IOH is their most emotional release yet and also their most philosophical.

This is accessible, song-based contemporary jazz at its most earnest, ordered and empowering.

A sassy self-overhaul, AM issues lubricious R&B come-ons over a self-assured narrative arc with personality and open potential cannily spliced.

Liars revel in keeping their listeners on edge and entertained making Mess their most wickedly enjoyable album yet.

There are enough album tracks and B-sides to make the case that what we actually had in 10cc was a British Steely Dan: clever, funny and funky as hell when they wanted to be.

[Tales from Terra Firm] ought to be the one that separates the Oxford quartet from the indie-folk bandwagon and kicks them a few steps up the ladder to being Mumfords-sized.

It may not be for everyone, but it's evidence that there are still some restless minds out there.

Even if [Psychedelic Pill is not essential], it's by some way the best non-essential album Neil Young has ever made.

Memphis is a late-night delight.

There's no progression or narrative, it's immersive rather than engrossing. Slow Focus is an album to steep yourself in.

There’s something artificial and experimental in the project’s very DNA, but that need not be a bad thing, and it isn’t.

Arrangements are simple, bluegrass-inflected and rich in acoustic textures. Warm and thick as a hayrick.

Tough, soulful, rockin' songs.

A hitherto only-hinted-at humour (try "UK Blues") punctuates this hypnotic and haunting glimpse into an imperial isolation.

Ageing is a war they can’t win, but by facing it head-on, the Manics have found the spur to move forwards.

It's rather fine.

Expect more straightforward, big-vocal, soul-funk numbers, and fewer immediate hits. But compared with most R&B records, Monae is still lightyears ahead.

Not a perfect debut, but one that leaves you with the feeling that we're dealing with a living, thinking artist here, not just another Brit School waxwork.

Proper, stop-you-in-your-tracks talent with the occasional song to match.

The intricate interweaving of guitar and ngoni juxtaposed with the bright, clear backing vocals makes for a sound that’s dynamic and assertive.

Effortlessly mixing traditional instrumentation with samples, this varied yet cohesive album has an angular funkiness and a soulful pop edge.

It's testament to his songcraft that it feels all of a piece.

A mature, reflective, intelligent, Americana-inflected [album].

It is a near-total triumph.

Songwriter/producer Sergio Pizzorno opted for a more slimmed-down sound, stripping away layers of sound to allow the ideas to speak more clearly.... It’s a brave but largely successful move, as is the shift from mainly guitar-riff-based songs to ones predominantly fuelled by synthesisers.

Sweetly soaring stuff.

You can almost hear the chickens out in the yard and see the dust mites dancing in the sunlit air.

Turn Blue’s stealth seduction suggests this much: their wrong-footing instincts should keep them on the right track.

These are tipsy juke-joint stompers with feeling in their heart as well as dust in their grooves.

A surprising (if a little sad) return to form.

The weird, aquatic-sounding requiems are getting better all the time.

Their self-titled debut, aptly enough, is one of the most bitterly anti-romantic albums this side of the third PiL offering.

Haunting and harrowing, the uncomprehending first reactions are combined with a score both alarming and consoling. Also here, Mallet Quartet (2009) and Dance Patterns (2002), but it is WTC 9/11 which packs the most powerful punch.

Delicious.

Unrefined, unresigned, occasionally clunky, frequently obtuse but always, always fit to bust.

A seething, soundtracky, high-gloss, high-energy orchestral Latin "fusion", full of licks and stabs and twiddly bits.

Their unadorned, effects-free music remains simple and straightforward, like a rock equivalent of the Dogme school of cinema.

The songwriting has come into focus and the hooks get under your skin.

An intimate, introspective album that takes tentative steps to reveal the soul behind the star.

It's nevertheless a hugely enjoyable ride, Clarke and Gore's duelling synths creating an entirely instrumental soundtrack to the sci-fi movie playing inside your own head.

There’s nothing here to quite match his finest moments, but nothing stinks and that, I suppose, is the best you can expect.

How you respond will depend on how you react to such gubbins being brought to bear on Merritt's A-to-B-and-back melodic sense. No doubting its realness, though.

Unless I'm going insane, On a Mission sounds like a modern pop classic.

Ice on the Dune is a seamless suite of elegiac synthpop, with fairydust-flecked melodies, a perpetually peaking bass end, chord changes that reach into your heart, and fantasising falsetto vocals.

One moment--the Jason Molina tribute “JM”--is startling enough to forgive the clunking stadium-grunge workouts that seem, conversely, to be bringing Strand of Oaks to wider attention.

It's that rare thing: an album that will reward repeated listening by drip-feeding you its secrets.

Tales of Us has a stately pace and woozy beauty, with cinematic orchestration of swaying strings over acoustic guitar or mossy cello.

It starts nervily and there's some creative recycling of motifs, but once he builds up a head of steam the force is truly with him.

