You can’t help recognising a kind of supreme inspiration behind the thing, fuelled alternately by manic rage and exultant gratification.

That this split LP showcases is two bands from different cities, on different labels and of a largely different generation of musicians--yet it's unified and generally very good throughout.

Brutally hip-hop with post-punk tendencies, Ratking’s debut album is a wonderfully dystopic record that is as progressive as it is anarchist. Ratking really is that thing.

Enter The Slasher House sounds like a direct sequel to his swampy solo album, and wrongly marginalises the influences of his collaborators.

This is one person using only the bare minimum but still crafting something beautiful.

It’s by no means a flawless debut but it provides a perfect platform from which SOHN can only rise.

It’s the unmistakable sound of a band comfortable with having discovered that quiet is just in their character, and that those with the quietest voices can still cut through the squall.

It’s an album that provides a taste of something familiar, yet somehow flavourless.

The music operates less as an end in itself and more as a counterpoint to the keening, whispering, screeching, gasping voice-as-expression-of-humanity: within the silicon maze, she suggests, there’s a ghost trying to get out.

Here And Nowhere Else not only reaffirms Baldi as one of the most prolific and consistent songwriters of his generation--its hard to believe he's still only 22 considering the extent of his back catalogue--but also suggests there's much more to come in the future.

With Hot Dreams Timber Timbre have continued to perfect their sound and aesthetic: no matter what influences or styles they are drawing upon, they are still at their most powerful when they're sending mixed messages.

An album diluted by the indecision of its creators.

It’s rare to find an electronic full length that manages to feel so varied, and yet also so harmonious in its uncompromising vision.

Small Town Heroes holds enough versatility and charm to captivate even the most jaded soul; songs that will wend their way into your consciousness and stay with you long after the album is done.

While nothing on the album quite reaches those lofty heights [of Pumped Up Kicks], Supermodel far outshines Torches as a whole.

As colourful as its cover sleeve, Wildewoman is packed with a joyous authenticity that’s achieved through a well-structured set of songs that traverse a veritable array of musical styles.

On New Gods there’s a sense of logical progression, an aim of expression that might have been missing from some of his earlier work.

Dignified, confident and packed full of elevating song structures, Piano Ombre is an album many will find euphorically addictive.

Just before World of Joy threatens to peter out entirely, Howler’s first ever attempt at a ballad strides in to offer some welcome variation.

Tokyo Police Club have finally made small sound huge.

Though occasionally he could have done with his band mates to act as a quality control barometer, overall Odludek shows that Goodwin made the right choice to step back onto the treadmill.

The highlights of No. 2 certainly suggest that thinking bigger might see Vantzou produce something more spectacular in the future. For now though we can at least be thankful that she has once again produced something that paints several shades of beauty on its minimalist canvas.

In Each and Every One is a whirlwind of an experience that elevates as much as it does bury you in fear, you'd be foolish to write this off.

It’s a flawed album that’s at times unbelievable, at times unbelievably bad but for those interested in investigating the moment Elton John became the legend he sought to be this is a thorough and generous offering.

Maui Tears is a distinct return to form and one that reaffirms Sleepy Sun as a genuine force to be reckoned with.

Being a Liars album, it is magnificent.

What they have created is a consistent work which showcases the band’s diversity as well as their skill and passion in making music which treads the ground between weird and wonderful.

There’s a nagging feeling that those derivative misses aren't so much accidental misfires as born out of a writer keen to remain free of the pressures of success. That prevents a promising record from being as good as it had the potential to be.

Occasionally you might seek more variety in the tones and washes, but Foy has worked hard to create something that feels of a piece, and there’s no denying the talent at play here.

You get the sense that all Sky Ferreira ever really wanted was for people to listen. Here, she gives them a reason. That's truth worth discovering.

Musically, this is a pleasant record, one that’ll soundtrack many a packed yet ultimately sensible party.

Ultimately, while Abandoned City’s atmospheric appropriations of various strands of dance music make for interesting listening, you might wish they appealed to instinct as much as they do the intellect.

This won't be Evian Christ's greatest moment, but it could be a crucial stepping stone.

An album that would sound as though it could have been made anytime in the last five decades were it not so immaculately produced, recalling Dylan and Springsteen and pretty much all of Almost Famous without ever descending into pastiche or mere homage.

For the most part Underneath the Rainbow lacks the acerbic wit that has underscored so much previous Lips material; there’s a handful of tracks here that really are sorely lacking in character.

You can hear a band recognising that the journey is important as the destination, and the process important as the final product.

This is yet another dance album that avoids the pitfalls of stringing together separately conceived singles.

