Patch the Sky is undoubtedly the record of someone not only haunted by their past but also the continuing difficulties faced in the present, but it is also a stunning example of Bob Mould’s resolve and ability to channel life, death, love and failure into two sides of meaningful and melodic music.

The Blood Bank EP is a fine appendix to the Bon Iver story, so far, and in its subdued elegance, the title track has all the emotional generosity of giving blood, tinged with the awareness of mortality.

Yak have nailed their debut album, and exceeded the high expectations put on them from the beginning. Don't let them pass you by.

A small and totally unpolished gem, sparkling and anti-lapidary.

It may not be a timeless classic - much like a lot of his immediately great yet throwaway peers - but for all Baldi's youthful exuberance, he's proven himself an honest and remarkably mature set of hands.

If there were ever a reason for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's existence, this would be it, and despite the false dawns of albums past, Beat The Devil's Tattoo can hold its head high as their most compulsive body of work to date.

For all the globe-trotting that went into the album, this is a band that--perhaps more than any other at the moment--innately sound like and capture their Californian home in all its beautiful complexity.

Turn Out the Lights is far from a happy album, but my word, it is riddled with joy.

Next Thing is an honest but beautified version of the mixed-up life of a city kid. The most interesting thing moving forward will be seeing how Kline's songwriting approach shifts shape.

PJ Harvey can be exhilarating, thrilling, or offer up a disturbingly hysterical variant on black humour, but she ain't fun. A Woman A Man Walked By is kinda, sorta fun.

Nostalgia doesn't often feel as good as this. Prepare to feel both spooked and studious.

Constant Future is the sound of a band who, after nearly ten years together, are comfortable with their sound, who know exactly what they're good at and sound like they're having great fun doing it.

The band transcend their obvious influences: the recording is far heavier and denser than anything they're referencing, the songs more abstract and feral, the vocals surging with an unknowable American passion that sets them apart from their Brit influence.

There’s a distinct lack of choruses, and if you don’t like the rest of Yorke’s ouvre it would be kind of bizarre if this won you over. But really, if you have a tolerance for drums that go ‘fzzz’, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a lovely, lovely record, easily Yorke’s best non-Radiohead effort.

There's no sonic arsenal, nothing to make you sit and check your ears, just gentle, simple songs that sound like the laments of a sad generation.

What could so easily have been an obtuse exercise in wilful eccentricity actually ends up an engaging, focussed listen that’s deserving of a wider audience than its somewhat cliquey appeal might suggest.

That they’ve somewhat restricted themselves in the way the record was constructed is also, oddly, a very good thing because it’s allowed them to strain and work within a framework and yield excellent results.

Composition is one of Bailey's specialties, and she quickly rebounds from even the tiniest missteps.

Asleep on the Floodplain is billed as a return to that pared-down sound, and it is as close as Chasney has come since to capturing the simple beauty of For Octavio Paz.

When he steps away from alt-country-rock (or whatever you want to call Jeff Tweedy et al) Cline tends to veer towards a more experimental jazz sound and this is where Lovers really surprises.

Grand without ever being bloated, humane without settling into pessimism, the best indie band in North America remind us why sometimes, the rewards do not equal the output.

The Wanting boasts both technical excellence and a cosy, welcoming atmosphere. A simple combination, perhaps, but a hugely rewarding one.

It’s easy to call XAM Duo a Hookworms side project, but to be honest, these days it kind of feels like Hookworms are the side project, not the other way round.

The great strength of El Vy, by contrast, is that it brings forth both members’ strengths to create something that sounds like a proper polished debut from a 'real' band.

With its bones on show and chest wide open, White Chalk may not be the greatest album of all time, it may not be to everyone's tastes, and it may not even be Polly’s finest. But let it and it'll haunt you.

There are flaws in the album, as some songs could be shortened a little and not every song connects, but once you start trying to add that individual polish, you would risk losing the essential character of the whole. As a solo debut, it is an album of assured intelligence.

It’s overblown, it’s almost too much to take in, it's got a sizeable chunk of dodgy singing, and it’s way too long--and as such it’s a wonderful tribute to The Grateful Dead, unlikely to ever get topped.

They've remarkably managed to raise the bar to a whole new level for an entire genre with Third Fact Fader. A triumph over adversity if ever there were one.

It’s refreshing to hear his music decontextualised--without a wider narrative, or the restraint of having to make an album as a piece, it’s Ashworth’s songwriting that has to hold the collection together.

When a soundtrack works this well, with each track slotting naturally into a strongly cohesive body of work, you begin to wonder about the clamour that is sure to come from bands and singer songwriters to put their work forward towards featuring on the next film's soundtrack.

Outsiders contains all the summery charm that made The Magic Numbers so vital all those years ago, but by golly they've matured in their songwriting too. This is a full-blown adult contemporary pop record, in the best sense.

Another essential release then, but a step towards theory-over-content that Hecker never really needed.

