Hearing rappers coming from this musical sphere is a refreshing novelty however, and the record is definitely one of the most interesting, if not exceptional things to emerge this year.

There’s only one test a live album has to pass, and this one stands up to it: if you were there you’ll be prompted to bask in the memory, and if you weren’t you’ll be wishing like hell that you had been.

Far from succumbing to the simplicities of a simple mash up record or a standard mixtape, Edan has created a flowing, evolving piece of music as liquid as the basslines he’s so fond of sampling, that has never yet failed to bring a grin to my face.

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.

Everything about Beak> is a cohesive, ambitious and thoughtfully-executed murky delight. A godsend of a record in these times of landfill indie.

It’s an oddball groove-rock album, played very well, imprinted with Homme's undeniably interesting personality. Yet when all’s said and done, it's not particularly memorable and entirely lacks the type of yee-haw exuberance that might have made it a sloppy treat.

On this record, Merril Garbus manages the impressive feat of condensing much of the decade’s more interesting musical trends into one very well delivered tapestry.

They’re still an incredibly likeable band, unashamed of being rabble-rousing without ever resorting to lowest common denominator tactics, but The Cribs have toned down the things that made them great.

Unfortunately these familiar sounding highlight aren't enough to raise Bad Lieutenant above the level of any other New Order side-project and they in fact fall some way short of Sumner Electronic.

Perhaps where Midwinter Graces suffers most is that it will be resigned to the world of the holiday album, making brief appearances from only late November to early January, garnering at most a passing mention the rest of the year. At the very least, though, it is a holiday record that will be remembered once a year.

Hate them all you like, but Snow Patrol have some great songs and enough money now to forget all about the tripe they’re currently peddling at their massive group of new fans.

These climactic moments help Belly Of The Lion to ultimately feel more consequential and less of a project for a moonlighting soundtracker. He’ll need some help to recreate it live, but on record David Wingo has shown that he can pull it off on his own.

Landing is a well-made bit of fun, but it’s no more than that.

In the midst of the beautiful descending piano chords of the Twin Peaks referencing ‘Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes’ a blade of static erupts without warning, coming to life with an extremely high-frequency version of a distress flare’s hiss. Once this has faded the track’s coda becomes the most beautiful section of the album, clean descending string-playing blending with a more frenetic bowing and echoing wolf cries.

The result is intricately experimental in style and form but while there are some glorious successes, as a whole Climb Up feels blunted.

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.

By no means is this album a disappointment, rather it’s an attempt to fill a particular niche for a specific audience.

Having greedily sucked the Tapes blog dry of every note I could find without so much as a by your leave to the chap generous enough to share his creations with a bunch of strangers, I waited for Seek Magic's release tingling like a tuning fork and hoping he wouldn't pull a Big Pink on me. He didn't. Seek Magic is probably my favourite album of the year.

There are moments which hint at Casablancas’ underlying skill as a writer on Phrazes, but there’s such a ruinous deployment of disparate ideas that they never form a cogent whole.

In general, the choruses are forgettable, the guitars are woefully exaggerated, and the quirkiness that made Weezer a band to be cherished now seems forced and stale.

All in all, a fine introduction to the compelling Will Johnson, but a peculiar idea, to make a painfully intimate album with two songwriters rather than just one.

Certainly on this album class is more straightforward.

So it’s good, but given the large amount of quality Nirvana concert stuff out there, does Live At Reading really have much by way of USP? Probably, yeah, if only because it's the band's sole full electric gig commercially available.

It’ll no doubt be lapped up by impressionable 14 year old girls the world over, but for a show that has so much more to offer this just smacks of studio exec. cash-in.

Ironically, this package was always going to be one for the completists, but those who’ll actually get the most from Bleach are still the "Nevermind" fans left feeling alienated by the gnarled triumph that was "In Utero."

You can’t say it’s a great album for 2009 when it would have been a merely good one in 1981. But it is good, fitfully very good, and when considered alongside Cremations, this two year old band have build up an undeniably impressive body of work.

Yes, this thing is ridiculously derivative. It won't change lives or rearrange the musical landscape of nations but Kahn was never going to win any awards for originality. It may just raise some roofs and shake some foundations though.

Whether or not it is as defining a release as OK Cowboy even feels somewhat incidental in the end, as Flashmob is easily the most enjoyable, addictive, air-keyboard-inducing electronic record that the year is likely to produce.

Jaumet might have Carl Craig hovering over him but he’s not entirely in his shadow, and Night Music is his own diamond-encrusted carriage, which he rides through the small hours with no risk of ever becoming a pumpkin.

Though there’s a paucity of joy to be found among proceedings, other aspects of You Are The One I Pick (even the title’s a barbed double entendre!) actively compensate.

Whilst Islands displays nuggets of well executed nostalgia, one can’t help but wonder if they have any style that isn’t old, borrowed or depressingly blue.

It’d be rather too easy to sketch this as a record suitable only for chewing off your own tongue to: in fact, just like the Hieronymus Bosch triptych it appears to name-check, Earthly Delights is actually a work far richer in tone, shade and technique than its lurid sheen might suggest.

