He clearly relishes the heightened emotion of his source material, the album wisely avoiding cheap campiness in favour of respecting the music's rich sense of drama.

This engrossing union of pianist Matthew Shipp and alto saxophonist Darius Jones is an important addition to the aforementioned and fascinates for its emotional and conceptual richness.

A record fizzing with ideas, tight melodies and loveable sass.

Whatever the case, those years out of the spotlight have served TPF well: every second of Buffalo is wrought and layered with artisan care, and if ever you were looking for a record to banish the winter, this could be it.

Admire the riches this national treasure has bestowed upon us.

Who would have thought the musical accompaniment to a film about a series of Idahoan murders could be so beautiful?

While it lacks the freshness that saw it named one of Pitchfork's best albums of last year, there's no doubting that Palomo's best efforts retain their charm a year since they were first heard.

Gravity the Seducer isn't the ultimate Ladytron album, a title which still belongs to Velocifero. It's too uncertain for that, with the slight wobbliness of someone injured learning to walk again.

Tribal contains 16 deeply detailed, fidgety tracks--but it's never hard work. It's a warm, gently funny album.

Smart but not showy, clever but never at the expense of a catchy hook, this is 'indie' par excellence.

The overall impression remains of a bunch of clever chaps who are able to avoid over-intellectualisation and weave bags of charm and fun into their complex pop songs.

The performances are terrific, and although the songs are from the more obscure end of the Western Swing repertoire, with the exception of Corrine Corrina and Right or Wrong, it’s an excellent introduction to this music--a delightful blend of country, swing and jazz.

At just 28 minutes long, Cat's Eyes certainly doesn't outstay its welcome. Hopefully this is the start of a very glimmeringly troubled yet wonderfully disturbed relationship. Amazing.

They’ll soon become enraptured by what accompanies these highest-of-profile pieces: music that embraces the listener with a silken touch and seduces them with a beguiling beauty that, still, sits prettily beyond the clamour of convenient categorisation.

It is, frankly, classic Eno. Holland too emerges from it well, though his contributions tend to be less immediate.

Elysium could be Pet Shop Boys' warmest, wisest album yet.

It continues the band's long-running, idiosyncratic and distinctively creative career path.

Songs as bold, honest and passionate as these shouldn’t have any trouble fitting in.

While much here can be summarised as more of the same, when Lennox's natural quality control operates at such an admirable standard, that's precisely why Tomboy is such a chilled-out triumph.

Mercer's gently off-beam pop songs are lit up colourfully by the duo's choice of arrangements.

An outstanding debut album that's been a long time coming.

Justin Bieber's new album not only finds him becoming an artist for adults on his own terms, but showcasing impressively distinctive tones and translating an innate charisma across many styles.

There are many more moments of magic on this triumphant third album. Among them, The Girl is Gone proves Mystery Jets can do melancholy in as confident a manner as they do happiness.

It is beautiful and bereft and hard to listen to with easy joy--as are much of the best of these essential recordings.

Elements create a thick, clotted atmosphere which is enveloping but sometimes almost claustrophobic.

Cadenza is so much better than alright: it's more than a little brilliant.

At Night We Live is the best and the most confident album of their two-part career. It is also, admittedly, more commercial-sounding, but there's no shame in that if it's done with integrity, dignity and passion.

Rispah is brilliant enough for the listening public to find it naturally, in their own time.

They now sound more like a band that has really found its own voice. Recording live in the studio in as few takes as possible also seems to have given them a new edge.

Tunes are plentiful, but competing with angularity and dissonance to establish a prevailing mood.

Roll the Dice are processing the work of their predecessors into something recognisably new. And at its best, In Dust sounds neither antique nor cutting edge, but timeless.

Mylo Xyloto may have an oblique title but it's a triumph because the music is anything but.

It might not encourage repeat plays, but to dismiss it as a racket is to do it, and its maker, a huge disservice.

Elling's individualist vocal reinterpretations are well worth hearing.

Lawrence Arabia's narrator persona, with one foot sternly in the past and the other staggering, trying desperately to get away, loiters before it settles. This makes Chant Darling a charming listen whose dolorous sentiment recurs like a welcome motif, each song taking time to reveal its full charm.

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.

To call it a career highlight would be a little excitable, but Mirror Traffic feels like one of those records that'll tempt fair-weather fans back to the Malkmus name. Which is probably a happy thing for all concerned.

The sessions don't sound patchy or cobbled together. There's a unity in terms of performing equality, coupled with an unbeatable repertoire.

Felt is a transportative album, a balm for troubled minds.

No Gods is a significant statement of intent. Despite its nihilistic title, it's an album that brims with vitality and could well be Sharks' ticket to the big leagues.

Aesop Rock shows an accomplished ability to join the unflinchingly candid with the unfalteringly compelling.

Best Coast's music wishes for that innocence – for when a pop song could sum up your whole torment in three perfect minutes, before your heart truly gets broken that first time – and successfully evokes it with Crazy for You's immediate classic-pop hits.

Unicorn is that rarest of things: a record imbued with genuine talent and emotion which wipes the floor with the majority of its makers’ contemporaries, while calling to mind the classic vocals of Karen Carpenter and the pioneering spirit of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Quite startling.

Byrne and Clark have managed to not only meet but exceed expectations, and created one of the year's smartest albums in doing so.

This eighth studio album sees the four-piece climb the next step of the stairway of relevance.