As fan-boy pleasing as this is, and as great as some of the songs are, it still feels a little like sneaking a peek at a director’s first draft, or rummaging through a scribbly, discarded diary.

Furr is the work of an assured band that are in confident command of their craft.

Broadcast and House have fashioned an artefact that could well work similar magic on future generations of wide-eyed sonic archaeologists.

There’s everything here that those in the know have come to love and expect from The Veils, but there’s also a window in for the rest of you--especially those not-quite goth, dreamer-types lurking over there, I see you with your Low lyric tattoo and Yeah Yeah Yeahs t-shirt.

With Last Days on Earth, the persistently-versatile Noah continue to set to music those picturebooks of get-togethers, easy plateaus and break-ups that we've all got stored in our heads and add to year-on-year – and, in the process, they've managed to forge some great big tunes. More or less irresistible.

They’ve pushed themselves on this album, striving to achieve something honestly different to what was released before it. Occasionally they’ve fallen short of perfection, but for the most part this album is a certifiable success.

Trouble In Dreams is full of amazing poetic adventures which could never flourish in the harsh light of the public eye.

Visiter has a hidden treasure aspect implying future generations may be more willing to appreciate this album.

It’s a piece of masterful craftsmanship tucked snugly into the singer-songwriter tradition, filled with country-soul ballads and grungy laments driven by jangly guitars, family band harmonies, rumbling pianos and cinematic string passages that should appeal broadly to fans of the genre without alienating his own die-hards.

For something so sprawling, Field Music (Measure) is impressively cohesive, particularly when considering the styles of the two brothers are more distinctive than ever.

'Love Is Hell' is proof that Ryan Adams is still on form and as splendid as ever.

A hidden gem in a murky quagmire of landfill non-entities.

It may eschew the rough edges of their earlier records, and adhere to the templates the Fannies have used since Songs, but when you’ve got the formula just right, and have the songwriting chops of three of the finest melodic songwriters these isles have to offer, then the result cannot be anything less than sheer joy in the here and now.

This is clearly the album that removes any lingering doubt that Chelsea Wolfe is a very special artist; one who is capable of the visceral and the surprisingly soothing in the same stroke.

As If is the album they’ve always hinted at, but never pulled off.

While Ween’s subtlety was never their selling point (but instead a delicious present undertone that added to the comedic effect) The Deaner Album also makes it clear that any poignancy and lightness of touch they did deploy came from Gene.

Yes, Dark Sky Island’s mix of Irish folk, choral music, pianos, synths and vocals with more layers than a 50 foot gobstopper; but the music of Enya is impervious to outside influences: if she didn’t continue to make it, then nobody else would.

Empros is consistently epic and life-affirming without ever delving into over-emotional cliché.

Apocalype then, is another Bill Callahan album, similar to those that came before it, with some particularly beautiful songs and some particularly considerate musical accompaniment from the band he has gathered around him. That it happens to be both heartbreaking and life affirming is just something we've come to expect.

While retaining this overactive production style, Angelakos manages to make Gossamer feel more effortlessly human, more like the self-realised artistic vision of an individual than Manners ever came close to being.

It’s another subtly heart-rending effort from a band that remains one of the very finest in the world. If you needed a reminder of why Low are an institution then this is it.

At just 39 minutes long, it’s spectacularly brief, especially for Dälek (2007’s Abandoned Language, for example, stretches to 63 minutes) but brevity here works in their favour, as there’s very little fat that needs trimming.

The Earth Is Blue is a potent lesson in deceptively simple but exquisitely emotive songwriting, and one that continues to reveal further charms many a listen later.

What we have here are twelve tracks of attitude, spice, intensity and verve, largely played at an uncompromising, breakneck tempo, but never compromising in terms of melodic accessibility or technical prowess.

It is not monotony but repetition, not sing-a-long surface but deeply-felt rhythms, shunning songwriting convention for more fertile ground.

<i>An End Has a Start</i> actually sounds like it was crafted as ten quite individual chapters of a long-running saga; surprisingly, though, it ultimately works better than its predecessor as a cohesive, flowing album.

It's to Mercer's credit that Port of Morrow, which could have so easily veered off into soulless corporatism or self-indulgence, manages to remain nothing less than both a universal and personal joy to listen to.

Despite their lyrical nods toward the future, this self-produced diamond ought really to be nestling in your collection now.

May embraces the darkness and finds slithers of light shattered within. And while it might be haunted by a black dog, in Broken Twin's company, it's one that you too will want to walk alongside.

So while it’s still tough to classify his sound, Silver Wilkinson is Bibio’s most streamlined recording to date.

To be frank, it’s pretty much business as usual for Dinosaur Jr on Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not, but when the formula works this well, what’s the point in switching it up? Love live the fuzz.

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is a rich, dense and rewarding album. Dig deep into it and watch it envelop you--decay and chaos has rarely sounded so seductive.

