By focusing inwards, Born Ruffians have done that whole 'maturing' thing that us reviewers like to talk about, and created a much improved piece of art.

Fever then, is an album with an audience already writ large. If the idea of ‘cosmic jams’ brings you out in a cold sweat, then this isn’t a record for you.

Stripping away all of the surrounding noise, it allows Krauss to bring her dizzyingly sweet voice to the fore, showing that Sleigh Bells are not just a one trick pony and that these songs work on more than just the basis that they are great at shaking windows.

So, Fly Yellow Moon flirts with, but ultimately averts, disaster by virtue of the strengths we already know Fyfe Dangerfield to possess as Guillemots' principle songwriter: a knack for making bright pop songs on a life-affirming scale, delivered with an infectious and indefatigable enthusiasm.

While there are tracks of beauty and wonder, there are duller moments too, where the history that First Aid Kit derive their music from overwhelms their songs, reminding us always of what came before.

The Family Jewels seems to be to be symptomatic of a broader trend at the moment to demand our female artists be both credible and commercial at the expense of achieving anything great in either camp.

He only truly nails it on one track out of four doesn't bode especially well, but as I say, there's some reason to hope, and if you really don't have anything better than the Pumpkins to pin your musical hopes onto, you probably shouldn't be too nervous about checking out the next EP.

Jurado's strengths--ability to tug at the heartstrings without seeming mawkish or sentimental--are intact, but bolstered by what you might assume is Richard Swift's input. Unfortunately, it doesn't last. The rest of Saint Bartlett isn't bad, it just reverts to type to such an extent that it pales in comparison to the earlier moments.

Maniac Meat is only really disappointing when compared to what came before, because try as it might, it can neither supercede nor outdo its predeces at it's own game.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that Elson's debut is a flight of fancy, but it just doesn't engage the listener in any meaningful manner. An engaging artist should be inviting you to step inside their bubble, they shouldn't really need you to stand outside and wait for the pop.

There are a lot of sweeping strings throughout ...and the Pioneer Saboteurs, but don't come along expecting a smooth ride. Although he might look and occasionally sound like Richard Hawley's younger, scruffier brother, Hinson shares little of the Brit's romance here.

This is Happening might not take us as far as Sound Of Silver, yet at times it’s still an exhilarating journey with ample opportunity to revel in another idiosyncratic lesson in the art, and joy, of sonic bricolage.

Their third album Infinite Arms glows with that familiar sound, a sound born with an American heart.

Brothers goes straight into the chase for the finest traditional rock album of the year so far, and with a slight trim to its 15-strong run would be a front runner.

It's true Lidell darts from one scene to the next, and not every moment earns its place. Yet it all makes a curious kind of sense in Compass' vivid canvas.

A Small Turn Of Human Kindness really does sound like some bad shit has gone down. To this end, you have to assume HM have succeeded in their intentions, although they tend to be sardonic and inscrutable by design.

This isn’t a particularly awful record--it’s simply a album full of typical sounding Stereophonics songs

While ‘Hustle And Cuss’ and ‘I Can’t Hear You’ rely too much on the practically prehistoric blues template White has employed throughout his career, the slinky stomp and lusty roar of ‘Gasoline’ and the crashing, panting, hair rawk solo-infused ‘Jawbreaker’ show that The Dead Weather have found the balls to break free of such constraints.

An easy grandeur is present throughout, as is a sense they are following an increasingly individual, carefully textured path. It is a wild, vivid romance that The National make their own, and on High Violet it sounds just as striking, just as wild, just as vivid as ever.

Latin doesn't have a weak moment, and while LP's higher energy levels may indeed play better with that lucrative Top Shop demographic, it would seem remarkable if any right thinking fan of the band didn't think Latin at least its equal.

The immediacy of ...Night Fall's melodies and the satisfaction derived from its buttressing rhythms will generate just about enough pleasure for most.

There's just so many country records being made, each a replica of another, that in moving away from Phosphorescent's original sound, much of Here's To Taking It Easy has found itself dangerously subscribing to banal convention.

So after the outré highs and lows of Grey Oceans have played their last syllable, it's hard to know what to think of it, apart from being slightly underwhelmed for the most part.

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.

