St. Vincent and David Byrne have brought out the best in each other--they should do this more often.

You feel there's meaning to be sought for by the listener in Roberts' songs, but they simply aren't inviting enough that you'll want to open up the gates and step inside.

Whilst Glass Animals excel at sustaining mood all that effort never really builds to any kind of release, just ultimately fading away beneath a queasy drape of melody and a frustrating sense of unfulfilment.

Although it may often be breathtakingly evocative, Ancestral Star is a record that many could admire, but few could truly love.

The droll poetry of Emmy's lyrics are brilliantly showcased in 'Hyperlink'.

There's an intricate balance struck between analogue and digital, between raw confession and meticulously engineered sonic detail.

A step forward into what lies ahead for Dirty Projectors rather than the complete self-immolation of its previous attempt. It seems, however, that while Longstreth has indeed found a 'Break-Thru' he still has some way to go if he's to return to his former glories which, perhaps, are now unobtainable.

While these jams document an undoubtedly exciting collaboration, only a few of them go so far as to offer anything that sounds like this project's true potential, despite frequently being tantalisingly close.

Some of Loscil’s best, most menacing, most uncompromising work.

While the concept of a double album can be off–putting for some, these records shift and weave so seamlessly that one barely notices the combined one hr 30 runtime. That said, it is a record that rewards repeat listens, as its length and depth are well worth letting wash over you.

This collection of his most ambient and interesting soundtracks is presented here in a contemporary art crescendo; and features the good, the better and the synthesized from his artsy endeavours.

To The Happy Few is precise and calculated. It lacks the irrationality and selfishness that gives a record its soul.

As a relative paradigm shift of an album, The King is Dead is a success, with The Decemberists managing to make their transition smoothly, creating a work that is well-structured, hook-driven and coherent.

Invite the Light should be regarded as a triumph, a neo-funk gem which stays true to Dâm-Funk’s vision, without alienating those who’re arriving fresh to the party.

It may not be the old Mountain Goats kick, but whatever it is, it'll keep me returning to All Eternals Deck for a long, long time.

Weller seems enthusiastic, upbeat and genuinely inventive across the whole LP, with only a couple of minor missteps throughout.

Everybody Down is powerful and gritty and it tackles subjects such as sex work and drug deals with wit and subtlety beyond measure. It’s just not as good as it perhaps should have been from such a prolific talent.

The album bubbles and whispers along. You can listen to every word and every inflection or you can let it carry you--Foster's casual vocal style holds true for the lyrics, so each phrase is a shape as much as it's a fully formed, structured section.

If there’s a problem with the album it’s possibly in the even-ness of the tone throughout. The vocals are soft, tuneful and pretty, the tunes are melodic and often hooky but it’s not until the second last track--‘Snaps’--arrives with a bit more attitude and grit that you realise that this is what has been missing up until this point. That said, almost every track here would work as a single, or heard by itself on the radio – they’re all decidedly easy on the ear.

Humanz is good, because Gorillaz are good, and it distinguishes itself by probably being the band’s most party-orientated record, which is great. But ultimately it feel like Gorillaz are now more curators than provocateurs, locked into a classy, comfortable groove.

Plumb is a good bet for the end of year polls already.

The nature of this very premise could so easily have made for a messy and confused effort, but Africane 808 somehow manage to make a cohesive piece of work out of so many conflicting elements.

Unfortunately, the remix format really extracts and commodifies the sounds of the original albums rather than do anything wildly different or interesting to it. The mix might sound alright on the dancefloor, but so would the original effectively mixed into a good DJ set.

Whether this is a better record than previous Mogwai releases is hard to say categorically, but it is certainly bolder and braver than what came before it. Yet equally, it is the same trademark moves and subtleties that will make and just as rewarding of repeated listens as its predecessors. Mogwai have released another jumper, but not quite like we know it.

Songs is an accomplished second album, that sees Woodhouse building on the foundations of electronica-tinged outputs that you'll quite easily appreciate and enjoy.

The result is Mogwai’s most vital release in years; a collection of fully realized pieces that could be the closest they’ll ever come to an unplugged greatest hits.

At times much like a soundtrack to life’s sombre and reflective moments, Roots And Crowns’ clutter-free design is a nice reminder that good music needs no window dressing.

Dr. Dog are a band you know you're going to appreciate as soon as you reach the first chorus. You'll want to go back and explore their back catalogue, and force them on unappreciative friends.

The musicality on Pylon remains suitably elastic.

Apart from the new wave prom dance of 'Candles', The Far Field plays out like a treadmill--same tempos, same whining siren wails from the synths, same bass undulation.