Dreijer has cemented her place within alternative music's dynasty, and it's refreshing to hear an outwardly queer and fiercely political artist convey a clear message without having the music, performance or reception fall over the potential weight of those themes. For as much as Plunge quite clearly contains these themes, it can and will be enjoyed as a universally creditable piece of brilliantly constructed art, and that is Dreijer's real success here.

For the most part, this is the heaviest record that they’ve recorded and the most far-out as well.

So anyhow--crossover album of the year, no contest.

Overall, this at-first-shy but eventually overpowering record will make yer cheeks sting with wine and late-night gales; and, as I've already said but feel sort of compelled to reiterate, it's so refreshing to hear.

Pitched somewhere between physical pleasure and mental torture, is Oshin, dream-weaving, benevolent, sadistic puppet masters Diiv playing havoc with your sense of contentedness.

The Neptunes' pitch-perfect production allied with Pusha-T and Malice's vicious, witty rhymes make Hell Hath No Fury one of the records of the year.

The genuine article, Sets and Lights brings coldwave a step closer to realising the vision of the sub-genre once proposed by Blank Dog's Mike Sniper; a new underground form of internal transmission Sniper christened 'Impossible Folk'.

The reason Tongues works so well is not because the song lengths are significantly shorter, but because both Hebden and Reid interact on the same wave length.

In Our Bedroom After The War feels like the conclusion of a journey towards the summit of mount indie pleasance.

There are songs here reinterpreted slightly to fit the format, then those that need full reinvention and finally, least interestingly, those that it seems are included only because they are written and usually performed in line with the bare-bones remit.

By consciously interrogating everything they do, they’ve created something that doesn’t need a condescending suffix to justify its existence. It’s a new high-water mark for the band, and one well worth the pain to reach.

It revels in a soulful, brassy buzz that sounds great from the offset and even better on further listening: Swift’s production fantastic and Burhenn’s vocals genuinely spellbinding.

What does make sense is songs that can be related to the world over, not just in Williamsburg, and the songs on Any Port In A Storm fall very much into this category. A brilliant record.

The beats seem genuinely fresh and the dextrously speedy rapping is original and scathing in equal measure while the singalong aspect is more than evident.

Overall Menuck seems to have made a record no less personal than the first. Pissing Stars is mysterious yet relatable, and as always, a distinctly singular experience.

Their second full length album, Sunshine--which had its US release back in October--wonderfully demonstrates the finesse necessary to play noise rock.

Yet another satisfying record from the London-based producer, who, while loses marks for his perhaps too similar creation, remains an important figure in the UK electronic scene and for good reason. Ultimately, Singularity will shape your summer of 2018 the same way Immunity did of 2013, and all power to it.

A great, and fun, album.

Bon Voyage is a foray into the world of spiritual healing and rediscovery through a various musical textures and emotions.

The sound of a band still in their creative prime, MMXII is everything Killing Joke have proclaimed themselves to be these past three-and-a-half decades, and 15 albums on is just as incisive and coarse as their debut.

Simply, it’s back to what it was all about in the first place; writing cracking tunes and just being boys in a band.

There may be plenty of meat left on his bones, but for this fine album to take the plaudits it truly deserves, we have to hope that there are many with open ears and hearts. Richard Hawley: troubadour in chief for this generation.

This is a proud record that is best played loud, and often.

Hitch is a startling achievement of creativity. It doesn’t reinvent The Joy Formidable wheel but it refines everything they’ve done until this point and presents their most complete package yet.

Outspoken and even prone to some fairly loony conspiracy theorising, The Ecstatic thankfully does not become such a platform, and is a refined selection of strong tracks, which skilfully tread the balance between tight beats and forthright exclamations.

A turn towards pop has alienated some fans of their earlier work, but almost everything here could be released as a single, and that’s an undeniably winning achievement.

Fight Softly isn’t in the same league as Clouds Taste Metallic however, which, let’s face it, is among the very faintest of criticisms, but the fact remains that it is slightly hit and miss in places.

Thirty years in arguably the most significant act to come out of the American alternative underground of the Eighties has clearly not dimmed Moore's desire to explore new territory, and this record is as much testament to that as any of his many others.

One day the mainstream is going to claim him and he'll lose a little something, but for now he's still the prince of the misfits and the martyrs, the waifs and the strays, Sundark and Riverlight is him at his distilled best, tears in his eyes, glitter on his cheeks, tragic, magnificent, ours.

It's a record that can be enjoyed on a simple music level, but also explored as an interesting take on a particular historical period.

Ultimately, The Rakes have softened their blunt and focused their attention to detail. This is a far more cohesive record but at the expense of the brutal urgency so prominent in their debut.

Instrumentally, subtle use of synths, keyboards and strings now embellish the sharp arrangements and add a new, more mature, depth to the bands sound.

With references to house, dub, and instrumental rock all stitched together into a looping, building tapestry that manages to be both visually and emotionally evocative, this is certainly an album that will keep your interest long into the next fad.

Lost Songs ain't a new direction for ToD. Far from it. But it's a frenetic, committed album oozing passion at every turn, and the world would be poorer without it.