Few albums this year will match up to the level of proficiency and commitment here and yet it remains a distinct probability that the world still won't listen. An album that will shadow most others.

Beautifully produced and blessed with Guy Garvey in fine voice, it's a small but perfectly formed step forward.

And my sixteen-year-old-self waits with baited-breath, wracked with the same nervous excitement I had a decade ago except this time, there's anticipation and expectation, justification, even, for an album I've waited almost half my life for.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea but this could well be a guilty pop pleasure for many.

Over the course of the album, the grandiosity gets wearying, and Jamie Sutherland occasionally sounds like Vic Reeves in full club singer mode. But, at its best, Let Me Come Home is a thing of troubled beauty.

To the uninitiated, this kind of '70s-inspired thrum-rock might sound a bit AOR, but given time it reveals its nuances, placing Vile somewhere between a rougher-edged M. Ward and a bluesy Ariel Pink.

Patchy with flashes of killer bee sting.

Collapse Into Now suffers somewhat. It's good. But it's no Reckoning. Or Document. Or Automatic For The People. Or...

This is cheerful childhood innocence come to life - candy-floss dreams and rainbow rivers.

Quick on the draw, Beans bosses a bite-sized blitz of syllable practice.

We're New Here is a psychedelic atlas with which we can all sonically voyage upon. A great way to start the year.

Lykke Li seems to have made it work for her.

Beady Eye are at the beginning of their own musical adventure - DG,SS, though hardly full of surprises, is a compelling way to start.

It's a solid and honourable return for a singer who has rarely disappointed.

Yuck is a satisfyingly catchy re-enactment of what would happen if J.Mascis, Kim Gordon and James Iha had formed an early Pavement tribute band.

Dark, deluded and dangerously danceable, Paris Suit Yourself are the inspiration for wild dance floor seizures, or, at the very least, lucid gonzo dreams.

Joyous, pensive, cathartic and hymnal in equal measure, this is the human condition set to music.

A dizzyingly ferocious support slot on the recent Gold Panda tour proved that London-based producer/remixer Alessio Natalizia's one-time bedroom project is now fully-formed.

A shift away from the sampling of his debut, Underneath The Pine keeps things sweet and traditional, leaving you lazily grinning from ear to ear.

The second Telekinesis album suggests that Michael Lerner's gift for hooky, college-radio friendly indie-pop shows no signs of abating.

Delicacies proves that this aging duo still have the fire in the belly of their hard drive.

Fragile but far from frail.

While these musicians have no problem coming together to craft a solid, emotional record, the sound is far from being their own.

The Golden Age ultimately comes across as try-hard penthouse party than wild warehouse rave.

Still confused but back on form, The Streets' final album (Skinner wants to make a film) sees a return to garage beats and square-eyed observations from a life staring at pixels on screens.

The album is a promising sweet-treat.

Nothing here transcends either songwriter's back catalogue, but Jonny is a welcome blast of warmth that shows the fires still burn bright.

Hotel Shampoo shows off a simpler, stripped back Rhys - whose lyrics are placed front and centre of beautifully arranged tracks, each imbued with an infectious energy.

Authoritatively potent, bitterly bleak and beautiful, this record is an unexpected but essential punch in the face.

Bolt on an undeniably zealous execution, a set of simple yet well-written songs, add an element of confident adventure via some experimentation and diversity and the rebirth of indie may just have found its leading protagonists.

It's alright and will shift units: boundaries will rest easy however.

For all the PJ Harvey comparisons Calvi will inevitably attract this record is more alternative cabaret than gothic melodrama -- and much better for it.

Things are a little different now but like many of their contemporaries, Cut Copy have had to adapt to the landscape and Zonoscope is a considered attempt at a more kaleidoscopic approach.

His are fragile, beautiful songs floating over warmly alien, sometimes seemingly formless musical structures yet it's an effect borne through unconventional levels of space and patience.

Like following a serial killer's trail of devastation, you're gripped until the end, no matter how grisly the conclusion. Bewitching.

In no way throwaway, this is a trip.

The repetitive beats and seemingly endless loops become, on the whole, tired and tedious too soon.