Carrying almost nothing in the way of flab, Blood Red Shoes is the band standing entirely on their own four feet--a rare occurrence in modern music. They've not reinvented the musical wheel, but their strength as a unit, and as musicians, cannot be doubted.

No Mythologies to Follow is perhaps better taken as a really strong collection of singles (or potential singles) than a complete body of work, but that’s its only real weakness.

This is easily as good JoFo’s debut.

That they have dealt with personal strife and getting older while recalibrating their sound and their approach to songwriting is an impressive feat indeed.

A warm and personable record then, but one that doesn’t put its head above the parapet often enough to properly engage.

On Let’s Be Still, they sporadically do a good job of nagging at the heart, but fail to convince the head that this hasn’t been done better elsewhere, plenty of times before.

From the twin guitar salvos of Mark Goldsworthy and Liam Matthews through to Tom Kelly and Henry Ruddell's flawless rhythm section crowned by Mitchell's voice of reason, they're an unshakable and on this, their long-awaited first LP, an unstoppable force.

In general, Voices in a Rented Room is a pleasant if undistinguished record, two old friends revelling in each other’s company and mutual talents with the occasional moment of technical or emotional aplomb interrupting the bonhomie.

If ‘April’s Song’ is the low point of the record’s wanderlust--an affectless instrumental track that goes nowhere--elsewhere it blooms wonderfully.

The real genius of Tomorrow’s Hits is its shaking off not just fan expectations but the almighty shackles of credibility, innovation and, for want of a subtler term, corporate buzz-band etiquette.

Benji contains some of the most evocative songs about mortality and youth that have ever been written.

At times, it is derivative, channelling everyone from Passion Pit to Bowie himself, but it subverts both those acts by being excruciatingly personal and that is where Milagres' real strength lies.

On casual listen it’s a perfectly pleasant electro-classical record. But despite the considerable technical talents of its creator, it could be by just about anyone.

It is churlish to dismiss a band after one record, however: there is potential here for so much more. This record, however, is the most irritating one you will have heard in a while.

It remains, at its heart and in the best possible way, a very small record of considerable charm. Warmly recommended.

Close to the Glass isn't quite the luxurious auditory and emotional jacuzzi the Notwist's albums have been in the past. It's more a wading pool made of obligation and diffidence.

Each track is well structured and well-executed; never staying for longer than it should do or even doing anything on the whole that it shouldn't.

It might share some sonic similarities [to Sea Change], but it's an altogether brighter beast, built by an older, wiser soul who seems to have been taking a few years to work out exactly where he wants to be as an artist.

The Soul Is Quick is the sound of versatile talent who could easily rest on his laurels continuing to grow and evolve.

The songs from St. Vincent that you’ll return to umpteen times are front-loaded into its first 23 minutes.

Present Tense might lack the immediacy of both Smother and Two Dancers, but scratch away at the surface and its a record oozing with the precision and maturity we've come to expect from its creators. And in all honesty, it would be churlish to ask for anything more.

In spite of its gloomier mood, it’s a record every bit as spirited as Half Way Home, and possibly even more affecting.

If this is peroxide, it’s a heavily diluted solution; there’s certainly nothing caustic here, and scant evidence to suggest, as she protests to be the case on the title track, that there’s anything burning in her heart.

It's difficult to know where to stand with The Brink. It's vanilla, it's milk in tea, it's lager, it's a morning bowel movement. It just is.

Despite the immense joy of the final five songs, the prospect of a repeat play is a discouraging one when the first five brought forth a cynicism entirely unwelcome among a collection designed to elicit wonder.

You can’t deny that their intentions are good, but Let’s Go Extinct really is just missing that certain spark that’s required to lift it above the middle ground.

The mish-mash of styles on Dead makes for a globalised texture, an eclecticism that appears to know no bounds. For some, it may all be a little too much to handle. But if you’re looking for a thoroughly twenty-first-century record that’ll challenge your preconceptions and bombard the senses, then Dead is something that’s definitely worth your while.

Sun Structures is a record made with flair and skill by a band who know exactly what they’re doing--and that’s the problem. Temples are trying so hard to be something else that we lose track of who they actually are.

There’s a zip and kick to it, with big melodies (huge in the case of ‘Blk Stallion’) and clever turns of pace.

Nina Persson may have dropped the guise of A Camp, but Animal Heart is too emotionally unengaging to leave you feeling like you know her any better for it and compared to Colonia’s more colourful palette it feels, if not quite beige, then at best a dull taupe.

Ghosts of Then and Now floats just out of time and is as versatile a record as they come--your interpretation will change with each setting and mood.

It’s disjointed and discomforting, and certainly easier to admire than actually enjoy.