There’s some interest to be found but for the most part he displays a real lack of daring.

Whether If It Was You or So Jealous serve as your touchstone for what this group should be, Sainthood is unlikely to leave you one hundred per cent satisfied. Which is good--in their own way Tegan and Sara are mavericks; that’s what always saves them in the end.

There’s a lot more going on besides, maybe a touchstone too much at times, but you’d have to have either incredibly specific or incredibly boring taste to not find some gold herein.

Though there’s nothing startlingly new here, this is a consistently engaging record that doesn’t so much successfully straddle metal and post-rock than have both coursing through its veins.

It’s a clever and often highly entertaining album with inbuilt limitations, but if you buy one record this year whose title is possibly a reference to Bumblebee Man from The Simpsons, it should probably be this one.

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

This is no groundbreaking piece of art; it's not innovative, it's unashamedly backwards looking, and it rips off the greats to high heaven. It's also bloody awful for a significant amount of its running time. However, when it does work, it's a great thing.

As 'Syncn' lilts to a close, it’s hard not to feel that White Denim would be better if they channelled a little of their chaotic diversity towards consistency, and focused upon being the very biggest, dumbest and craziest bunch of garage revivalists, rather than striking towards a uniqueness that is momentarily out of reach.

As it is, they're more than quite good, and all the better for the tracks that surround them.

It’s a shame, because there were some genuinely good ideas on We Can Create, but Chapman seems to have no real sense of direction for this album, and thus the end result is wholly unfulfilling.

Tarot Sport doesn’t pause to bang or whimper. Tarot Sport accelerates.

Logos is a gorgeous, hallucinatory and somewhat sickly outing.

The album serves as a classic case of frontloading and one gets a sense that the first six songs would have made a better standalone EP, buying the band yet more time to craft something a little more interesting.

Take The BQE on its own terms and there’s plenty to enjoy.

Individual tracks will wax and wane in popularity, and the genitalia humour of 'Sugar Lumps' et al might attract a wider audience who don’t understand the deadpan atmosphere of the rest of the show, but it’s hard to grow tired of this peculiar couple and their music.

On The Real Feel it seems that he’s buckled slightly under the pressure of having his own full length, with his own space to breathe and experiment, and has instead decided to play it straight down the line.

Tracks like ‘My Step’, ‘Feather’ and ‘Blinking Pigs’ have that unique ability to transcend seasonal musical folly, there's nothing 'now' or 'then' about them - you can listen to them any time, anywhere, any weather and still be pretty pleased.

Axe To Fall makes good with an appetite for reinvention.

Like many of the tracks contained therein, Geneva ends up far from where it began. But this is not a record defined by where it starts and where it finishes--it’s what there is to take in on the way that counts.

As ever with Themselves, there aren’t really highlights or many changes of pace – it’s full-on, all the time; you don’t get skits between songs, just a second, third or fourth gabbling vocal line within these ten, unconventionally concise songs.

New Clouds is as good a record as any to soundtrack disconnection from deep thought.

It’s not often you find music that lives and breathes with such conviction that you find itself swept away in the charm of it all. That Do Make Say Think have achieved this lofty standard yet again shouldn’t come as a shock, yet it’s testament to their enduring talent that, at every turn, Other Truths continues to surprise and enthrall in equal measure.

This, likewise, isn't for every occasion--and perhaps not for everyone--but for those who do chance it, an immensely rewarding work that feels like much more than music.

As it is, Espers have moved towards new territory, stumbling occasionally, but with a clear eye on where they’ve come from.

Linguistic detective work aside, engage with natural scenery through scattered sound, this album does.

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.

Fanfarlo are similar fare, and that’s a perfectly fine thing to be. The band make pretty, guitar and organ-led indie, with discreet swirls, parps, and trills of brass and strings.

What it really all boils down to is your tolerance for lengthy psyche records, which is what Embyonic undoubtedly is.

It’s Bob Dylan’s Christmas gift to you, delivered with warmth from his heart, even if his tongue is in his cheek. Like eggnog, it’s something that will always go down well once a year, even if it is probably just the once.

Throughout the record the ooo-oooh swoopiness is enchanting and the constant SNES-soundtrack bubblings take you back to a simpler, more tranquil and ultimately a place filled with hope.

Pictured on the album’s cover taking aim at a heart-shaped pinata, Thao once again sings in a way that conveys both breathless astonishment and world-weary wisdom.

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 a crushingly un-exuberant album, powered by neither anger nor joy, howls of rage nor whoops of exhilaration, not revelling in any particular aspect of the band’s music, nor kicking against any pricks. The lyrics dabble with outsiders and the odd bit of queer imagery, but there’s nothing revelatory, incendiary or revealing.

It's here and it's almost perfect.

The quiet simplicity of these songs is better suited to Fink’s lone voice, clear without a jumble of voices and complex harmonies, strengthening the continuity of the storytelling.

