[The] expansive and slightly melancholy tone which has always been at the core of his music does feel slightly constrained when he tries to squeeze it into a verse chorus verse structure: the best moments on Similes come when he simply lets it wander free.

Proclamations that only the music matters, not the units shifted, are liable to ring a little hollow. Nevertheless, there's a lot to like about Body Talk Pt. 1.

Testarossa is an album that gets better with each listen.

In the end we’re left with a solid, sympathetically-performed record that only intermittently comes to life, which is either a subtle victory or a hollow triumph of taste over gutbucket soul, depending on which way you look at it.

The Secret Migration is a wonderful record, full of exquisite indie-rock epics. But so was the last Mercury Rev record. And the one before that. So what’s changed? Nothing, basically.

In the cold light of day the album feels flat and utterly predictable.

But for all its momentary highlights, this is a record that doesn't tend to grow on you as much as sink and seep into your skin: and it does this slowly.

Overall, another great album from one of the UK’s best underground talents who may not remain so underground for long.

As a whole, Remain Calm dies too quickly, leaving the listener hanging on the sandy, sunset-lit horizon of 'Mob of Waters'; 'I’ll Keep Going' stretches its melancholic (and mostly static) air a minute too long; and while the concept of 'Xhill Stepping' as dissected electro amuses on paper, its dry deserted dancehall yields nothing but empty space.

It’s an excellent album by a band who seem to be permanently brimming with life and ideas, a glimmer of warmth to lighten the dark depths of winter.

Their gentlest to date, 44 minutes of music arranged around a single, dreamy riff/motif. Listen to it on Bandcamp or Spotify without checking out the other stuff that comes with the music and it perhaps seems like a retreat from the sturm und drang of their previous work. But the accompanying words and art to Luciferian Towers posit it as the band’s most politicised set since Yanqui UXO.

Songs Cycled has everything you’d want from Van Dyke Parks and from an album. By being true to the Van Dyke Parks’ perception of what an album should contain, his music sounds as though it is from a different planet.

Everything sings here, no matter how dark the matter at hand.

Put simply, The Pains...are a pop band with songs about young love and teenage misadventure.

It really is one of the best things he’s ever put his name to.

Maximum Balloon really about a great producer/songwriter exhibiting his considerable talents free from the pressure and expectation of his day job.

As a rule the lackadaisical New Order and the greatest hits-centric set they tour with aren’t the stuff of live album legend, and matters aren’t really helped by the fact large chunks of the set have been lopped out in order to make it into a single CD, with the likes of ‘Ceremony’ and ‘Crystal’ receiving the heave.

Marriages know what they're about, and have crafted an album for all seasons that still possesses a distinctly autumnal sound--an accomplished record that will provide the ideal soundtrack once summer's over.

While the longstanding fan may indulge them the odd misstep, it’s a little bit jarring when they produce something which by their own high standards is, dare I say it, a bit underwhelming.

While (the album) tips far more convincingly on the successful end of the scales, there remains the sense of a band playing safer than needs be; a sextet pushing against their limits but never straining outright at them.

It's very odd, varies wildly in tone and has its fair share of clunky bits, but it's all done in the spirit of fun and is always endearingly sincere.

Deliciously downright dirty.

It's not a classic and it won't get him back in the NME, but it'll more than entertain those willing to listen.

No Grace is raw, quick and dirty, just as rock 'n roll was always intended. Glorious stuff.

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.

Something of a case of style, or schtick, over substance in places. However, the visceral power of Goat is inescapable.

A knotty, messy work: a series of interior monologues depicting some unsavoury but very human sentiments; a sprawl of devastating emotion wrought with a keen yet weary eye. But it’s undoubtedly a triumph--Kasher hasn’t sounded quite this sharp in years.

Circuital can't be marked down as a failure; it's just not as good as it could be, or as its best tracks suggest it might have been. A little run of the mill for a band that often hit such massive heights.

Quite simply, Alight Of Night is one of the most breathtaking records these ears have been partial to in a long while, and even if Crystal Stilts never make another record, their legacy is assured.

Although this is a far cry from the standard of their late Seventies heyday, the band have continued down their obscure path with little deviation, creating a sound which, although challenging and on occasion elitist, is there own.

Music for Drifters definitely represents a diversion from whatever constitutes Field Music’s ‘normal’ work, but it’s also an unquestionably lovely addition to their impeccable discography.

Chura proves that she exists in a different plane where music for its own sake lies at the zenith of what one can experience and achieve in life, and is detached from the excesses of wealth and power it can bring. Here’s hoping there’s much more to come from this magical songstress.

This is not a record for the fair-weather Frank fan, rather one in which he sticks to his story with the stubbornness of a mule.

