind In The Wires' is a magnificent record full of the language, imagery and sound of travel.

Ejstes... has an innate sense of melody, rhythm and the skill to play some pretty natty fat bass splurges, and psychedelic, peripatetic spider-like drum rolls.

Put 'Peeping Tom' on the stereo and it's as slickly dark and eminently devourable as Hip-Hop with R&B overtones can be, though whack it on the headphones and you're introduced to something infinitely superior.

As White Stripes albums go, 'Icky Thump' is a goodie, and there's no resting on of laurels either.

Sophomore set of the century, near enough.

'Abattoir Blues' is weirdly full of wonderment, and - get this - 'The Lyre of Orpheus' is even more joyful! And they both kick Nocturama's arse full of buttonholes.

Dicing with folly at every stage and coming out victorious, 'Blinking Lights...' is sprawling, galling and downright enthralling.

Bugger if the Furries haven't gone and exceeded their own expectations with this, a total stonker of a new record that cannot fail to excite and delight on, oh, so many levels.

A wondrous re-emergence.

If there’s a problem with ‘This Is For Real’ and you’ll have to really look, it’s the fact that it’s a tad too shiny. Not much, but, at times, it’s lost a bit of that dirtiness that made the Grease so appealing.

Basically, this is a fantastic band releasing twelve brilliant songs, and it's not only the best guitar album you'll ever hear with no guitars on it, it's one of the best this year generally.

Even after one listen it's apparent that 'Untouchables' is a monster of a record.

An unfinished album, and also a beautifully accomplished one.

Easily one of the most essential sessions albums ever released, this, and probably one of the year’s most essential, full stop.

Like 'Deserter Songs' and 'All Is Dream' before, 'The Secret Migration' is a compelling, visual album. And yet within this, Mercury Rev have moved on.

Here is an album with all-new complexity, unforseen depth and many delightful hidden layers.

'Gotham!' is an infinitely danceable and certainly insightful record that gets better with each listen, on every frequency.

A beautiful, engaging, enchanting record.

Repeated listens propel it towards sounding like his best yet.

There is just enough balance between the tune, and the unexpected jazz chords, ear-splitting squeals, and lovely harmonic noises to make it forever listenable.

Gleeful, glorious, and utterly unique.

'Want Two' is simply in a league of its own.

Like Spiritualized re-scored and re-scripted by Timothy Leary, something inescapably dark, dread ridden and mesmeric lurks within these tracks.

'The Drift' is an extraordinary piece of work, even more challenging and expansive than Scott Walker's startling last album.

At the end of the day this is a bit more of a grower than the last one, but is easily as good.

As with all Blonde Redhead albums, there is no real standout track to pinpoint. Instead, they've made a terrific progression from, and succeeded in the daunting task of following, 'Misery Is A Butterfly'.

It's not overestimating matters to call 'Tones of Town' a timeless masterpiece.

What's apparent from playing this album is that almost everything they've got is a killer single.

Up there with the best debut albums of this, or any decade.

Say hello to the future of electrofilthsoulhop.

Fischerspooner might be harking back to a more colourful age, but '#1', more than any other album apart from, perhaps, 'Original Pirate Material' is very much The Sound Of Now.

This is a subtle record that rewards what you're willing to put in.

'Fatherfucker' is one motherfucker of an album.

Whilst this comes closer to 'Out Of Time' than anything else they've done, it never once sounds dated.

They've totally nailed it.

Rancid are currently the best and most consistent and most observant rock n roll writers on the planet.

It's highly unlikely that Buck 65 is ever going to become the cash cow that his paymasters probably thought he was going to be, but let's hope that he is invited to keep on presenting us with his skewed worldview; a beautiful painting seen in a shattered and blood stained mirror.

'Damaged' is a hugely welcome addition to Lambchop's now frighteningly impressive back catalogue, and an album with few limitations.

Given how many of their contemporaries have attempted to xerox a winning sound and got it so far wrong, the fact that the Kings can still turn their hand to such magnificent lost hits as 'Misread', spin out obtuse, imaginative imagery as they do in 'Surprise Ice' and sculpt such tender ruminations as 'Stay Out Of Trouble' is cause for serious celebration.

Compelling. Devastating. Amazing. And rocks like a bastard.

'Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited' is an often fascinating and enchanting compilation as these things go, though I say, somewhat predictably, that there's no substitute for the real thing.