Kings and Queens is a resounding success. Okay, maybe it's a tried and true formula that Jamie T and Ben Bones have created, but their textured, layered songs each have something new to offer upon every listen, and they've mastered the art to near perfection.

Darnielle's lyrics are as true as ever to his incisive yet confused style; 'confused' because, as his myopic cleverness makes for phrases as bracing and direct as can be, his words always--simultaneously--obfuscate or complicate themselves.

There is something exorbitantly satisfying about enjoying what you might deem to be a comeback album, especially when it arrives from an established band that many - including myself - thought were out of fresh ideas.

This is their thing, their schtick. And for the most part, bending phil Spector out of shape and dragging him by his hair through a raft of distortional devices and all the while kicking the hell out of the ‘Leader of the Pack’ is a very good thing.

Emotional ambiguity never sounded so good. Business as usual then.

A Place To Bury Strangers have managed to strike a perfect balance between noise and tune, and as a result created one of 2009's most ingenious records.

The trio continue to demonstrate their chops and their wit over these 41 minutes.

Though Losing Feeling remains EP in stature and with its intentions, it’s still enjoyable and represents a need to keep testing different waters before diving headlong into their next murky stretch of creative water.

They all contribute to the consistency of atmosphere that makes the album in itself such a distinctively satisfying listen, and one in which anybody who makes the initial effort can immerse themselves entirely.

They do little to advance on the template, but at their best they produce some thrilling pop music, and while failing to create a consistently brilliant album

It can seem unfocussed on occasion, but that rush to cram in influences from disparate sources settles into a pleasing hodge-podge in the second half of this album.

If All My Friends Are Funeral Singers has said one thing at all to me, it’s that Califone merit further investigation, especially for someone who tends to write off ‘folk’ music. And if that doesn’t make it a success, then I don’t know what does.

The 13 songs on Six are rich and exquisitely constructed, perfectly-pitched baroque riffs and orchestration are juxtaposed with searingly compelling lyrical imagery.

When you consider the current crop of supposedly afrobeat influenced indie rock, Warm Heart Of Africa is, if you’ll excuse the pun, The Very Best.

Falkner manages to set up a sort of production halfway house, which raises everything out of the bedroom, but still burrows deep to the tender core at the heart of Daniel’s songs.

On Splitting The Atom, though, the duo simply sound like they’ve run out of ideas, unsurprising given the opening half’s attempts to re-visit an album over 18 years old.

Threadbare’s generous, circular nature is to be applauded; it’s rare that studies of loss are as authentically moving and sensitively played as this--and even rarer they’re so completely endearing.

It remains to be seen if Music Go Music can succeed in a world where platinum selling artists align themselves with paganism and performance art; perhaps they are just too relentlessly chipper. However, it would be a crying shame if people didn’t let Expressions light the dark corners of their heart at least once.

Yes, this is a collection of Tracks and Traces, meticulously edited in the late-90s, and again more recently, so that none of the musical ideas outstay their welcome--in this respect, it’s not quite an album, and when the less melodically surprising tracks fade out, you feel like you’re moving along to the next case in the exhibit, whereas other albums by Cluster, Harmonia, or Cluster & Eno sustain a mood, and often a weird nervous energy, with their generally more urgent rhythms.

This is a realisation, and an affirmation, of Paramore's musical craftmanship and potential longevity.

It's at the safest of removes; emote by rote, numbness by numbers.

When AiC hit home though, as they often do, Black Gives Way To Blue becomes the quiet triumph it set out to be.

God is Good is a more confused creation, more like two EPs than a concerted record.

This is a record to be drunk from deeply, preferably in solitude, along with a bottle of whatever makes you purr as warmly as Sandoval and her Inventions can--and evidently still do--at their best.

You could accuse Cymbals Eat Guitars of being derivative, but the idea is that all of these influences are broken down to component parts and then reassembled into something different. Some of the pieces are still recognisable, others disguised or twisted.

If it is indubitably more soundtrack album than bigshot solo debut, this record certainly provides irrefutable, definitive, official proof of O’s talents as a songwriter in her own right.

What really impresses though is how complete all of this sounds: aside from the typically cocky lyrical references, there’s nary a hint that they’ve not been working together for the last few years.

Such is Vlautin’s talent as a storyteller, conveying everything about his disparate cast of punch-drunk, liquor-soused losers with just a handful of sparse adjectives, that moments like this manage to feel genuinely gut-wrenching without ever coming across as remotely emo: he writes harrowing documentaries, not bed-wetting poetry.

In its lack of cleverness, the album has a certain wide-eyed innocence, and even the songs about hangovers show a generous perspective on life, of which music critics could do well to take note.

The first half connects the mind and the body equally, which is why they are such successful songs. The second half of is just body music and that’s where it falls a little flat. That’s not to say it doesn't work at all.

This is a surprisingly engaging record that highlights Ian Brown as an underrated songwriter and arranger, and underscores the point that while his enthusiasm for creativity is as infectious as ever, Spike Island and its ilk are unlikely to be revisited in the forseeable future.