This is an album that can make you weepy in the hazy blur of the wee small hours, and euphoric in the fuzzy afternoon sun.

Ultraviolence marks real progression: never has Del Rey sounded so compellingly crystalline on a set of recordings. Thematically, though, tracks can appear content to splash in the shallows.

The result of two years of head-down studio time, the Brighton-based producer has laced this debut with heart-racing drums that trip over each other and dark-hued synth rollers.

Refining rather than challenging their boundaries, Fucked Up reconnect with the sounds that first set their pulses racing. Glass Boys is a gloriously savage return.

Any aspect of their music that might have felt lightweight before, at least off the stage, has been eradicated.

Between the caustic riffs and searing lyrics there’s some damned beauty in Parquet Courts.

There’s a lack of precision, with a flabby middle section finding ‘Begin To Begin’, for example, looping aimlessly. Yet when it hits home, Reality Testing more than justifies Lone’s tag as one of the most flexible, dextrous producers in the game.

It’s enlivening, inspiring, frustrating and maddening in equal measure--and you always wonder what’s coming next.

While it aims to push boundaries, CLPPNG does so in a way that demonstrates a love for the music and culture that forms its source material.

Apart from perhaps three exceptions, most of these tracks get lost in their own elegant, introspective and lovelorn swirl of tedious easy listening.

With lyrics dripping with casual poetic nuance and bold, full arrangements, Stay Gold is at once an arresting set of classic country reference points as well as a towering body of stirring, beguilingly original songs.

Although the material demonstrates Vek’s undoubted talent, Luck can’t quite match our hopes--or, indeed, the quality of its predecessors.

On the whole this is clever, electronically-infused rock that showcases Ounsworth’s songwriting chops.

With Glorious Foxes has made a pop album that, despite occasionally drifting into melodrama, serves as an enjoyable listen stuffed with genuine pop-gems, sun-baked choruses and enough bite to warrant repeated listens.

Coming two years after his debut ‘Blunderbuss’, a vitriol-filled purge that dropped in the wake of White’s divorce, Lazaretto does sound like a transitional step.

Hardly essential, then, but Unplugged is a fans-pleasing release that serves as a reminder that songs with great longevity needn’t always be played loudly.

Towards is smart pop that keeps its charm.

With an energy and ambience that ebbs and flows in waves rather than exploding in peaks and crescendos, this is edgy, kaleidoscopic lounge music for the Digital Age.

The woozy title track seems deliberately designed to unsettle the listener at the halfway point of an album that is in turns both richly emotive and beguilingly, bewitchingly uneasy.

For now, these gossamer modernists have created something understated and endearingly elegant.

The classical elements are independently pleasing--as you’d expect when elements of Shostakovich, Mozart and so on are used--but by drenching it all in commercial dance production, the supposed ‘fusion’ becomes a bastardisation.

It’s a truly fascinating listen.

Think ‘Step Up’ from ‘Blue Songs’, developed full-length.

A U R O R A is both testing of boundaries and transcendental of beauty.

This is a sizzling and accomplished jaunt through the mind and talents of a British institution.

Reachy Prints is yet another artful and aerial treasure.

The production is an expertly judged combination of radio-friendly pop and club-influenced, sparse trap beats. Iggy’s the real deal.

Everybody Down might have created a new genre: the album noir.

Some of the fragile innocence may have been replaced by moments of casual philosophy and effortlessly grandiose anthemic pop (‘Zigzagging Toward The Light’, ‘Kick’), but Oberst can still throw out quietly stirring minor epics using little more than a guitar and quiet musings.

Separation is writ large across the themes of Ghost Stories--and knowing what came next in Martin’s personal life, perhaps that was always to be expected. What’s not is just how lifeless so much of this material is, how instantly forgettable these songs are.

Where previous Colourmusic albums were spiky, unpredictable things, this set often feels content just to wallow in an amorphous sonic soup.

Live, Little Dragon are weapons-grade ace. Now they’ve finally got an album to match.

First Mind is captivating, full of intricacies and influences that should see it celebrated as one of the great albums of 2014.

There’s a playful sense of bawdy humour at work across White Women. Some may find the irony unpalatable, but there’s little denying Chromeo’s cheeky pop mastery.

To Be Kind is altogether more colourful, an expansive record--fleshier, bloodier and lusciously psychedelic.... Near perfection.

This is a timeless collection of blossoming ballads.

A damaged but delightful long-player, then, perfect for fans of Daughter and Camera Obscura.

We’re submitting this one for further clinical studies.

A work of typically broad imagination, not everything on American Interior fully clicks into place. Yet when it does, there’s more than enough to suggest that Rhys need not cease his eternal voyaging.

Still splitting opinion. Still weaving rich pop tapestries from whatever fibres take their fancy. They deserved better.

This is invigorating, wilful and wildly exuberant--and one senses an invitation to collaboration with David Byrne might be in the post.

Across its 10 tracks, the album focuses more on the complete experience than unexpected instances of sidestepping intrigue.

Though her personal tragedy has been transformed into an affecting record of real beauty, one truly hopes Li’s next chapter isn’t quite so agonising.

9 Dead Alive demonstrates amazing talent, then--but the ideas and theme, as a whole, are a bit samey.

Passion is a puzzling thing, expressed in myriad manners. But it can never be fabricated, and Ought’s heated brand of it is amongst the most bracing sounds anyone can encounter in 2014.

Turn Blue is pure searing sexiness, hotter than a Nashville afternoon. Their best yet.

While it has it moments, Sheezus is largely devoid of Allen’s pragmatic charm of 10 years ago.

His music marries complexity with club-ready thump, resulting in a dystopian dancehall of morbid booty shaking.