Not so much a natural progression as a foray into new fields, Skyline is a wonderful album brought about by a sense of restlessness and curiosity.

On Sugaring Season she captures both the melancholy and the confidence that comes with growing older really rather well.

Gorgeous, exquisite... and no, definitely not a side-project.

These aren’t drastic alterations to the standard Sia formula, but what you do get is an album with a very specific identity.

Rather than thinking of Groove Denied as some form of outlier we should only be thinking of it for what it is: a delicious treat.

The band have hardly been better than on that EP’s opening three song suite and that’s what is so frustrating about I’m Going Away; it’s not a bad album, but the band are capable of so much more; the title of the album is at least apt in that the Friedberger’s don’t sound like they are here for this record, it sounds like they already left and phoned this one in.

Whilst arguably Beam's most consistent album for some years, there are fewer moments of raw beauty here than on past excursions, resulting in a whole that is somehow less than its impressive component parts.

Come Down With Me has solidified the band as their own entity; it has forged all of the disparate pieces of the past into something evergreen. There is no inclination to pander to any preconceptions of yore and this has now, undoubtedly, made Errors the force they always threatened to be.

Devastating until the very last note subsides, this is arguably The Telescopes' finest record for over a decade. Prepare to be pulverised.

While they’re unlikely to achieve the same reach awarded them by ‘The Middle’ (although Taylor Swift’s endorsement won’t hurt), their dedication to honest, wide-eyed songcraft has resulted in their best album in over a decade.

It's a solid performance, by far their most coherent yet, but missing some of the flair of previous bouts.

Cut adrift with its own bewildering reference points, peppered with glimpses of cryptic brilliance and slabs of deceptive nonsense, Beat Pyramid is a flawed patchwork masterpiece.

With Native Speaker, Braids project dreams onto iridescent lakes and marvel at how they glimmer, and the results are every bit as lovely as that sounds.

In the final assessment what we’ve got here are a set of pop songs that are almost uniformly brilliant, captured in a fashion that harks back to the band’s beginnings, presented beautifully and with pride.

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

The version of the band audible on their second album is one that's on a sugar high and fuelled by a desire to create loud and fast music that doesn't skimp on the hooks.

So, finally, to Farm, which every bit the equal of "Beyond;" maybe even better.

For all its awkwardness, for all its outrage in major chords, it's ultimately hopeful. Sure, there are some bum notes, but it's music with passion. It makes you want to DO something, and that is what a real protest album is really about.

Jiaolong is a living, breathing animal, and all the better for it.

Cricket and rock music have a long history, and at points it all gets a bit glamorous. Sticky Wickets isn’t concerned with those though: it takes the thinga that makes the loner, the geek, the loser, the tragic feel all warm and fuzzy, and then makes that sound like ELO. And nothing this year has made me feel happier than that.

Overall No. 4 is serene, still, and deep. It doesn’t allow you to become transfixed by predictable patterns by rather relaxes you into accepting the next step, whether you are being visited by a herd of headless horsemen, flying away on a magic carpet or sinking slowly, irresistibly, into torpor.

It’s a little bit adventurous, capable of surprising sidesteps, but remains safely at home in Electrelane’s own engagingly individual aesthetic.

There’s nothing else like this out there that’s as perfectly realised as this, and to draw upon previous, albeit indirect precedents, that leaves only one outcome from this unruly verbiage.

Upper Air is a decent enough record, but it’s not strong enough to be listened to without recalling other, similar but better records.

The EP alternates between dense metaphor and wistful candour; the places artists invent to retreat from their problems, and confessional accounts of the places they literally go, in retreat; solo piano as a cipher for authenticity... and ethereal synthscapes as a cipher for utopian fantasy. What distinguishes it is that there's an epiphany at the end.

This is the sound of a well established, accomplished singer and production crew that have earned their right to do what they want to a high standard.

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.

The problem with clipping. is that they sometimes seem to have an unusual idea of what makes good hip-hop. Sometimes it feels like the purely hip-hop side-project of a dodgy rap-metal group circa 2003.

Despite being released in weather incongruous to its content, there's so much heart to this record that it simply demands to be absorbed.

It drags a little, it meanders a touch too often, and you are left wondering if there is anyone at the helm at all.

Haters are gonna hate given the artists in question – but to be disappointed with Watch the Throne is to be disappointed with the rap game in 2011.

'To America’ comes across very much a modern take on West Side Story replete with fine vocal performances from its central pair, sweeping strings and ebullient brass, it’s a jubilant finale to an album that, while never quite surpassing the evocative beauty of the band’s first, matches it with a keen flourish.