'Milkwhite Sheets' will come to you offering kisses, but beware the knife behind its back

The diversity audible throughout 'Nostalgialator's' 11 tracks makes the album feel like some surreal kind of trans-generic mix tape.

Doom is what is amazing and great about hip hop.

Calexico provide drama, atmosphere, tension and tenderness in the 16 tracks here, not only because they have soul but because they're so good at their craft.

If it's house music you're after then you won't like this because this (sorry to point out the bloody obvious) is something completely different. And that, as far as we're concerned, is the whole point.

The most poetic, bookish and winsome of the anticon crew, his new album as Why? sees [Wolf] creating lavish wordscapes over the deceptively straightforward folk rock music.

'The Eraser' is Radiohead's fourth best album, and not bad considering it's the first one with only one man on it.

Anyone expecting something similar to his early doom-laden musings will find nothing of the sort here.

We've rooted for them and been scantly rewarded, but at last they’ve done it - 'Heroes To Zeros’ is great and they know it.

If you like your dance music jerky, nasty and just a little bit angry, Death From Above are your boys.

Whatever you're going to make of 'Heathen', you'll probably agree it's Bowie's most eclectic effort for some time - and a damn enjoyable, rockahula listening pleasure.

Their zeal is such that, for the most part, we can overlook their failure to be flawless.

A lean, aggressive and thoroughly relevant album.... If you really need to spend any money on an album where a multi-millionaire relentlessly tells you how remorselessly shit life is; make it this one.

Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.

People who hate the venality and misogyny of modern mainstream rap will find this a particularly joyless experience, but this unwavering and energising disc at least has the courage of its convictions and makes the immediate competition look like the mealy mouthed twats they are.

'Silent Alarm' is a brilliantly accomplished art rock record that immediately immerses you in a world of taut, late 80s post-punk, melodic indie. It rarely lets up.

'Streetcore' shows he was still producing vital music to the end.

If there's a quibble, 'Honeycomb' does lack variation of pace. Though it doesn't matter when the tunes are as consistently as good as 'Sing for Joy'.

there's something in this that sounds just so much more intelligent than fannying around making devil horns.

If anything this year's model raises the stakes on its predecessor.

Key to the success of 'Broken Boy Soldiers' is the relatively restrained musicianship.

The music on the album sounds muscular, more confident than before.

What makes Bunyan's return such an unqualified success is that, unlike so many of those she's influenced (Patrick Wolf excluded) she doesn't come within a country mile of the briar patch of cloying kookiness.

'Rather Ripped' is the most accomplished and mature album Sonic Youth have done in years.

Somehow Blink 182 have captured the space created by Green Day.

Anyone else tries this, it'll be like being force-fed Sunny Delight by a battalion of pastel-pashmina'd Pokemon on My Little Ponies. In the hands of The Flaming Lips, with their stellar inventiveness and inquisitive sweetness, it's just utterly noble.

As ever, he's on point, and brilliant.

It's an unrelenting trip, and while Hawtin's much trumpeted spoken-word vocalisations veer perilously close to self-parody at times, 'Closer' is a stunning re-affirmation of an uncompromising musical vision.

There simply aren't enough superlatives to describe the genius of his music.

But shorn of the spoken word indulgences and look-what-I've-just-found electronica it's a leaner, hungrier beast, a more focussed, more alluring, more dangerous, but still tender trap.

Gris Gris' practice of bleeding their songs together in dissonance creates a roller coaster that renders 'For The Season' over before you've really realised it's begun.

Unlikely to be defined by any passing scene, Herren seems likely to go his merry way in the way production auteurs do, body-swerving ham-fisted attempts at pigeon-holing or categorisation.

Quite simply, 'Bows + Arrows' is a Great American Record, taking the qualities most admired in the last 35 years of US rock and barbecuing them together.

Lethally simple pop tunes which sound like they were written during a particularly good seaside holiday in 1974.

A fascinating work of collage that never gets tedious or faddy.

In truth, there's no good reason to only confine yourself to just one of these albums when both have charms to spare.

'Suspended Animation' is less a compendium of songs and more a splurging, raging, raping jazz metal fusion machine, weaving in samples, gong noises and assorted cartoon horror.

It's terribly important that you don't give up on this record too easily. Given just a little bit of your precious time, the album will grow into something you never expected.

An album that rivals the brilliant 'The Sophtware Slump'... as their absolute masterpiece.

Even if you only have a passing interest in 70s heavy rock this album is nigh on essential.

She has issued a treasure. She has floored us again.