He’s come close to his aim of making this album more than a curiosity, but the real impact can surely only come from seeing his orchestrion in action.

Downtown Church is full of astonishing songs.

There was a time when it seemed anything emanating from a Chicago zip code was essential. That time may have passed, but if you're in any way interested in atmospheric, exploratory music that creates worlds as it progresses, seek Boca Negra out.

Good Shoes have home-produced a record worthy of similar plaudits; there’s both hope and future here in abundance.

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.

As tasters go, it’s exciting fare: the appetite for more isn’t so much whetted as left in a state of delightful fervent.

Astro Coast sounds so prescient that Surfer Blood will be riding a wave of popularity for a good few months yet.

Within Spoon's astute use of sunny structure, a brooding heart of murky frustration lurks. A deceptive, addictive album, revelling in hidden depths.

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

There are impressive experimental excursions here, too: take Never Say Never, a whirl of backwards beats, twinkling harps and discombobulated vocals that’s both utterly disorientating and quite delightful.

So, despite promising little, Turn Ons proves to be quite the diverting delight, albeit one you're unlikely to return to once a new Supergrass album arrives.

At times it can settle too readily into a kind of country chug, and one begins to feel stuck for too long in a dusty, last-breath pick-up on some interminable road trip. But when it is good, it is very, very good.

Here, they deliver a sequel as successor, less a follow-up and more an outright usurper from the underworld.

The Len Price 3 sound well aware that people aren’t tuning in for their Swiftian commentary, but for the fizzy fury of their cheerfully unreconstructed rock’n’roll. Pictures may well be what the doctor ordered, for those whose preferred consultant’s last name is Feelgood.

The Betrayed is not an underachieving record. It sweats hunger and ambition, and while it’s not flawless, it’s a success on their own, aggressively populist terms.

The band’s lack of a defining musical style has proven an advantage here, as frontman Damian Kulash and co. were clearly able to explore their boundaries, unconfined by audience expectations.

Not everyone is going to want a 12-song cycle about the relationship of an extremely violent fictional farmer (no – come back!), of course, but within Heartland’s grand sweep are some riveting and quite glorious ideas.

In The Music Scene, Blockhead has made both pretty melancholic tracks and straight-up thump-the-desk bangers bedfellows, and for that the new decade should be eternally thankful.

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.

Although Stronger with Each Tear may not be one of her greatest works, it ensures that Blige remains as relevant as any of her more recent contemporaries.

More than a holding operation while Thomson tours with Ian F. Svenonius as two-man funk caravan Publicist, this is travelling music for swinging around asteroids or hurtling down a ravine.

It’s a neo-soul record. A very good one, because that’s what she does, her passionate voice bringing abundant personality.

Kid Sister is certainly on the right tracks, but Ultraviolet is a sadly patchy affair.

No-one will be disappointed by a Glee album which includes "Don’t Stop Believin’"--their chart-eating cover of the Petra Haden arrangement of the Journey song; or "Alone," or "Gold Digger." But it’s a shame there wasn’t room for their Winehouse-approved upgrade of "Rehab;" or the stripped-back swing at Bel Biv Devoe’s "Poison," as performed by the show’s all-male vocal group Acafellas. These would probably have lifted the second half of the CD, which loses some of the sparkle and joy once the barn-storming "Somebody to Love" has finished.

If at times the impression left is too breezy (the elephant in the career that is You’re So Vain sounds almost embarrassed to be here), at others it’s extremely potent.

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.

Despite the bounty of overdubs, however, there’s little self-indulgence to There Is No Enemy; Martsch’s overloaded approach might scream ‘prog’, but he also possesses a perfectly-disciplined, ‘pop’ songwriting sensibility, with every lengthy instrumental coda married to contagious choruses and melodic barbs that lodge in the mind.

Originality niggles aside, the vitality and wit these Oregon upstarts display on this first LP is enough to recommend them to anyone interested in hearing a quality good-time band. Hockey seem to actually give a puck, and that’s reason enough to like ‘em for now.