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.

This will end up flying off the shelves for sure.

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

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

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.

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.

This Japanese power trio possess a lurking sense of Metal traditionalism, producing a scabrous wall of guitar noise, crunching, dense and turgid.

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.

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

A textbook lesson in sublime but understated country soul.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Shorn of the orchestral lushness that distinguished their previous effort, The Dears now have little to recommend them.

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.

Heartfelt but sometimes overly polite.

The influences may be antediluvian but the spirit is timeless.

Lyrically, Allen spins the street-slang tales of blowjobs and booze told with varying success by everyone from The Streets to Shampoo.

Short answer: it’s good.

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.

Even the most melancholy moments... have airy jazz arrangements that let them breathe.

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.

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

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

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