It’s not just the recurrent meditations on mortality that makes Ma Fleur even more heart-rendingly beautiful than 2002’s Everyday, it’s also how The Cinematic Orchestra’s new album actually feels.

This is one of those rare albums that makes you wonder how you ever got by without it.

Excellent Italian Greyhound is vintage Shellac: stark, razorous and blackly comic, lurching into whatever time signature happens to possess drummer Tod Trainer.

This is not a bunch of old blokes looking to recapture their youth; rather, Grinderman sounds like a freshly hewn and rudely vigorous chunk of leftfield rock.

Though it still errs toward a languid late-60s template, Cabic’s songwriting is now crisp and effortlessly melodic.

Throughout, monster riffs abound. Perhaps this monochrome-clad cartoon combo are as great as singer Howlin’ Pelle always said they were.

Essential listening.

In Rainbows really does present Radiohead at their most full-blooded and confident.

Much of Hissing Fauna… dances in the face of its depressing subject matter.

M.I.A. and co-producers, including Switch, straddle more styles than you’d find in most music collections, let alone on the same disc.

This is music that hits the head, heart and hips all at once.

When Cease To Begin rocks out it's euphoric, but there's a mournfulness shadowing each of these insistent melodies that will have you crying even as you smile.

It’s exciting stuff, simple yet deadly effective.

An album as rich as it is strange.

it's great to hear Banhart playing outside of type, and the swagger and muscle occasionally at work suit him surprisingly well.

The songs on Comicopera rate amongst his very best--emotionally complex, politically charged but never short of beautiful.

He’s an acquired taste, perhaps, but a distinctive and extraordinarily talented songwriter.

As exciting as it is original-sounding.

A fine album for autumn.

This will end up flying off the shelves for sure.

A less angular, more grown-up album - something that won’t rattle your nerves.

It’s to her great credit that Newsom (literally) plucks artistic triumph from the jaws of cloying whimsy.

Bewildered newcomers will soon be entranced, old fans won't be disappointed.

The new album conjures something of Condon’s own imagination, more deftly-etched romantic fiction than dry travelogue, and is all the better for it.

While their sound might have progressed in an even more bizarre – if sadly less atmospheric – direction, it's still surprising, full of invention and totally unique.

Give it a bloody good stereo and your full attention.

Now every track is an intensely creative pop gem, like those brilliant pockets scattered throughout previous releases, refined and condensed.

The result is less cohesive than Vespertine or Medulla but the fun’s in the exuberance, the jolting between musical styles.

Overblown orchestrations, searing choruses, a demonic self-help tape pastiche and odes to Tom Cruise’s private life are tempered by sparse melodic interludes and tender songs of souls battling against grim routine.

Turner’s sharp narrative ear is still tuned to the revealing banalities of everyday life, the whole band admirably responsive to emotional nuance.

Together, they’re a marriage made in musical haven.

At 77 minutes it’s no sprint, but YLT’s mellifluous serpentines are never less than involving.

Whatever the permutations, Amiina's fragile magic can't fail to beguile.

There are missteps... and the production is sometimes frustratingly muddy, but Neon Bible very nearly delivers on impossible expectations.

Their debut has a great deal of shadowy appeal: there are lyrics about ghosts and secrets, set to drowsy washes of guitar.

Burial has concocted a noir-ish sound that’s as powerful as it is atmospheric.

This only occasionally matches the breathtaking splendour of last year's …Illinoise! but with its modest price and immodest extras only Scrooge could fail to have his heart warmed.

El-P's uniquely, beautifully harsh vision remains undiluted.

Rather than play catch-up, the Chems are accentuating the difference, digging deeper into melody instead of piling on the noise.

Ward’s band kick back with a looser, rockier feel than previously, yet his dusty, wistful voice still inhabits an age all of its own.

The sort of euphoric, sweetly intentioned indie pop that, despite occasionally making Belle & Sebastian sound like Da Lench Mob, nevertheless manages to stay the right side of cloying.

It's brilliant: Broder's twisted tales are better than ever, this time underpinned by urgent guitar riffs, off-beats and perfect pacing.

Upon starting Soft Bulletin--you’re instantly whisked off into the universe the Flaming Lips have created. The musical journey that ensues is nothing short of imaginary genius--simple as.

Filling the gaps between Prince and !!!, this is for those who spent the last two decades shaking their hips rather than banging their heads.

If you’re after dark, bloody romance with a twist, look no further.

It’s clear that chemistry was in the air.

This mini album sometimes feels as if it’s thrown together like quickly-packed luggage.

Warm and quirky. Pleasantly bizarre. Sophisticated and daft. Herbert at his best.

The result is a folk album so rich and intricate that, in scope, it's comparable to Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks."

Frank is an honest, refreshingly personal record which, though very occasionally strays into easy jazz, has Gucci bags of personality.

[Finn's] smart, poetic, unashamedly adult lyrics... almost guarantee this is the best arena band that’ll never play an arena.

