Dizzying in its scope and ambition.

Terms like "alt.country" are far too prosaic to contain music which might equally be called post-bebop, spook-folk or ghoulish horror soundtrack.

Every note, every lyric, is perfect.

Each track is astonishing.

His best work since the Clash's London Calling.

Though the arrangements are predictable, Staton's versatile voice is a revelation.

An entirely unique return to form.

Both albums are sublime. Taken together they're hip-hop's Sign o' the Times or The White Album: a career-defining masterpiece of breathtaking ambition.

The most original and exciting artist to emerge from dance music in a decade.

One of the year's best already, by a mile.

A Grand Don't Come for Free raises the stakes to such an extent that it sounds literally unprecedented: there isn't really any other album like this.

London Calling itself stands tall as the band's masterpiece, the showcase for all their musical tastes and inclinations.

You are drawn to the conclusion that these songs would be remarkable regardless of the circumstances in which they were written.

Franz Ferdinand's album arrives packed not just with fizzing guitars, disco-influenced drums and intriguing shifts in tempo, but also memorable songs, laden with hooklines and startling riffs.

Medulla may divide Björk's audience, but, combining intellectual rigour and sensual ravishment, it is brave and unique.

Using and abusing passionate gospel, country sweetness and filthy guitar licks, the Kings of Leon are the kind of authentic, hairy rebels the Rolling Stones longed to be.

Smith has crafted an album that is deft, addictive and profoundly musical, and it feels like a fresh-minted classic.

For fans of chiming, literate, lovelorn pop, Picaresque is an absolute treasure trove.

This is late-night listening that pulses with pain.

The air of two songwriters on rare form, confidently challenging each other to greater heights, is inescapable.

It's a triumph of non-judgmental storytelling, delivered within purgative rock'n'roll.

Such sentiments are couched in consistently wonderful songwriting, surf's-up vocal harmonies... and lavish electro-pop.

He's discovered a mellow maturity in Southern soul - and without losing his punk rock perversity or poetry.

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.

Their melodies have never sounded richer or more lovely, their charm never more beguiling. SFA have made their best album yet.

While the music is eclectic and teeming with exotic textures, it always feels coherent and easy to love, and might even earn the band a nomination as Britain's Best Pop Group.

[Fall Heads Roll] is of head-turning quality.

It is filled with things only Kate Bush would do.