Dark as the rest of the album's subject matter, it wafts by like a delightful breeze. That's partly because the music is delicate and gentle, but it's mostly because Tunng can write the kind of melodies that get under your skin. They are still there long after the gloom has dispersed, making Good Arrows a dark pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

This is a beautiful, beautiful record.

It is the dense, dour mini-symphonies such as Broken Home and December that, while unlikely to appear on the average feelgood summer playlist, offer the kind of beautifully brutal music that will continue to reap rewards as the long, dark nights of winter draw in.

The New Abnormal proves that when they put their minds to it, that old magic is still well within the Strokes’s grasp.

Like its predecessor, The Physical World is crammed with loud, fast, short songs.

Thrashing Thru the Passion does what it sets out to do: scratch again beneath the surface of America’s hedonistic undertow, and prove there’s plenty more life in these Brooklyn boozehounds yet.

A light, entertaining album.

Not all the experiments work... However, Rilo Kiley are more inspiring than you'd think.

It is the stylised, minimal music that lends the album its power, and which helps West convince as a man beset by demons and femmes fatales.

Almost everything here sounds like a hit waiting to happen, equipped with a tune strong enough to be heard above the hype--or the hype about the hype or the people complaining about the hype about the hype--and memorable enough to make the idea that Black Kids will be forgotten by Christmas seem a highly unlikely suggestion

The diversity of the writing means that Mirror II occasionally feels more like a hugely enjoyable compilation than a single artist album: whether one trio can successfully contain three writers with such diverse approaches indefinitely is an interesting question. Hopefully yes.

Scott’s mighty voice is a commanding presence throughout, whether flying around the melodies of songs such as Prepared, or multi-tracked on the dreamy Fool’s Gold.

He sounds enlivened, even happy, nestling among the steel guitar and bottomless suffering.

It’s very much an album out of time, music made out of love, rather than in pursuit of a trend. You need a high tolerance for wispiness, but it’s hard to deny the loveliness of a song such as Floating Like You.

Go Easy is by far their most accessible yet, balancing the arty with the party beautifully to make for a set of danceable, hook-filled songs.

While Marten’s debut doesn’t reinvent the strummy/murmury wheel, its purity and grace make it worth investigating.

Long Live A$AP's is frequently thrilling, a dense splurge of woozy electronics and samples, packed with lovely production touches.

Strikes a near-perfect balance between the various facets of the band's history.

Over 13 tracks, not one a filler, they mix everything from punk to electro, house and disco, and end up like a delirious collision of the Specials and Basement Jaxx.

Amazing how this old-fangled stuff can still sound so good.

There Is No End plays as a cohesive record because of Allen’s capacity to slot into place behind seemingly any collaborator without diluting his innate sense of rhythmic style. The album is a tantalising glimpse of the varied records Allen might have gone on to make; as it stands, it will no doubt inspire others to continue to shape the multitude of work he left behind into giddy new forms.

If you're seeking an album to keep out the winter chill, you could do worse than to wrap yourself up in Telefon Tel Aviv's sumptuous head music.

Lyrically, they veer between odes to suburbia, such as 'Photobooth,' and dreaming big dreams ("One day we'll live in Paris"); either way, they couldn't be more likable.

You’re left with an album that fancies itself as a challenging work of art, but turns out to be a collection of fantastic pop songs full of interesting, smart lyrics, but also peppered with self-conscious lunges for a gravitas it doesn’t really need.

There's an appealing open-heartedness about the debut from Australian psychedelic poppers Cloud Control, a sense of wide-eyed, slightly fried wonder.

What the Raconteurs offer is the middle-ground between White's muscular, distorted blues and Benson's Who-goes-bubblegum approach. The end result seems unlikely to change the face of music as we know it, but it's often breathtakingly executed.

The album is a tuneful emotional rollercoaster, and it's thrilling to hear such vitriol and indignation--qualities in short supply in current pop.

When the MCs are actually on the mic, backed by 7L’s super-rugged boom bap production, there is much to love.