Enchanting stuff.

The overall theme is utopia defiled. Until, that is, Deacon – ever the optimist – brings it all together on "Manifest", the big rapturous finale.

Somewhere between Ladyhawke and M83, it's 1980's fetishism all the better for the apparent lack of irony.

The warm human purr of her ethereal vocals is juxtaposed towith fluid electronic elements and the occasional welcome interjection of bluesy guitar and jagged off-beat percussion.

It is, as you'd expect, spacious, gentle, reachy, euphonious and, for Air, fairly organic sounding.

Danilova's commanding tones evoking nameless terrors over wonderful doom-laden synth-rock.

Jamal sounds close to his 1950s Chess Records best.

Their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.

The constant here is Arthur’s voice: genuinely soulful and able to switch from MC to Marvin at the flick of a falsetto.

Comedown Machine is, essentially, The Strokes' 1980s album.

The wisdom expressed is crusty but benign, poetic and sometimes witty.

"I Wanna Talk 2 U", [is] just one highlight of an album which manages to be sonically inventive, dense and complex and melodically accessible.

Filled with beguiling close-harmony tunes which wouldn't feel out of place on the Wicker Man soundtrack and sound like venerable trad-arrs but are actually originals.

A classy, well-made record.

Gentle Spirit is impressively inert.

When these three Liverpool lasses let their freak-folk flag fly their abandon is contagious. Their voices are great, which helps, but it's the unexpected instrumentation that really seals the deal.

PTSA may never stare you in the face, but you'd be a fool to turn your back on it. It's carrying a knife.

Morning Phase is an often gorgeous sequel to Sea Change, but it’s also more than that: it’s cheering proof that Beck isn’t ready to start repeating himself just yet.

Simultaneously the most and the least pop record of the autumn.

Squelchy synths, down-and-dirty basslines, and vocodered vocals stay just the right side of Jamiroquai.

The music is softly strummed, and Bird’s voice is a high, lonesome thing like the wind on a prairie. Sort of.

Michigan auteur Hawthorne has synthesised his influences into perfect power pop, with the help of producers including Pharrell Williams.

Very enjoyable package.

Truth is, the release of Tin Star should set Ortega’s adopted home town alight.

BTS is a covers album recorded at and paying tribute to Memphis's Sun Studios, deploying tumbleweed guitar twang, and occasionally, the falsetto.

Crain’s third album has proved something of a breakthrough in the US.

Maybe now he can sleep a little less on floors and spend more time making gorgeous albums like this. Please.

This is an instantly engaging showcase of the 23-year-old Aussie’s talents--poppy without diluting her fierce-flowing charisma.

Everett’s earlier, fearless accounts of family tragedy have refined his ability to explore extreme states of emotional disrepair.

This often sounds more like a BBC4 documentary than a pop record. And that's no bad thing.

There is no shortage of shimmery songcraft here.

They are awfully thoughtful, though the thoughtfulness does frequently give way--sometimes you feel with a sigh of relief--to the technical liberation of jig and reel.

The repertoire leaves room for instrumental chops from saxophonist Ernie Watts, while Haden's big bass fiddle thumps out the time with authority.

Winehouse's progression from fresh-faced ingénue to agonised diva is operatic stuff.

Simultaneously grounded and spiralling off into the stratosphere, this is urgent, epic stuff that doesn't let up for a moment.

A natural wonder.

Just simple, old-fashioned talent and charm.

It's touching, witty, and like everything else the Bostonian ever does, brilliant.

James's voice is slightly diminished but not so as to sound like anything other than itself. She's the real deal.

There's a modicum of standard Teenage-Fanclub-meets-Mekons indie jangle. Far more interesting, however, are the dreamy, dazed disco tunes.

Daves is a guitarist, Thile a genius of the mandolin. Both sing. Together they hammer and tongs the songs like smiths.

while D contains strange time signatures, proggy flute solos and syncopation aplenty, it soon reveals itself to be a work for the heart as well as the mind.

Their music which, as it happens, is a thrilling mix of raw vocal harmonies, rattling homemade guitars and handclaps.

Happily, the North Carolina’s modern hippie’s second album is too ambitious, too fluently fluently surprising and too lovely to appeal to 1970s retro-heads alone.

If the Mayans were right and the world really is going to end this December, you won't hear many better soundtracks than this.

This darkly amusing, awkward yet oddly graceful return of the ostensibly dead, more than measures up.

It induces a heady sense of perpetual forward motion, whether graceful or full pelt. Stunning.

If Elysium has a weakness, it is the absolute absence of thumping disco-pop monsters. Once you accept that, and surrender to the tranquil beauty of Chris Lowe's synth textures, you quickly realise that Neil Tennant is on top lyrical form.

An atmospheric yet danceable debut.

Thankfully, the Knife have remained true to their essential principles.