This is metal taken to a higher plane of brilliance.

The melodies and vocals are uniformly great; writing about the pressure of fame in a way that elicits a response other than a yawn is an extremely tough trick to pull off, and Happier Than Ever does it with aplomb.

The melodies seemed soaked in a timeless well of American music: the album feels both new and familiar at the same time, every song a clever layering of Gunn’s guitars--acoustic, electric, steel, and assorted effects pedals, but all separated clearly, so there’s no hint of sonic mush. Gunn’s voice is perfect, too.

For an album recorded in only five days, it wallops with impact. Giddens is going supernova, and it’s a blistering thing.

Best of all, though, is the dynamism of the music: although songs flit around from riff to riff, as if Marmozets were bursting to fill each song with ideas, they are never too full, never just exercises in technique.

Akinmusire's arresting sound and the collective strength of his band of long-time friends--the dry-toned, Wayne Shorter-like saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown--power it all.

They offer the promise of something more perhaps in the future, with richer, bolder production: another tantalising glimpse of Earl’s unique and enduring charm.

Shaking the Habitual's problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society.

There aren’t really bad Spoon albums. There are really good Spoon albums and there are excellent Spoon albums. Lucifer on the Sofa is one of the latter. What a delight.

This isn’t spiky postpunk like their last album--it’s more unhinged: they’ve swapped hooks for a dirgy epicness, distortion bulldozes through, sometimes flaring angrily, punctured by driving, truly affecting drums. As poignant as those images of a decrepit Motor City, once brilliant, now decayed.

One of the most understated and charming albums of the year.

This is an upbeat album, as if LaVere is looking back on her youthful adventures with a twinkle in her eye.

You couldn’t call Badbea wildly original; it’s filled with references to Collins’s musical touchstones (northern soul; the Velvet Underground) and an explicit melodic link to Big Star’s Feel in I’m OK Jack. But Collins is in fine voice, and it’s always a pleasure to have him back.

Simon’s lyrics are finely honed, from the conversational The Werewolf to the confessional title track, a moving exploration of his creative process.

Mr Morale & the Big Steppers is absolutely crammed with lyrical and musical ideas. Its opening tracks don’t so much play as teem. ... An album that leaves the listener feeling almost punch-drunk at its conclusion.

50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having.

The singing gives you goosebumps.

Lyrically, he's never been better.

Sunny yet substantive, Anderson .Paak’s second studio album shows he is as at home settling into a breezy club groove over euphoric brass (Am I Wrong, featuring Schoolboy Q) or unleashing James Brown-esque funk yelps as he is waxing autobiographical tales of family hardship.

Simon's openness and spirit of inquiry ensure that So Beautiful Or So What is never the work of a man slouched in complacency.

Portishead's third album is initially more a record to admire than to love, its muscular synthesisers, drum breaks and abrupt endings keeping the tension high. But after several listens, Third's majesty unfurls.

Like the Dorset woods they describe, I Inside the Old Year Dying is eerily forbidding, but intoxicating, and easy to lose yourself in.

It’s all hugely impressive and striking, the familiar made subtly unfamiliar, Clark’s famously incendiary guitar playing spinning off at unexpected and occasionally atonal tangents, its effect simultaneously heady and disturbing.

The Overload is a starting point for a number of routes, rather than a perfectly formed end in itself. Certainly, there are flashes of a smartness and depth to Smith’s writing that go beyond scabrous one-liners.

This exhilarating set is a real find, for Jaco fans and left-field big-band followers alike.

The music offers further evidence of how far outside rap's usual strictures West operates. OutKast aside, mainstream hip-hop doesn't really do ambiguity or irony, but just as West's arrogance occasionally appears to be a protracted joke, Late Registration finds him in thrillingly subversive form, working in the production booth to undercut tracks' messages and shifting their meanings.

A slow-burn apocalypse of ennui and injustice crackles through the sensational fourth album from these Detroit post-punks.

At times, the bloodlust in Craig Finn's growl gets too thirsty. But it's the album's closing lyric - "Man, we make our own movies" - that reveals the secret of this band's special powers.