Resultantly, while the textures are nostalgic, the album is a very contemporary experience. Since you're unlikely to ever get the same 20 plus artists on the same page again, it's best to enjoy the album for what it is: a one-off experiment, more of a happening than a record, that can't (and possibly shouldn't) be repeated.

Once again: there are six more songs on this album. Six songs that really aren't bad at all. But once your needle has dropped to the end of side one, it's only going back to the beginning again.

Despite these forays into a wider world, and the dreamy, vulnerable and hypnotic subtlety of 'Stone', you can't help but think that NYPC have still got one foot firmly anchored in the glowstick glimmer of past glories.

You’d need DNA evidence to separate Free Energy from the influences they’re so clearly in thrall of, but it’s all so blusteringly fun and care-free that they make you feel like a curmudgeon for even contemplating giving a shit.

While The Hold Steady haven't made a bad album this time, they haven't made a really good one either. It's a good album with some problems.

The fact that Smith rarely untangles The Fall from the cryptic absurdist approach that has become his stock-in-trade, to head toward this type of profoundly personal material, only makes it that more affecting when he actually does deviate from his path most traveled.

Despite the aimlessness of much of FRR's second half, nailing it is what BSS do brilliantly. There are enough moments of standout glory in the first half to sate any fan of this band, whatever part of their work they admire.

Cosmogramma is dense and devotional, Ellison piloting his craft into the fading slipstream of his aunt Alice Coltrane's cosmic strain of jazz. Not that it's jazz, exactly. Well, no more than it is techno, dubstep, chiptune, P-funk, IDM and, by no means least, hip-hop.

Together does not scale the heights of Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema, but then, The New Pornographers have already made Mass Romantic and Twin Cinema. This is something new, something hopeful.

In essence this is their most fluid recording, unbroken by exploratory concerns.

It's little surprise that Mondo Cane is an album that--65 piece orchestra or not--is built around Patton's personality and voice, rather than his lyricism in the traditional sense. It's this continuity which lends it an appeal beyond mere authenticity and curiosity, to the listener prepared to devote a little time and dare I say it, research, into the album's background and source material.

More! as an EP would have packed more punch and avoided the pitfalls of consistency which plague albums of every genre. Nevertheless, it is a good album, and perhaps the only tinge of disappointment is the knowledge that they could have done better.

In Evening Air employs a clear formula where guitar and synth play off each other, where at points they're indistinguishable. It's this close partnership that gives the record an architected feel.

By shirking an introspective approach, he has succeeded brilliantly in wending a line between intricacy and intimacy. The output is a genuinely majestic creation, brimming with a richness of substance to both enthral and devastate.

With barely a duff song here bar the minor irritations mentioned earlier, Tourist History is an infectious debut that may well divide opinion, but at least suggests that amidst all the uneasy listening and obtuse noises coming out of the underground at present there are still those capable of writing the odd tune or ten.

On many levels it's immediately obvious that Nobody's Daughter is neither an awful record, nor a great one.

The record could be accused of wearing its influences a bit obviously, but as Wilco, Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev borrowed from Neil Young, progression essentially comes through a degree of regression and, although Avi retreads familiar ground, he still adds his very own unique footprint to his band's debut.

Over 13 tracks Transcontinental Hustle casts its spells, a record that fairly howls at the moon.

Our Inventions feels terminally lacking in ambition and new ideas and a big step backwards for Lali Puna. The music is safe tweetronica, Trebejahr’s vocals inscrutable like a tasteful wallpaper.

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.

Paul's Tomb: A Triumph has two distinct modes – those slowburn instrumental passages, and the lyric driven, quicker, melodic segments. Frog Eyes succeed when the joins between the two really 'flow', when the segues work.

Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast is a vibrant collection of songs that further illustrates the importance of Cornershop over the past two decades.

Sleep Mountain lacks both the urgency and unhinged fervour of Arcade Fire and the inventive mischief of the Flaming Lips.

His music really is art for the ears, with hues, colours, textures and aural brush strokes dripping with vibrancy and imagination.

Like a Shakespearean monologue you're either going to be living every moment with the narrator or gazing on indifferently as your attention drifts away. For those in the former camp, this is a challenging listen where life mirrors art in a profoundly resonant way.

