Truly, the album of a lifetime.

With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.

Centralia is by far the most satisfying release to date by the Brooklyn-based minimalist post-rock duo Mountains.

These are big themes, dealt with imaginatively by a singer and a band both operating at the peak of their powers. Album of the year?

It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

Roth fits Hunter like a glove, bringing out the warmth of his brass section and framing his raw voice in perfectly judged R&B arrangements that spark and bounce.

Kouyate's electrification of his ngoni lute is just as effective a sign of resistance: fed through a wah-wah pedal, his serpentine, fleet-fingered lead lines gain a fresh, assertive power on songs.

Inspiration Information [is] repackaged with an extra disc of pieces recorded since then, which show his abilities undiminished by age.

The warm but haunting Trouble Will Find Me will surely cement their accession to the rock mainstream.

Once I Was an Eagle is a work that demands to be taken as a whole, another reminder of the peculiar power of the album form, despite frequent premature declarations of its redundancy.

Technically unimpeachable, the layered harmonies of songs such as "Angels From The Realms Of Glory" and "The Holly And The Ivy" are rendered with razor-sharp precision, though there's a stridency to her delivery on some pieces.

It's easily the best work Diddy's been involved with in his entire career.

British Sea Power are bravely bringing beauty into an increasingly ugly world, whether that world wants it or not. They ought to be given a medal. For valour. For Valhalla.

The Kentucky combo Cage the Elephant manage to find a new wrinkle on the face of US indie-punk, thanks to an enthusiasm for yoking catchy melodies to abrasive guitar riffs that recalls the Pixies.

The T-Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues is Gruntin' Gregg Allman's first album in 14 years, and it's the best work he's done since the Allman Brothers' Seventies heyday.

Like some hibernating agit-prop agency awakening to meet the needs of these hard times, Gang of Four are in typically brusque form on their first new material for 16 years.

Todd Snider has the kind of audience rapport that comes only through years of one-night stands and the confidence that builds in one's character – even if that character is of an inveterate ne'er-do-well peacenik, wryly proud of his inability to grow old gracefully.

The simpler arrangements allow more room for Rhys's sleek harmonies to drive his whimsical wordplay: accordingly, the album has the lush, beguiling charm of a sun-kissed soft-rock album by The Beach Boys or The Young Rascals.

On what may be her best album, Polly Harvey offers a portrait of her homeland as a country built on bloodshed and battle, not so much a police state as a nation in thrall to military endeavour, however impotent and wasteful that has become.

Slightly laconic, slightly ironic, ["No Problem"] makes for a brilliant contrast with the production duo's galloping stutter-riff groove, heralding a run of crunching fuzz-guitar riffs that brings to mind the UK big-beat heyday of The Prodigy.

The secret is their infallible way with a tune: tracks such as "Get Away" and the single "Georgia" possess a beguiling melodic charm that illuminates the lo-fi boy/girl vocal delivery of Blumberg and his sister Ilana, bringing uplift where once all might have been gloom.

Go-Go Boots is the promised "R&B Murder Ballad Album" recorded concurrently with last year's The Big To-Do, and it's every bit as good as that description suggests.

Potential affection for this self-titled debut is likely to depend on how one takes this and similarly twee sentiments.

It's ultimately hard not to like an album that features not one but two epiphanies, one experienced lying on the "Roof of Your Car" staring at the stars, while in album closer "Lock the Locks" a dream prompts Skinner's sudden change of career--an event engagingly depicted as an office farewell party.

The King of Limbs sounds like the bastard offspring of dubstep and Nico Muhly, the brilliant composer whose string and choral arrangements inhabit the open spaces between contemporary classical and art-rock.

The only mis-step on the album is "Boeing 737", a pounding, splashy stomp whose brash incoherence perhaps disguises a commentary on the twin towers attacks. It seems brutish and crude set alongside the rest of the album, which otherwise has the kind of stylistic and atmospheric unity that reminds one of what albums can offer that no other format can match.

It has everything the Adele album lacks: real emotional insight, couched in genuinely soulful arrangements bristling with imagination.