Sadly what Yours, Dreamily needs is a little bit of oomph every now and again to wake us, and the rest of the band from our collective stupors. Even compared to his debut solo album, this feels second rate.

Taylor Swift may not be challenging societal norms in the same way as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and my own band CHRIST ALIVE are, but she’s relatable and that counts for a lot. I spent a surprising amount of 1989 rooting for its protagonist and sharing in her triumph.

Middle Class Rut have crafted a solid release that, while unlikely to set the world on fire, nonetheless makes for an impressive debut.

For all the puritanical spoilsports trying to confine Toro Y Moi to an unfortunate genre box, Freaking Out has the chops to confirm him as an interesting artist in his own right, rather than as the product of a semi-coherent micro-scene.

Polymers Are Forever lurches, strives and sneers with all the subtlety of a bulldozer through the houses of parliament.

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

Ultramarine moves Young Galaxy from being a great indie band to being a great band, full stop. The songs profoundly move the body and the psyche in equal measure.

Moore is a collage artist of the highest, silliest, most joyful degree--and as he pulls together strands of strange, whisps of weird, odours of otherness you’ll be compelled to dig, dig deeper into the man’s psyche and back catalogue. And be rightly, wrongly rewarded.

The Staves have added all sorts of bells and whistles to their sound. They all work.

Its sound is as beautiful as ever too, and the arrangements are captured well on Lost and Found, with a glow of warmth hovering around the instrumentation.

If There is No Enemy was a pretty concise record of dreamy guitar pop, then Untethered Moon sees the band get back to a gnarlier sound, with roughhewn, grungy production and two songs that yawn far over the six-minute mark, erupting into hackingly primitive Crazy Horse-style jams.

Waters is on fiery form, and you get the sense that by 1992, he’d finally settled into his own corner of the world a little more.

This is not background music to relax to, though there’s something undeniably calming in its beauty. It’s music to be consumed in, sink into its depths and float on its updrafts. To revel in its celebrations and mourn with its grief and feel all that it means to exist within universal existence. If that seems excessive, well sometimes hyperbole feels justified. Stop, listen and be in love with the world once again.

Solid and safe fun perhaps.

It has a lot to offer around the edges, but is difficult to truly connect with at its core.

Whatever you care to call him, the man’s come up with the goods.

Not only is Holy Fire utterly sublime, it’s a record that’s been six years in the making.

It’s not the Arctic Monkeys you might expect, and living inside Alex Turner’s identity crisis can be an occasionally uncomfortable experience, but give it some time and this sixth album reveals itself as one of the most interesting of the band’s career.

Perhaps there's not enough variation on the album as a whole, with only the odd anomaly which then sounds rather out of place, but even the anomalies are very distinctly John Maus and at times that may be a grim, cold, dark, slightly pretentious thing, but it is no bad thing.

It seems, in musical form, this album moves back and forth between sore tenderness and a violent turn - coercing the listener into adoring the beauty and open-wound vulnerability, but simultaneously pushing the same listener away with a dirty menace and obtuse lyricism.

Loss in its many forms shades Ruminations, and the matter-of-fact nature of its acceptance makes the record all the more devastating.

Hormone Lemonade is an endearing listen that focuses primarily on the here and now, and as a result messrs Gane, Dilworth and Zapf have every reason to be overtly satisfied at their latest creation.

Tommy sounds like it has been carefully scored, but chances are Dosh created all this in his head. There are so many perfect moments.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have crafted an impeccable debut way beyond their years, and any misconceptions about them being mere revivalists of a scene only their elders could recall at first hand will surely be diminished instantaneously upon hearing this most accomplished of long players.

K-the-I??? makes bold steps alongside the likes of Saul Williams, emanating poetic flamboyance without becoming too confusing, but with enough (e)motion and kinetic verve to satisfy even the most passive ear.

Whether they're prepared for it or not, 'Open Season' is set to transcend indie cliques and hardcore raving mentalist fanbases and blow BSP wide open.

Love Songs For Robots is ambitious without being overblown, intimate without falling to sentimentality and subtly, delicately lovely.

Not all of the tracks hit their mark, and this is a far cry from the standard of much of E's earlier material. But it is nonetheless a good record.

Despite its occasional charms, Easy Tiger feels like an uneven piece of work.

Darling Arithmetic is rarely anything but elegant.

It might occasionally makes for heavy listening, but Passerby skilfully turns quiet melancholy and dignified sadness into a thing of subtle beauty.

Fucking insane, whatever way you listen to it.

Its restrained combination of new and old, tradition and innovation, sums up the strengths of OH (ohio), an album which isn't another Lambchop masterpiece, but rather a fine addition to an extraordinary body of work.