My Best Friend Is You is, indubitably, rather daring for a mainstream pop album. Yet for all the Butler-begat polish, it's hard to work out whether it really is a mainstream pop album.

Overall though, Travellers In Space And Time is a fascinating collection that won't be everyone's cup of tea, but should at least cement its creators cult status for the forseeable future and some.

It goes without saying that they still possess a die-hard dedication for that certain herb, and if you don’t smoke the reefer you shouldn’t go anywhere near this record; it will leave you colder than Cheech and Chong’s Arctic Adventure

It’s a surprise that the band managed to get through those weird four years and make such a consistent album--from front to back it’s exceptionally well sequenced.

Ultimately Thing is an album that exceeds expectations, not to mention revealing new trajectories with every subsequent listen. Whether a heavy indulger or casual fan of electronically based music, it's hard to envisage a better record than Thing emerging from any of its sub-genres this year.

This is one for the ‘pleasant but unremarkable’ file, and it seems that’s all the band was striving for in the first place.

While Erickson provided the 'text', Sheff had to present it with the right level of reverence, being careful to highlight, and not undermine, this record of struggle and redemption.

Congratulations is no more impenetrable than the Flaming Lips at their most commericial, with Sonic Boom offering a bright, upfront mix that keeps the baffling array of omichords, guitars, sitars, synths, organs and FX percolating in dynamic, uncluttered fashion.

These old balladeer's tales are fleshed out with metaphors and all the tricks of a great writer. The burble of guitar lines complement it all artfully. That doesn't mean the criticisms go away--there is a lack of invention within any genre, and too often the lustre dulls.

The adventurous nature of Coheed and Cambria was what made them so thrilling. And while this new tangent of popular method could win them a fair few new fans, it may leave some of the loyal wanting more from their next opus.

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.

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

To be blunt though, for all the great literary and musical figures involved, the result of this creative vision sounds more or less the same as the music Natalie Merchant has been making for her whole solo career. Only more boring.

Bluntly, if you consider yourself in any way interested in rock music and don't already own this album, you're doing yourself a rather large disservice.

Pop lives or dies primarily on the quality of the songs, and in comparison to the commercial pop he's emulating, these songs come up short.

As it is Weathervanes remains a catchy album that will satiate those with an indie-pop sweet tooth, (the type who can bear glockenspiel on every track) and maybe even offer the odd moment of genuine inspiration. Many of us will find it all a little too familiar and unengaging to get that far.

...And Then We Saw Land is a satisfying addition to the Tunng canon and is one which proves them distinctive enough in their own right that the only label they need be tagged with is simply that of 'Tunng'.

I Speak Because I Can is an album of elegance and brilliance. Marling has developed from her debut, and her voice has grown both physically and lyrically.

What's really satisfying about Go is the way the soaring architecture of symphonic hipster du jour Nico Muhly's compositional work looms just as large on the more effervescent numbers as it does in these quieter spots - it really drawing everything together into a wonderfully coherent whole, despite the record's ever-shifting tides and Birgisson's violently affecting knack for distilling every emotion known to humanity into a single echoing chord change.

Ultimately there are only so many excuses you can make for the fact Here Lies Love isn't an out there masterpiece, merely a somewhat outré easy listening album.

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.

What is disappointing about Slash, however, is the fact that it seems getting the names into the studio was where the creative process began and ended. So many of the songs here would simply not make it onto new albums from anyone involved.

Javelin don't yet possess the same kind of wit and invention of their most obvious forbearers, but there's enormous potential here, and the biggest compliment that can be paid to No Más is that it will sound best when reduced down to an audio tape and shoved into one of the boomboxes that Langford and van Buskirk so slavishly worship.

Now Mi Ami are making sense. Now you realise that this band is actually really good. Really, really good. And they make you want to dance.

While unlikely to win many prizes for originality, I Will Be possesses likability in spades, not to mention a hefty selection of demurely constructed tunes that might delve into the past for inspiration but smile brightly into the future as a result.

Erykah might have mellowed out, but the lessons from last time round have been learnt, rethought and reapplied. This is a record that confidently stands alone as brilliant, yet remains an equally perfect companion to a modern classic.