The prominence of structure beams through and makes this more of a traditional offering than a novelty. Still unlike anything else, this is time well spent.

Dominated by Satomi Matsuzaki's cute vocals, this is might be a laid-back record, but it's still one that's wonderfully challenging.

Adele is sincere, poignant and affecting throughout; the emotive 'Someone Like You' closes the album magnificently.

His prodigious talent is undoubted, but a second dose of puppy punk feels suggests Baldi is in cruise control.

This Party succeeds in merely rejuvenating, rather than reinventing, wonderful Wanda.

Less folksy, more funky, Kiss Each Other Clean is a rather more lively, sometimes even poppy record.

Nathan Willett digs deep into fractured relationships for inspiration and the resultant openness, coupled with King's deft nurturing of Willett's soul-searching, has created the finest Cold War Kids album yet.

They've mastered the anthemic choruses; all they need to work on now is the consistency.

This latest offering is a finessed folk-rock record to bring a little taste of long summer evening drives to the glacial January gloom.

Their subtle blend of kraut-funk, atmospherics and hushed vocals works, but at points several tracks pass by and you realise you haven't noticed anything.

Splicing the spirit of ancient Viking alcoholics with some red-hot Jamaican jah, BSP are finally having fun.

The band's third generation began just after the turn of the century and this LP completes a trilogy of new work that is confident yet vulnerable, refined yet earthy, moody yet flippant, representing a highly commendable contribution to the current scene, suggesting they are more relevant today than ever before.

Rich, detailed, and poetic, Blurry Blue Mountain explores human emotion and the meaning of life like the great writers of old. Gelb has been around a long time, and on the basis of this he will be for a long time to come.

A daydream-like haze smudges the crispness of the beats while Lewis sings his osmotic melodies, his tones akin to Richard Swift gone disco.

As a stand-alone album, what Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have created won't sate the disco heads screaming for more club material, however as an accomplished score it can only make a legendary film yet more cherished.

As attempts at storming the mainstream go, this looks like a surefire winner, but musically it feels like a lesser take on Outkast's The Love Below.

So, while Robyn shows that her body can certainly do the talking, when it comes to walking the walk she's prone to stumbling in directions she should avoid.

This is not just West's best album, it's a keen contender for the most ambitious LP in hip-hop history. West side story!

To account for the offensively retrospective nature of this trawl of commonplace dance-floor garbage (we're talking Coldplay, Candi Staton and Justice), I must assume, first, that they spent the last two years in a timewarp somewhere between 1993 and 2006. And secondly, that they spent this time in trashy commercial nightclubs, where glowsticks never die, dancefloors rotate and there's a price reduction for hen parties.

By concentrating heavily on this former and earlier part of Elliott Smith's career, the compilers of An Introduction To... have gathered some of his best songs into a starkly beautiful and coherent album.

The musical equivalent of a coffee table book this is a poised, polished album of covers and collaborations spanning a decade.

With the veteran experimentalists on a self-imposed hiatus--and now a drummer light--Not Music offers a stopgap if not a final full stop to a kaleidoscopic career.

Things move from melodic ambience to galloping sci-fi workouts and back again, the highlight being the sublime 'Emerald And Stone'.

Predictably pristine, ultimately inessential.

The melodies are subtle, avoiding reaching out to over-commerciality in pursuit of reward. That may be the downfall of course, which would be a travesty, as this is an intellectual and brave progression.

This latest offering is meandering chirpy slobber that sounds more boy band than ever.

Swanlights is less straightforward than his other records and more operatic. It's still astonishingly beautiful.

The Union is a mutual display of affection from both sides - Elton and Bernie's nostalgic tales are infused with gospel, rollicking country and rock 'n' roll, while Leon's croaky voice adds southern authenticity.

There's enough promise and originality within the current scene to merit considerable credibility.

The Godfather of cool retains his title!

Half the tracks see the beats surface into formed drums but for the rest the stratification and distortion takes the sound field to new places. Dangerously engaging.

Who cares if Stoltz listens to the Kinks and Beatles too much when he sings like an angel?

Like a virus-ridden PC vainly trying to upload lovelorn messages over dial-up to its neglectful owner, this side-stepping of the usual Hyperdub format is most welcome. We want more.

