A consistent second album of big choruses from the New Yorkers.

Soothsayer lyricism atop sinister guitars and eldritch electronics.

Spencer should be vaulting over these songs in an attempt to make them connect more directly, but she seems content for them to be merely pretty for the time being.

Thoughtful rap that deserves mainstream attention.

While the technical prowess on display throughout this set is truly awe-inspiring--Mastodon might turn everything up to 11, but they never compromise the finer facets of their sound, and everything's captured here in crystal-clear clarity.

The result, invariably, is that they hold the attention like a movie that keeps tantalising you with strands of plot then flashing back and switching the viewpoint. Some may find it irritating, but many more, you suspect, intoxicating.

If there is a fault with this record however, it isn't Faithfull's but her band's, as the playing is perhaps just too polite and polished.

With so much good here, it's foolish to dwell upon a few relative missteps.

Their most coherent, alive and plain best album yet.

This 17-track set is a worthy document of Soundgarden's glory days. There's certainly nothing here which hints at a group on the road to self-destruction.

So, while he fails to reward those fans who are everything to him with a great collection of pop-RnB, Brown at least gives them reason to believe.

Not one for the casual fans, but more than enough to remember the good times.

This album, Mark Ronson's "imaginary follow up to Rio that never was", is their best for 18 years.

On its own terms, it's a lean, mean success – and questions about longevity can probably wait until the follow-up.

You could justify that over-emphasis as evidence of a broad-ranging band flexing their options and chafing at their limits. But, in songs and career alike, you could also say The Naked and Famous might benefit from a sense of pacing.

FFAF have produced another pop-punk special with Welcome Home Armageddon--and, thankfully, they don't look like stopping any time soon.

It's this ability to pare back extraneous matter and to stare unflinchingly into the very soul of a song that makes Last such a spellbinding, if at times unsettling, experience.

Prepare to be smitten all over again, as the NYC outfit release a brilliant fourth album.

Once you strip away all this nonsense, The Chapman Family's music is thunderous and well produced.

It's one of the best things you'll hear all year. Bring on the next two.

Nineteen years later the band are in robust health, and Skins makes for an impressive, graceful addition to their catalogue.

Reanimated glam-punk pioneers get dafter as they get older.

Steel strings slick with gumbo grease and sweet gospel inflections.

A zingy fusion of disparate styles.

Full-tilt, power-pop catharsis and ecstatic blaze-of-glory euphoria – catchier than H1N1.

Immersion takes Pendulum further still from their roots. It offers more rock and more dance, but most importantly more fun. And when it's good, it's very good indeed.

The Gate is an impeccably stylish album that coaxes jazz from unusual sources.

On the first few listens, the album is less immediate than the debut, but patience reveals it to be richer, more eclectic and far more satisfying.

There's a kitsch appeal, but this stuff [from disc two] belongs in a different world from the marvellous early disc.

Throughout, CTE prove that they are an alternative act that's not scared of offending mainstream sensibilities. Time to break their locks.

Now we're meeting a new side of the veteran guitar god – a gentle, delicate and altogether more acoustic Mascis.

With Gomez still a going concern, this solo effort--five years in the making--is very much a side project finally realised. But Ottewell should consider a follow-up, as there's much more to recommend here than on recent releases by other indie band singers turned so-so solo artists.

It's exciting, not self-indulgent; real, not affected. Far from being removed or pretentious, these are songs that pierce the centre of the hearts that they've sprung from.

This one bristles with a sense of hope and possibility.

While Endgame is a strong album, and certainly an honourable one, it does lack an ingredient that might be identified as magic.

Remarkably, across its length the virtuosity and excitement levels never dip. After repeated hearings, the music sounds as fresh as ever.

The overriding impression of Boys and Diamonds, however, is of MIA's global smash-and-grab style of musicianship minus the bonding agent of an overarching personality.

Shoegaze drone-noise from Texas, done well but done several times before.

Civilian pushes Wye Oak to the head of the nu-shoegaze pack with a record as blissed out as it is maudlin, as rootsy and tough as it is fey and introspective.

Palermo Snow is a confident collection that delights in bringing together a still-formidable technique to exercise and enjoy itself in the company of a good tune.

They continue to make music that sounds like it cares how you are.

A personal, private fourth LP from the Philadelphia native and select pals.

A worth-the-wait second LP a decade after the New Yorkers' celebrated debut.

Lupe remains a singular hip hop voice, and Lasers is still worth a listen.

In lesser hands, such 'fusion' elements could have fallen flat, but Aurelio's obvious talent, and Duran's sterling musical arrangements, instead yield an impressive album that simply sounds better which each new listening.

The true tests of an album of compositions such as this are, firstly, that it produces original, stimulating music and, secondly, that it makes one return to the original versions to listen to them anew. On both counts, Bird Songs succeeds admirably.

Whether Goodbye Lullaby was all a tad over thought, or whether she's just holding back, the finished product falls significantly short of Avril Lavigne's own capabilities.

Though not without merit, the overriding sensation is one of empty melodrama.

Collapse into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event.

The Magic Place, splendidly, isolates the listener, cuts them off from the world around them.

A treasure of tremendous emotional resonance and focus from the rising country singer.

As ever, whatever the material, Wilson's smooth but husky-toned vocals are highly distinctive, especially when combined with a delivery that savours every word while remaining loose and languid.

Oregon rock alchemists create soundworlds that one can be effortlessly immersed in.