As fascinating as it is perplexing, anything but obvious, and therefore to be applauded.

The results are both reminiscent of preceding emissions from rap’s fringe-mentality movers and shakers, and compellingly unique in their colourful fusions.

This is a band that never rests on its laurels, a band that embraces new ideas but also knows how to write killer choruses. The worry was that this record would turn out dull; the reality blows that concern out of the water.

U2 producer Flood marshals the band's bulldozing energy into an altogether slicker sort of bombast, and admittedly there are moments (Dream Dream Dreaming and the seemingly endless build-up of Lots Sometimes) where the songs sound in danger of losing their way in the middle of it all.

Despite the array of producers lined up--Including Danja, Darkchild, Polow da Don and Swizz Beatz--Diddy has corralled their work into a tight, coherent whole that's absolutely packed with ideas and creativity.

Propellor Time is, in short, another fine Robyn Hitchcock album, proving that, almost 35 years into his recording career, his gift for crafting such perfectly-imperfect, winningly-askew pop as strong as ever.

Haley is not attempting anything revolutionary on Galactic Melt, but he demonstrates a sight more depth than a lot of stuff that's been tagged as chillwave.

Mehldau's method is so dominant that everything gravitates towards the trio's signature sound, lending cohesion to a variegated crop.

Sky at Night simply distils and expands all Kloot's lovely strengths, from his taut, elegant tunes to resolutely bittersweet lyrics.

The surprise excellence of the songs and the music makes this the long-overdue fourth great Magazine album.

[An] inspired brew of, indeed, both fear and fun.

Through its songs he conveys truths about this country in a way that few other English songwriters, if any, are able to do.

The Oscar-winner is an understated powerhouse on her second album.

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.

A record, then, that says nothing, beautifully. When Burrows develops a lyrical accuracy as keen as his musical one, these Arrows will truly burst hearts.

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

With its hurtling, remorselessly breakneck pace this isn't an album you listen to as such; rather, you grapple with it.

He Is #1 has a refreshingly unencumbered sound, a lack of technological interference allowing the honesty and authenticity of the music to shine through.

The songs here might take a little longer to unlock than their predecessors, but none of them strike a false note.

Goodman casts a spell on the listener with Sees the Light.

This impressive debut belies Harvieu's tender years.

This is a transatlantic musical campaign whose virtuosity, verve and sheer eccentric heart make it hard to resist.

Pop Tune finds the Japanese three-piece in fine form, exhibiting a wide-eyed freshness all the more remarkable when you consider that they have been a going concern since 1981.

A majestic return and, let us hope, a harbinger of more to come.

The way Marnie plays is fresh, but she does hold true to some central tenets of rock’n’roll in her fizzing songs: invincibility and defiance.

Album proper or not, there's no denying this is greatly entertaining stuff.

With the constant variation found on the record--and what is probably Friden's most comfortable vocal performance of his career--they sound like a brand-new outfit, and you wouldn't bet against the Swedes gaining a whole new lease of life as a result.

Always building and beautiful, their sparse, even minimal, approach lends Penny Sparkle a complexity that's both rich and rewarding in both its inspiration and execution.

La La Land is so warm and easy to like, it triumphs over any misgivings.

With material of a standard to match his fantastic pipes, here Callaway has crafted his finest Cee-Lo long-player yet.

This is a collaboration that makes sense. Both share a taste for a rather languid tempo, that of small-town life and the more tender, bittersweet emotions; and theirs is a pairing that's complementary.

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

Bluntly, Lisbon is a collation and culmination of their finest work in years. Rather than a selection of scattered snapshots, this time we've got the bigger picture. And it's irresistible.

Now, it seems, her time has finally come.

The vivid nostalgia remains, with these all-original cuts sounding like they could easily have been laid down back in the golden ages of the 1950s and 60s.

Thoughtful rap that deserves mainstream attention.

Lyrics are route-one effective throughout, as you'd expect from an album called Boys & Girls, but the Shakes are not one-dimensional.

End Times plays to Everett’s strengths, offering enough intrigue and wonder to keep happy listeners new and old.

There's nothing vague or routine about this elegant, charming and quietly profound record.

Girl on Fire is a smart album, maintaining the high standards set on The Element of Freedom.

A rewarding indie-pop set that's as warm and comforting as a hot water bottle at the end of a bed.

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.

This set is a welcome throwback to simpler, gentler times.

It sounds like all involved had fun putting this one together, and the listening experience is a pretty fun one too.

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.

Even though the initial delight wears off relatively quickly, this is still a weird and largely wonderful insight into a band equally capable of frustration as they are innovation.

Aside from the hype, this album is by no means a feasible breakthrough into the mainstream--there's not stride enough for that. But when it's at its best, it's boundary-breaking.

The core elements are so big, like blasts of pure plasmic energy, that it sounds planet-sized.

Captured here, however, the band is still full of the future, and as fascinating and beguiling as such things always are.

Shorter is firmly at the helm, yet benevolent enough to play the background when needed. The rhythm has taken him far.

Bedouin Soundclash's fourth album bristles and fizzes with elegantly understated passion and deadpan punky fury, as the group pursue their muse to various ends of the musical Earth.

She's refining her songwriting into an individualist composite of myriad genres, crafting works which resonate with her own personality. It's clear that she's no dilettante, and that her understanding of rock'n'roll, gospel, folk, country and rockabilly has a profound depth.

The man's bid for a place in the pantheon of gifted and fascinating greats is still on course.