Somewhat removed from the robust radio friendly pop of their first Hoffer collaboration The Life Pursuit, this latest record inhabits a more delicate sonic framework, reminiscent of early B & S.

Even if there are occasional flirtations with bland daytime soul sludge, Mr. Strickland Banks is a welcome addition to Ben Drew's beguiling set of alter-egos.

Come Around Sundown is the remarkable product of an ambitious supergroup expanding their horizons, and is absolutely worth persevering with.

Lucky Shiner is one of the most innovative and mind-melding albums of the year and one that just keeps on giving.

Perhaps surprisingly, Adrian Thaws' Tricky schtick has yet to get old, with the only missteps on this, his ninth, album arriving when he conforms to, rather than resists, convention. Where it's good however, it's superfly.

The swagger comes in the form of knowing your strengths and for Stern, she's put all of them on display with Marnie Stern.

Love him or hate him, you can't deny that Ronson can certainly put an album together.

The album is a bold step, Spunt and Randall striving to write songs they would be psyched to listen to, and moving in a direction that will fail to disappoint fans of earlier releases 'Nouns' and 'Weirdo Rippers'. Rad.

It has to be said that, considering how Nick Hornby is credited with writing all of the lyrics here, the usual Ben Folds key words are present and there's only so much 'bastard', 'shit' and 'fucking' I can take. Despite this concern, as well as being Folds' most musically accomplished outing since going solo, it does feature the magnificent phrase, "some guy on the net thinks I suck and he should know; he's got his own blog."

A gentle and mellifluous set of songs.

Rave horns echo like WW2 sirens being played on a fucked-up ghetto blaster while the cast of House Of 1000 Corpses do their best Gucci Mane impressions--an interesting, if perhaps slightly contrived, oddity.

While songs 'Bondage Of Fate', 'If You Want It' and 'Sometimes' present a classic vibe, standalone track 'Pulse' is equally akin to the electronic sound of today. Nice touch.

Pitched as the genealogy of DFA records in one album, Shit Robot finally lays down his manifesto as an incisive filter.

There will be plenty of people who opt to be snobby about the fact that this record is so commercial, so polished and so brazen, but those people are all, to a man, idiots. If you can't love these songs, you are incapable of experiencing joy itself.

The Hundred In Hands manage to create mesmeric tracks of monolithic noise and danceable beat.

This time, the concept of political awareness reigns supreme, accompanied by some funkadelicious licks from The Roots' guitarist Capt. Kirk.

Earthy, enigmatic and possessed of a refreshing lightness of touch.

Unfortunately, the album barely reaches the most reasonable of expectations. The strength of their flawless magnum opus, 'Better Than Love', overshadows every other song on the LP.

With a sound centred around a tunable percussion instrument called a hang (think mellow steel drum), skittering jazz drums, saxophone and loops, the quartet, who live Monkees-like in a shared house in East London, serve up a fresh vision of jazz, drawing sounds from across the globe.

Brief though it is, 'Strange Weather, Isn't It?' represents a remarkable sharpening of focus at a time of flux - and possibly crisis - for the band.

Utilizing much fuller and considerably more electronic arrangements this time around, the album is uplifting and hopeful, though no less poignant; the tender self-evaluation of "What I Have To Offer" providing one of many particularly sweet moments.

The Gothic undertones of the previous two albums have been slightly toned down, but not that much, and this time they also manage to rock out with some more bluesy and electric tracks.

Combining this pandemonium with a more polished finish on the cosmic pop of "Echoes" and trademark falsetto chants of "Venusia," it's safe to say Surfing the Void was worth the wait.

It's predictably brilliant; another display of Dear's dazzling musical imagination.

Kaleide works best when all of its individual fragments twist into vision as one.

Good stuff, but their epics, like 'The Quick Mile', are curiously unengaging. When that track is immediately followed up by the captivating Eno-esque minimalism of 'Waves & Radiation', it's clear that their real talent still lies in crafting eerie electronic vistas.

Further proof that The Arcade Fire may indeed be the best band on the planet.

A magical insight into the development of Rossen's creative genius.