While the album's polished and pristine, it also feels dated and somewhat lacklustre, any true inspiration placed on hold. This is Elton Ron.

The songs here are less oikish, more nimble and nuanced, than a lot of Oasis' ponderous later music.

An outstanding album which improves upon the Swedish singer's great debut.

Casual Ladysmith fans are unlikely to be won over by these distinctions, although long-term listeners will be pleased to see the group finding fresh water at the bottom of the well.

The duo has followed through admirably with Invariable Heartache, a record that seeps with clear-eyed hope, regret and wisdom.

It is unnervingly delicate, endlessly distracting and ultimately addictively tactile as it sneaks under your skin.

Don Was produced this. He must have loved it as much as the musicians did, and he obviously got it as nothing in the production interferes with the songs.

As a whole, The Deep Field nails it. True, the songs are long, it is almost ceaselessly rich, and you're going to want to skip its first 30 seconds every time.

It's not an album for those with short attention spans but, in a world of lightweights, Tabor's a colossus and this is one of her finest hours.

Profoundly thoughtful music that's moved on from drone metal beginnings.

In order to get that these three people from Bordeaux and a drummer from Berlin are the genuine maverick article, one just has to grab a listen. And be confused. And delighted. And frustrated. And appalled. And strangely aroused. And then listen to track two.

True, it is debatable that we need more mixes with Cockney Thug on in late 2010. But Blow Your Head proves the two tribes can still intermingle, and both are still making winning records

Easy-going and mellifluous, songs built on the simplest of patterns.

Hecker's latest seems to ultimately be about making peace with our mortality, and as such is his most powerful album yet.

Malo is busy carving out the new genre of sincere south-of-the-border melodrama. It's all delivered within a classic 40 minute album length. The perfect pop punch.

There isn't the clarity that characterised his lovelorn debut. It's a minor criticism, though, and one that doesn't tarnish an album as equally rich in invention as his first offering.

It's not merely a rehash of the original, but a cohesive, considered masterpiece in its own right.

Rarely does a British debut album forge such a fully formed, genuinely unique direction that attempts to slot it into established scenes prove almost entirely fruitless. But Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam, the full-length bow of late-20s wisdom dispenser/producer Obaro 'Ghostpoet' Ejimiwe, achieves such a feat.

Flash, brash and brimming with an irrepressible anarchic vigour, more than anything, Bring Your Own is a thing of unfettered joy.

A fans-pleasing eighth album from Britain's most consistently brilliant band.

Go-Go Boots is one of the best examples yet of the separate yet complementary skills of the Truckers' three leaders, melding styles and switching moods but retaining an overall feel that's distinctly theirs.

Between the bounce of the lighter numbers and the ache of the sweet ones, there's all manner of winningly realistic insights veiled underneath the music. This debut is a joy from beginning to end.

Unique: rarely meant, but here the only possible description for the sounds these four remarkable players emit.

It may have taken Geldof a while to get here, but as he prepares to collect his bus pass it seems wisdom and reflection have finally overtaken venomous splurge as his choice of artistic cloak. And it's a very good look for him.

This self-contradiction makes him as human and vulnerable as the rest of us, and that is this album's true charm.

The accompanying music is folk-pop with just enough quirky edginess to keep it sounding fresh.

So they might be inserting themselves into a canon known for its critical consensus, but Palace is still a vital addition to the oeuvre, and richly deserving of the inevitable praise.

overall Excerpts is an evocative, sophisticated and charming record, awash with imaginative atmospheres, that looks back to the past for inspiration without ever wallowing in sentiment.

An album to relax into, over weeks and months, this is one many will be coming back to whenever stress levels flit into the red.

Think of it as a solid foundation to build something more unique from and it's a triumph; or, better still, don't think at all and let it tickle several sonic taste-buds in a single sitting.

It's dark but not relentlessly brutal. It's even more introspective and dynamic than the pair's collaborations from the first time around.

Overall this is a shiny penny of a debut, and it would be a terrible shame if Columbia's mishandling of this band resulted in it being forgotten.

Danilova and Stewart are respecting the intended intimacy of the record, but this could have been so much more had they let themselves bring a dash of Zola Jesus and Xiu Xiu, rather than phoning in their parts.

They've also striven to make their soiree as all-are-welcome as possible. If the latest serving of salad days for indie has to start somewhere, it could do a whole lot worse than here.

He may just have produced his best album.

Ambitious, and brilliant, fourth LP from the New York MC.

Childs and Blake have created a record of outstanding songcraft, which salutes rock's past with a carefree spirit and its head in the clouds. Go Jonny, go, go go.

Mescaline-soaked narratives woven through hallucinatory images of Americana.

So while Hardcore... is a shift of speed, downwards, it's only a gear change rather than a signal that the whole journey's coming to an end.

Super Furry Animals frontman's third solo LP captures his creative wanderlust.

Hercules and Love Affair have vaulted over any second album worries with a jubilant and celebratory collection of large tunes.

While not quite the amazing leap that Cut Copy made from Bright Like Neon Love to In Ghost Colours, Zonoscope is by no means a bad album. But it is one that will probably sound better when wafting across a field during festival season.

God bless unique, unfathomable, great Queen Polly.

The results are every bit as enthrallingly out of step with the group's "mainstream" catalogue as previous SYR releases, but fashioned into something that's perfectly coherent, and really quite a delightful listen.

To the Yorn faithful this set will probably seem like a step in the right direction.