As lush and expansive as his former work was taut and aggro - only the quality remains.

It's a bewildering jumble on first gaze, but Harte's little fingerprint-smudged slivers, so lovingly composed, are precious things, and you'll fast find yourself addicted to his sweet, glum love stories.

If there is such a thing as music with a hairy chest, this is it.

Their second album continues in a similarly delicious vein, melding wonky electronics, pillow-soft soul and lyrics that manage to weave strange violence into gorgeous soul songs.

A textbook lesson in sublime but understated country soul.

Short answer: it’s good.

It’s a winning combination, with the Prince’s shambolic charm still intact but lent clarity by the new additions that make this infinitely preferable to previous efforts.

An addictive and immersive debut album.

There's a real richness here, and raw venom beneath any fey first impressions, as gentle finger-picking bursts into free-jazz fuzztone guitar blasts and bloodied lyrics.

His vivid, scattershot rhymes are clever without being cryptic, and his techno-tinged beats never veer off into tuneless arhythmia.

The album’s dark title belies its artful balancing of psych pop’s sweetness with head-down, rock riffing and the emotional power of the blues.

Even by her own unsettling standards, however, her seventh album is disturbing, a collection of smudged and spectral laments that appear to have been written before the invention of penicillin.

As fun and full-on as it gets right now.

The best thing about Garden Ruin is the way they look beyond country borders to engage with the wider world, both culturally and musically.

An ambitious, filler-free, modernist-sounding beast which laughs in the face of underachievement.

Sensuous, subtle but emotionally overwhelming dreamscapes, whose luminous beauty makes pigeonholing nigh on impossible.

Meek Warrior’s seven tracks form a sprawling tapestry where every guitar pluck, clarinet wail or joyous shout seems part of some euphoric cosmic plan.

At their best, on Yankee Go Home and Five Easy Pieces, their sound becomes less indie rock than ecstatic chanting.

An ultra-sensuous experience.

The influences may be antediluvian but the spirit is timeless.

There are off-centre, post-hardcore workouts and plenty of edgy but polished, pop fusion pieces, which suggest The Futureheads transplanted to 70s West Coast America.

Preposterous, touching and brilliant.

Don't let the seductively pleasant drift of the tunes fool you: this is sharp, dark stuff.

Overall, The Sun feels like three men taking things at their own leisurely pace but without wasting a second.

Possibly their best and certainly most joyously eclectic album yet.

The Eraser’s sound lies somewhere between the roiling beat soup of Amnesiac and a poppier sensibility.

The translations offer many witty surprises.

Klaxons serve up Day-Glo pagan ritual and pop silliness on toast, and kids get sick on it.

Waterloo To Anywhere is more pro and muscular than former endeavours, chiming more with labelmates Razorlight’s ambitious professionalism.

Not all of Dangerfield's maverick ideas work - he should steer clear of under-accompanied singing for a start - but when they do take off, Guillemots really soar.

There’s gold here but you need to dig deep.

The confessional micro-detail of Darnielle’s minimal indie-folk songs – and haunted whine of a voice – remains stoically unchanged.

While still lush in its own grimy way, Ruff Draft represents the harsher, more experimental end of Dilla’s palette.

Their sophomore album is surprisingly world-weary, but brims with an almost brutal rawness and betrays the pair’s striking talent for storytelling.

Five albums in, The Coup have just made their best since their debut.

A cannily considered, thoroughly de nos jours mix of punk, skiffle and music hall-bred power pop which fizzes with energy and affects a brash charm, but adds little to Barat’s and Doherty’s original blueprint.

Godin and Dunkel are peerless at conjuring a mood, and sonically this is typically impressive, but it needs more foreground, more focus.

This is a beautiful record; so wistful and reflective when it finishes it’ll make you feel instantly nostalgic.

A complex yet controlled fourth album of astonishing beauty and perfect strangeness.

Shot through with attention to detail and the lush production typical of Dunkel’s main concern, Darkel might have its moments of archness but it knows how to shake it’s booty, too.

Coming in 2007 it sounds oddly fresh, but nothing here’s as full-on as their early stuff or as lovely as Feel The Pain.

There are few dynamic surprises here, and no serrated edges, but this disc's strength lies in its building mass of lumbering, decelerated funk, its textures gluey and thick.

It's perfect for passing down the crown of Malian desert blues.

The lyrics are often sublime, of course, but there are big, stupid choruses too.

Don't expect the gumption of Super Furries, instead bask in the mellow psychedelic ramblings of Gruff unplugged.

Having eschewed the over-earnest knob-twiddling of erstwhile producer Steve Albini, Verity Susman’s vocals and Mia Clarke’s guitars now sound crisp and urgent, and when the envelope gets pushed... the band’s detached cool melts into a pleasing joi de vivre.

The production is smoother, but when Sleeping Lessons morphs from an opiate dream to a riffing stomp with such exhilarating economy, or Red Rabbits wraps drunkenly swaying strings around yet another firmament-bound chorus, you can forgive an occasional excess of slickness.