Although their lyrical palette is limited to shades of grey or black, musically they allow themselves variegated freedom that allows glimmers of light in the dark night. For all its bleakness Endangered Philosophies is also strangely beautiful.

Death Lust is the sound of a band who has had enough being put down, pushed around and generally told to conform to a society they never really wanted. It’s the sound of disaffected youth demanding to be listened to.

Full of tasty licks and rocking out it may be, but The More I Sleep the Less I Dream is also genuinely reflective and melancholic as the band continue to mature. Let’s just hope they still get those jetpacks they were promised, even if equally feral and refined albums like this mean they might not need them to soar anymore.

It fits and works together perfectly despite the fact that the songs showcase the development of a thirteen-year career.

There’s a master at work, no doubt about it, but he’s already living in the future writing complex symphonies, letting the rest of us know that everything’s going to be ok.

When it's good, Rhine Gold has got everything you want. There's ambition, surprise and innovation. It's just that it feels like COYB go on autopilot at certain times, which detracts from the album as a whole.

This is not the best Marissa Nadler record, but it kind of feels like her most perfect, potentially the resolution of a subtle identity crisis that’s run through her music over the years.

She’s gone from making an album that felt in constant peril of collapsing under its own weight to one that carries her predilection for drama with genuine confidence--for now, at least, that’s redemption enough.

There is some devastating music on Are You Serious, and there is some beautiful music, too; often these passages are one and the same. It sounds like a natural progression for Andrew Bird, yet in places it’s like nothing you’d expect from the singer. It is, for these reasons and many more, a triumph.

For a record sold on its modernity, New spends most of the time in the past.

This is beautiful, disgusting, danceable, and nightmarish music. It allures and repels in equal measure, bursting with thoughtful concepts and successful experiments in sculpting electronic noises into something danceable, melodic and meaningful.

The inescapable feeling that Don’t Stop probably won’t sell all that many copies makes the songs sound like electric guitars without amplifiers. There are only so many things a musician can provide and sadly Annie has it all but that key component.

The sequencing allows the listener space to breathe at the most opportune moments, and its leaps from ambience into adrenaline-soaked enthusiasm for hand-clap-happy high-jinx are worthy of celebration.

Kiss Each Other Clean makes Sam Beam four for four--more if you count the EPs and 2009's rarities set Around the Well.

The duo manage to create the same raw fervoured energy of Jack 'n Meg, but also utilise a far more diverse array of sound and instruments.

Hummingbird feels wiser, grander, and more knowing.

For the most part, Evertything Ecsatic succeeds, but occasionally Hebden strays from the path.

At this point Rival Schools sound like Nada Surf without the pop nous or OK Go without the videos. Perfectly listenable, perfectly agreeable, absolutely forgettable.

It's the best representation yet of the sheer force of the band live, a perfect half hour snapshot of the energy and aggression they've never properly captured on tape.

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.

Throughout Infra, Richter's skill lies in his ability to re-emphasise and reinterpret, to construct an instrumental dialogue and a kind of imagined narrative through repetition and subtle alteration.

Their songcraft proves singularly remarkable once more.

There are no preconceptions about an album acting as a whole piece of work, and it’s certainly allowed him to be a little less bogged down in all that and freed him up to just try stuff out.

Every Valley is certainly an important and timely record, but happily it's also an extremely satisfying and moving one. While it may not have the obvious scope of their breakthrough record The Race for Space it has something important to tell us about the times we live in and the hard, heartbreaking lessons we should all be learning from the past.

The new album, Relationship of Command, is one of the most amazing collections of music I have ever heard.

We’ve been the Hold Steady, and You’ve been the Hold Steady, he says predictably... but for once, on a live-recording, you didn’t have to be there.

It’s an unapologetically impressive and precise record that could do more to reach out and connect, rather than just dancing off, expecting the listener to follow.

Potentially most interesting of all is the way parts of Red Barked Tree sound dated in a manner completely unrelated to how some of Wire's records haven't, y'know, aged that well.

Seriously: this is one of 2007’s finest LPs, no question.

The Bride Screamed Murder isnâ??t the best Melvins album ever, but it is rarely less than arresting as a listening experience. Moreover, they sound like theyâ??re having a blast, unconstrained by draconian label expectations.

The record will likely serve newer fans of Bonobo better than those that maintain a stronger fondness for his earlier work, but his journey is a fascinating one and only time will judge its permeance.

These towering moments stretch thin across a record lost in a comatose state of traditional, if beach-bumming, rock-pop tedium.

There's as much silliness and attempted cred-building as there is genuine excitement.

This is a wonderful, intoxicatingly special album that deserves to be cherished, and played and played.