Like the three series of Deadwood, you could spend time picking between each of the three Brokeoff's releases, but they should instead be seen as a single evocative triptych, although one that would nonetheless leave enthusiasm for another blood stained instalment.

While there will always be the criticism that a Wooden Shjips record is a merely an acquired taste of familiar morsels, the ripened fruits within never fail to satisfy the palette on every count, and even though some of Vol. 2 may be three years old, its a more than worthy addition to anyone's sonic menu.

The whole record possesses an industrial feel, be it in the synths or the drum machines or the moody-sounding atmospherics that are peppered throughout the record. Option Paralysis, may not win back fair-weather fans, but they've again proved why they're regarded as one of the best in their field.

Coconut, then, is a baffling, dirty, even exhausting listen at times, but never less than engaging throughout.

She & Him treat what could be needless and indulgent with care and soul. Volume Two will surprise and charm in equal measure.

With Two Thousand and Ten Injuries Love Is All have created another master class in yearning, defiant, confused and lovelorn indie-pop, the sort of record you wish you had by your side when you were stuck re-heating cheeseburger puffs* for minimum wage in one of Essex’s premier petrol station.

Goldfrapp make another proficient genre hop, it simply feels like they’re failing to consolidate their last bout of proficiency. They've moved on, changed their sound, and it's just okay... again.

Diehard fans needn’t worry that Autechre have diluted themselves in that respect, for Oversteps is still a challenging listen, and one which reveals endless layers of new detail with each spin. But it’s also their most instantly rewarding – and arguably best--album to date.

High Places vs. Mankind is their most complete work to date, which ends much as it began, with the band’s love of outright pop.

Make your way past the defensive drone it puts up and you will be rewarded with warm, welcoming fuzz.

The guitar work almost borders on wankery. Space-rock elements of Sixties psych don't so much creep as stomp leaden footedly into your lugs. Does it feel a little out of place? Yes. Finest four and a half minutes of Let's Wrestle's brief career? Absolutely fucking yes.

There are ten fine new songs here, each beautiful and sorrowful, sparse and complex, sacred and profane: this is what to expect from a new record by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

It would appear then that Callahan’s soul, like everyone else’s, is still up for grabs, but until the next record indicates what direction he’s decided to take or what road events have forced him down, Rough Travel For a Rare Thing is a darkly beautiful reflection of the continuing struggle.

[The title track] may not be very Bonobo, but it is very beautiful, and--like much else on his latest long play--begs to be listened to.

Even though this is a relatively concise Truckers record, it does still have a little flab around the midriff.

Under Great White Northern Lights would be a funny postscript. It's not particularly revelatory, less cohesive a concert film that Under Blackpool Lights, and in no way intimates that the band was about to go into hiatus. Really, it serves, more than anything else, as a reminder of just how singularly odd the White Stripes are, and how boring things are without them around.

Gone is the rawness of his debut and the innovation of its two follow ups. More worryingly, he’s missing the emotion that made those records so potent.

We can speculate as to how their ethos and focus was developed from time spent in the company of other imaginative musicians – it could well be essential to their consistent evolution – but the evidence on Peepers leaves no doubt as to how successful this union of education and expression is.

Whilst at times the melodies feel frail, and it seems to struggle with a slight lack of something musically, at others the album is triumphant, with complex, brilliant pop songs about that age old theme, heartbreak.

Song construction isn’t quite as nifty and complex as, say, Grizzly Bear, but there are plenty of moments to keep you coming back for more.

These tunes are fun and youthful, but also grown up and varied--there’s something for everyone here, whether you’re blasting this record at the park with mates or in the car on a road-trip or sitting on the beach--all you need is a little sunshine and wine (not in the car, though, please) and let Thomas, Garbus and Weisman take you to that place we all remember well (fondly or not).

All in all, it’s a shambles. Incarnation No 4 lacks the interesting feminine insight of Rihanna’s latest, the flamboyance and ‘balls’ of Lady Gaga, the nous of Annie, anything approaching the vocal talents of Beyoncé or the nonsensical slapstick fun of Girls Aloud.

Liquid Love doesn’t try to be anything other than forty minutes of groove-tastic electro-pop, and as such comfortably hits its goals.