Even with these flirtations with violins and brass, Let’s Wrestle are still the band they’ve always been: self-deprecating, scruffy and charming.

Taken as a three quarters of an hour lump, the narrowness of her vision is brought into sharp relief, as Keeler-Schaffeler struggles to salvage a bona fide record from admirably restless blogging.

Cheatahs might not have done anything especially new on their debut record, but they’ve delivered it in such incendiary fashion that it’s impossible to ignore.

July is a grown up album--but it’s not a cleaned up one: Marissa Nadler may flirt with the sun now, but still articulates the dark like no one else.

Augustines is a record that was born to run, taking hearts along with it as it goes, and is, to these ears, one of the great rock records of recent years.

Restraint and getting to the point are valuable commodities in music, but Too True misfires in this regard.

Genuinely, it’s the lyrics that are stopping Little Red from being properly brilliant.

Angel Guts: Red Classroom is the typical blend of passion, pain and awkwardness which makes Xiu Xiu what they are. Fearless, demanding, relentlessly subversive.

But for all its wandering into uncomfortable territories, Small Sound preserves the core of Tennis’s charm, and it's savvy of the duo to (hopefully) consign their elements of feet-finding to a stop-gap EP.

What War Room Stories makes clear is that the way forward is further exploration and boundary pushing. Unsurprisingly, given both their sound and their ethos, Breton are not at their best when static, but rather forging ahead--cramming the bare bones of their sound into new and unsuspecting genres and influences.

It's neither forward looking nor, overtly retro or especially of the moment--it just is, in the best sense.

Their least bowel-emptying tremor to date, it does make one anticipate Sunn O)))’s next move with both excitement and anxiety.

A collection of songs and 'works', the latter of which clutter the end of the record with a mess of somewhat ill composed 'classical' pieces, Mind Trap largely acts as a collection of initial ideas, with no songs feeling overly finished.

R.I.P. suggesting a fitting final ceremony, where Ghettoville evokes Actress driven over the abyss, As an obituary, however, it’s a fittingly emotional, opaque and confounding conclusion for a project that has been an outlier amongst a scene of outliers from its inception.

When the beats eventually die down the album shows its soft underbelly.

The 'odds and ends' packaged at the end of disc one feel like Jay Farrar’s discarded solo off-cuts, although disc two’s collection of demos is an intriguing listen; the ten tracks from the Not Forever, Just For Now tapes being what persuaded Rockville (then Giant) to sign them in the first place.

Minor criticisms aside, this is elegant dreampop at its finest, and a worthy introduction to the incandescent world of Snowbird.

If you’re looking for a neat musical reminder that David Crosby is one of the most influential men of his era--and can still sparkle with some of that same musical magic today, Croz is a worthy listen.

All in all, Chiaroscuro is an engaging record that brings new flavours to the palette with every subsequent listen. Prepare to swoon...

Trouble is--in more ways than one--a far more mature album than their debut, and it’s also a far better one.

The truth is Tranquillisers has no teeth; being neither truly reprehensible nor in the slightest bit memorable.

The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink promotional campaign--an appearance on Made In Chelsea here, a cover of ‘Wrecking Ball’ on Dutch radio there--might smack of desperation. Fortunately, In the Silence is more than good enough to dispel any such impressions.

Accomplished and polished, if a little slight compared to its predecessors, AGE doesn't quite equal the consistency of The Smell Of Our Own or Awoo but is, nonetheless, a welcome return for one of this century's finest songwriting collectives.

If the band have got their eyes on a full-length record then they might want to consider varying the pace a little more--it certainly feels like they’ve got at least a couple of rapid-fire numbers in them--but for now, Lowtalker will certainly help to blow the wintery gloom away.

Following on from last year's EP1, this a tougher, leaner Pixies than that of their classic era, missing some of the ramshackle charm on which their most well known work floated.

Fans expecting moving, but wearily delivered, post-rock may be disappointed with that position, but it may just have seen Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra produce a classic. At the very least it is the culmination of a discography that has always been leading to this as its high point.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues demands a more visceral reaction than mere respect. These songs have just as much heart as they do guts, and the LP stands as Against Me!’s first forward looking album since Searching For A Former Clarity.

The dub-littered textures and conceptual frameworks are admirable in their artistic reach, but Jurado’s greatest strengths are found at his most stripped back on Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son. Not coincidentally, the songs which he presents with least decoration are the songs which bear the closest scrutiny.

Despite its lengthiness, predecessor The Fool always felt structurally mighty. Warpaint, while a gentler, more complex thing, leans hard on atmosphere and collapses, elegantly.