The jaunty melodies and jagged incisors savaging them into bite-size shapes remain engaging for the full 45 minutes, proving that the loud and voiceless do not have to sound ineloquent.

This debut offering is strong, addictive and enthralling, the perfect accompaniment to any mood, any moment, anywhere.

On the strength of this richly felt, richly imagined album, though, lack of love needn't concern Hoop.

The Golden Age of Apocalypse seems specially made for a long, hot, daydream-filled summer. Here's hoping.

Just because it is not music that shouts about itself, that dazzles with pyrotechnics or showboating guitar solos, its profundity and emotional heft is nevertheless, and perhaps even all the more, striking.

Essentially, this is some of the most consistent songwriting to come from Australia since the loss of The Go-Betweens, and some of the most arcane performing available anywhere outside of Arcade Fire.

Bonkers and beautiful, Storm Corrosion leaves one wondering what this duo will come up with next.

Rooms Filled With Light never dips beneath beguiling. Most of the time it's really quite grand.

It's not particularly clever, but it is expectedly big: if you're a Carey fan with a stocking that needs filling this year, this'll perk you up better than any alternative speech or sherry trifle could.

There's not much more British than slightly freaky folk music. As if to prove the point, Erland Cooper has mined these pleasant pastures for a debut album of depth and weird beauty.

Despite the genre signifiers there's more than enough personality of their own here for Cults to transcend both their blog hit wonder and the timeworn sound they lovingly homage.

This is a fully realised tribute to early 80s pop-RnB music, filled with candy-sweet keyboard sounds and beats that could be the work of a battered old Casio drum machine.

He has created a work of insidious beauty: creeping, pervasive and better for it.

Yet despite the melancholy mood, We’re On Your Side is far from depressing. Slaraffenland possess a wistfully melodic knack akin to The Beach Boys if they’d never managed to get off the Sloop John B, and there is much to admire in the multi-faceted arrangements.

An extension of the rehabilitation that the 63-year-old has undergone in the last decade, under the devoted guidance of family and friends, it's a record that both addresses and somehow transcends his past.

The Bride Screamed Murder, you see, all works when it really shouldn't, demonstrating once again just how the Melvins can somehow ensure their own very special brand of weird never quite becomes the norm.

This gem of a long-player – both sleepy and steely, mystical yet rooted in very real and universal themes – deserves all the plaudits that will hopefully meet its release.

Angry and socially conscious he remains, though. Monkey Minds in the Devil’s Time, a sprawling, beautiful, brain-belch of an album, is an hour-long testament to this.

Still, it’s a largely terrific return that retains all of the weirdness and edge of their debut but allows the tunes to win through at the expense of unnecessary glitch and red-raw distortion.

The Radio Dept. have cleverly managed to conjure up music with a thoroughly minimal feel, despite this hive of activity instrumentation-wise.

While Mala retains an inquisitive aural attitude--there in its markedly electronic palette, and its squirly, scuffly sound--there’s also limberness to this set of songs, a feeling of them all moving happily together.

Essentially, jj have offered a more rounded, somewhat slicker version of what came before, and to the vast majority of listeners the comforting embrace it offers will be welcomed.

Always is one of Stewart's most accessible albums.

It's an exhilarating taster of things to come.

It’s a theme that recurs throughout the record, and, indeed, that defines the Four Tet canon: mesmeric, melody-laden music, with varying degrees of difficulty. There is Love in You should be a fine introductory course.

Ester is a collection best suited to after-hours reflection, a glass of red in hand and the TV playing only static.

That lang is a greater and more radiant talent than the rest of the Siss Bang Boom combined is obvious, but so is the fact that in mysterious ways this strange marriage has helped her find her feet and voice again.

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.