At times her deliberate vocal style disconnects the listener, and one hopes as Green’s career progresses, she trades in the allegories for something a bit more emotionally inclusive.

Death III is the last of the group’s unreleased masters, a dusty odds-and-ends collection of songs from the ‘70s, 1980 and 1992 that’s full of drifting guitar melodies and psychedelic funk.

Self-produced and melding electronic elements to their more conventional methods, this is a record by a band that has fallen in love with making music again.

The album’s lacking that one standout moment to make it a truly transformative experience. Still, the scope and ambition are to be applauded, and it’s a treat to take a voyage around his mind and beyond.

A great feel-good record for the summer months, this one is the perfect soundtrack for the car, park or beach. Just enjoy it.

An early contender for this year’s big summer rap album, we won’t be surprised if we are still hearing about Honest when the winter cold returns.

It doesn’t burn out so much as creep up and these songs offer yet another new guise for a remarkable talent.

There are Pixies fans that would have preferred another ‘Doolittle’ instead, but Indie Cindy isn’t bad, not bad at all.

It’s just irresistible and should proudly sit alongside the successes of their Bella Union labelmates.

This masterpiece isn’t dulling any time soon. Working on the premise that they were Generation X’s own Velvet Underground, this is their ‘White Light/White Heat’, and one of the most important rock records of all time.

While some moments may be a little theatrical, the astounding musicianship and production pulls it back, from the thick woodiness of clarinet and raucous cupped trumpet to the unbelievable percussion and strings.

Food is a fabulous and immediate record, rich with muted brass and low-key electronics.

Johnny Foreigner are, thankfully, still showing no desire to slow down.

Sure to be a hit with the disenfranchised, give the man a single bulb to perform under on stage and fans will be riveted.

Nutini reins in the melodrama, and Caustic Love is testament to that restraint.

Throwaway fun, for sure, but throwaway all the same.

This album was crafted amid relative calm, and this peacefulness is present in every track.

There are enough moments of musical eclecticism here to suggest that Built On Glass is his solid starting point, rather than a definitive statement.

So It Goes delivers on the promise they exhibited early on, successfully paying homage to NYC’s biggest hip-hop hitters, navigating busy, broken rhythms, and throwing up fresh perspectives with hazy, boom-bap production.

All performed with good, non-satirical heart.

Enjoyable, but some’ll always believe in it more than others.

Richly melodic and possessing a classicist pop sensibility, this is rock music with soul.

Darlings is a concrete mixer full of ideas, although it’s tricky to pinpoint if Drew’s actually laid the foundations of a decent record.

It’s a jarring listen from start to finish, but worth sifting.

Ultimately, Salad Days is an aural testament to the old adage that there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.

The first half of the LP is phenomenal.... Despite some scorching vocal interplay, there’s a noticeable drop in quality on later tracks.

Kaiser Chiefs fall further into the abyss of bands that have little new to offer in a current musical climate where progression is more closely measured than ever.

This is cheap theatrics masquerading as inspired art.

Herring’s growling vocals prevent proceedings from becoming too gloopy or nostalgic, and make Singles a new-wave treasure.

World Of Joy, ultimately, is impounded by its own musical influences.

Teeth Dreams is the New Yorkers’ burliest record to date, less feel-good and chorus-driven than previous efforts, but there’s still much to love

Impulsive, instinctive and infectious, the eccentric and emotional Ørsted walks an enchanting tightrope.

It may not be quite up there with fan favourites ‘Fever’ and ‘Light Years’, but proves a lot more memorable than ‘Body Language’ or her previous studio set, 2010’s ‘Aphrodite’, were.

Unsettling, certainly, on more than a few occasions. But wonderful is the descriptor that sticks after so many listens to this entirely enveloping LP.

Oxymoron is all killer, no filler--and despite some tracks here not quite translating to radio, in the album context nothing feels out of place.

There’s quiet beauty here.

[Gibbs] expertly negotiates Madlib’s minefield, forcefully popping words off the producer’s gorgeously mined snares and snatched vocal loops.

The accompanying DVD features an early performance by this line-up, which is a mildly diverting if sonically unspectacular curio alongside a still largely splendid record.

A glittering glam-pop bounty of androgynous pop bots, dock prostitutes, Depression-era outlaws, cowboys and nun-baiting schoolgirls, GYBR remains a vital and versatile vision of brilliance that deserves to be heard.

For all its lack of idiosyncrasies, however, there’s a credibly unashamed attitude to creating perfectly fine pop songs.

An album of summer anthems this is not, then, and its collision of sorrow-tinged dreaminess and ethereal symphonies ensure it’s not just good wallowing material, but good material full stop.

Too much of Neontwang feels slight, as if the band is still beset by identity issues, still confused by the prospect of what they could be. The transition, then, is still under way. When it works, Neontwang is a worthy return, the sound of a band taking risks in ways their detractors could never fathom.

Another ambitious statement from a band that has made a habit of reinventing themselves at every stage, while still, somehow, sounding uniquely like Liars.

An ostentatiously operatic tour de force.

It’s patchy then, but there’s enough quality here to suggest Croll is capable of better things in the future.

Although Supermodel is derivative, it’s more often inventively imitative, rather than devolving into out-and-out mimicry.

This is an enjoyable blend of ballads (‘58 BPM’), funked-out euphoria and even a satire of dance music pretension (‘Ten Minutes’)

Compelling and absorbing, The Take Off is a rich and rewarding record.

The radical variation on this album speaks volumes--this casting respect to yesteryear twisted with the juices of his modern imagination--and if ‘The English Riviera’ was Mount at his most accessible, then Love Letters finds him at his most inventive.

What we have in this album is a solid set of dance head-turners, but it narrowly misses the rubbed-raw rave charm of 2012’s ode to the 808, 'Transistor Rhythm.'