In four minutes of this record there are two tracks that together have more melodies, more moments of joy, than most bands will manage this year.

Sugar Daddy Live reveals a picture of a storied band that is still finding ways to reinvent itself.

However you choose to describe it, or whatever your preconceptions of Hawley and his music, this is definitely an album you should bend a considered ear towards.

For all its manufactured essence, Red remains firmly grounded at the crossroads between innocence and experience.

Although this is hardly cause for concern, one minor problem with Lesser Evil is that it doesn’t sound quite as fun--in the sell-your-house; buy-sandals; join-the-circus sense--as one expects Doldrums are fully capable of sounding.

.5: The Gray Chapter stands tall; not just as tribute, but as vital catharsis.

The album is a collection of songs from a band at the peak of their powers having their cake and eating it too.

Disquiet, the group’s fourteenth album, is their most direct and to the point release in some time.

It’s definitely not a ‘grower’, but you won’t love it for two minutes then leave it, either. Rather, it sits somewhere in between: impressively easy to like, refreshingly difficult to get tired of.

It's so proud to be pop and hopefully this'll make others realise it's never a guilty pleasure to enjoy songs that make you happy; songs that make you wanna dance your ass off and songs that perfectly fit the criteria for pretending to be in a music video.

On Why Choose?, they sadly lose a lot of their manic, propulsive momentum.

Skits and the odd miss accepted, and the Anonymous Nobody… is a grand achievement. Regardless of whether their next project requires outsourced funding or not, De La Soul fans worldwide will just be happy if the group can keep up these standards while never forgoing their wayfaring creativity.

Their music really does speak for itself through just their voices and a drum kit. Anyone suspicious of how that might translate can put those fears aside, Be OK is a fine record, and fitting document of the group that created it.

The nicest aspect of this thoroughly nice record is that Black manages it without sounding either insipid or cloying.

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

Despite Angry Cyclist’s shortcomings, the peaks are high enough to earn its place in the band’s long, lustrous discography.

The record is at its best when kept simplistic and spontaneous, but for much of it you sense they have thought about it a little too much and become a little too self-aware; for a band like Deerhoof that can lead into some pretty iffy territory.

If the easily distracted are at risk of sleeping through this, fans of emotional tours de force will have a great new addition to their 'best albums of the year' list.

What’s striking though is that a band known for a very particular sound can produce such individually distinct pop songs, with equal aplomb, while remaining within their self-defined parameters of 'the Dutch Uncles sound'.

Every Open Eye seems neutered, the rough edges sanded back on an album that fits a mould more than it breaks it--which given the band’s confrontational media stance seems something of a waste.

Though it has merit in the strength of its content, Pond Scum may be only one for the collectors.

If you need something to invigorate your soul and send you on a journey then look no further.

To conclude that Bromst is a triumph of inventiveness is too easy. It is wildly inventive, but what impresses most is that for all the levity, Dan Deacon has managed to impressively reign in his flights of fancy.

Atomic is a soft reset that will allow the band to move in new directions in the future. Its curiosity is infectious and immensely exciting, and it sounds like the result of a group refreshed, hungry and eager to grow.

Tunes-wise there’s some strength in depth here but it’s telling that, in spite of the lip service being paid to various left-of-centre influences, Santogold feels a strangely conservative listen, in danger of satisfying neither fans of M.I.A.’s wild stylistic forays nor the bubblegum masses thirsting after their latest dose of content-free self-assertion.

Listened to absentmindedly, its deep, rumbling groove and overlapping rhythmic lines may initially seem nothing more than an artfully assembled soporific swirl. Live with it a while, though--give it time and space in order that it may weave its beguiling spell--and delights aplenty unfurl.

This is a fast-tempo, punk and metal-tinged homage to days gone by and those yet to come and, as a result, may well be the band's best effort since their much-lauded debut.

It is a joyous, emboldened return to form and one that reminds us of what a treasure Edwyn Collins is.

A Snowflake Fell could have worked as a series of effective B-sides or bonus tracks on the aforementioned album package.

With lyrics so accomplished, entertaining and labyrinthine as these to be matched with well-measured, anti-bravado beats and textural sensitivity it’s difficult not to see a bright future for Speech Debelle.

Apparently, lightning does strike twice. It has for The Go! Team at any rate.

This represents their first attempt at creating a bonafide album and when all's said and done, they should be proud of their achievements.

The focus is there, the execution is there. It’s a record that delivers, satisfies, challenges and is occasionally sublime.

It's the interpretation of a human voice that elevates this record beyond a curious obscurist record and makes the simmering (but never boiling over) electronica truly shimmer.