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.

Dando fucks Varshons up just enough to stop it being an actively great covers record--in recent terms The Condo Fucks’ mighty "Fuckbook" stomps over it--but not enough to detract from the truth that the thread drawing the successful songs together is the still-beating talent of Evan Dando, non-dickhead version.

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

Octahedron lacks sparkle enough to raise it above previous creative highs--it’s a recommended affair, at times truly scintillating, but it doesn’t quite deliver to the extent where all caution can be tossed to the breeze.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and Spinnerette makes its strongest statements when flobbing a big loogie onto the grave of past endeavours, not when laying out fresh blooms at the side.

Whatever all this means, Dragonslayer is an album to get your teeth into. As on the final chorus, it's: "a bigger kind of kill". You need this.

Beacons Of Ancestorship is pretty much what the avid Tortoise fan would consider par for the course, in that its a veering cascade of inherent surprises that never fails to astound, amaze or disappoint.

All of the time, Will Roan's vocal proves to be the most engaging aspect of Rewild, even at its least explosive.

Travels... is a 33 minute monster without a slither of excess fat, and the best thing Andy Falkous has ever put his name to.

Bibio’s tendency, across the album, to either smooth the edges of his creations into non-threatening abstraction or fail to zone in on his best ideas is frustrating.

It's hard to get excited about music which never gets too excited itself. What good ideas The Phenomenal Handclap Band do have are spread a little thinly on this debut.

What was once pin drop quiet is now grand; one soon adjusts however as the key to all of the songs here is the inner shell, not the protective exterior.

Foreign Born feel like they should have more staying power, even if there’s less flash.

An attempt to relive the RATM era that falls far, far short of the bar. Save your money and go and listen to the real deal instead.

As with any good experiment the failures are almost as important as the successes. The old school reggae and the auto-tuned idiocy are utterly redundant, as pointless as water in whisky. There are four or five properly innovative and exciting tunes here.

Like Tiny Masters, these kids are at that enviable point when all this seems fresh and new. You can almost see the process of discovery burning brightly in their eyes. Skeletons perfectly captures that moment.

Bitte Orca isn't a record that'll reduce many to tears, except perhaps of awe. But when something's so astonishing in every other respect, we can allow for that.

Yes, The Eternal is “Another Sonic Youth Record” but it’s also “Another Good Sonic Youth record”, revealing its finer details gradually, even if there’s no fundamentally new approach, arrangement, or message, in any of the songs.

Battle For The Sun feels hazy, lazy and lost--a muggy summer afternoon. Predictable lyrics grate awkwardly like manufactured pop-factory produce, while a ‘nice’ helping of sunshine-synth and sighs paint a chirpy celebration of life and all its hand-clappy beauty. Meh.

Outspoken and even prone to some fairly loony conspiracy theorising, The Ecstatic thankfully does not become such a platform, and is a refined selection of strong tracks, which skilfully tread the balance between tight beats and forthright exclamations.

One suspects the end product here may have had more to do with the record's producer than its creators, and as a result, this album is as unconvincing as the band's hollow assurances that they're open to embracing new horizons.

Rainwater Cassette Exchange confirms--Deerhunter may never make a loud or abrasive album again, but they have other, deeper fires, burning away fierce as ever.

As the album enters its second half a number of elements which made the its first half so enjoyable begin to get tiresome, particularly the over-reliance on piano.

Just as Waits has the power to infuse you with familiarity with the return of a chord, so do the songs of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, like an embroidered pillow on an old porch that says ‘home sweet home’.

This may be a more suitable album for a man of Iggy’s age to put out than his last, but that doesn’t make it a better one. Indeed the idea of an inoffensive Iggy Pop album seems itself almost offensive.

This emotional rollercoaster of an album has a few cleverly disguised cliches similar to 'emotional rollercoaster' embedded in the music and lyrics.

Really, the only fault of this record is that its most arrestingly beautiful minute is its final one: everything that comes before, however brilliant it is at the time, pales once that choir swells, just for a few too-fleeting seconds.

Whilst Wolfgang Amadeus... is clunker-free, with high points from start to finish, allow me to abandon my critical faculties and gush about 'Love Like a Sunset Part 1', as this instrumental is by far the most incredible moment of the album and also quite possibly the best thing they've ever done.

Black Moth Super Rainbow is unable to even meld the far out periphery around a dreamy passive sound.

Somewhere around track eight, the formula starts to wear thin, and the mood lightens a little to a sort of murky, sleepless pre-dawn--it’s not quite sunshine, or it’s supposed to be, but Blank Dogs can’t really make sense of the big glowing thing in the sky.

For anyone interested in music that works both as art and an intensely new exciting experience--this is easily the best album that has come out this year.

Bike For Three! don’t often have the danceable poppiness of Neon Neon (though don’t get me wrong, they never drift into the background) but it’s hard not to think of that other collaboration for the simple reason: embracing a slick, futuristic, highly-produced sound has unexpectedly brought about the best album yet, by all concerned

Let's just call it an hour's worth of creepy, organic, nearly always-tension-building electronic ambience which certainly owes as much, if not more, to the hidden influences as the obvious ones.

The question remains unanswered, because while it was, undeniably, dull without him, Relapse is less 12 steps than a stumbling one backwards.

It’s Frightening is by no means a record which is without merit. I suspect that the production work of Spoon’s Britt Daniel has infused it with more presence than it might otherwise have had. However, that notwithstanding, the album’s lack of anything substantial to get your teeth into proves fatal.

Despite an opening volley that suggests Ghandi himself would have felt the urge to tell Passion Pit to stop being so bloody silly come the end, it finds a slightly more meaningful note surprisingly soon.

Occasionally vague, sometimes incohesive and a little self-indulgent it may be, but ultimately Abnormally Attracted to Sin is an abnormally attractive piece of work, and another fine example of the shining talent that is Tori Amos.

Unlike the best of those artists, however, the variety of ideas on Further Complication do not have a uniform success rate to bond them, and this is what stops the album short of reaching classic status.

‘Organic’ is a word that has influence and is often applied, but hardly does justice to so otherworldly a record as Yesterday and Today’. A pulse very rarely makes you feel this alive.

Listen to Still Night, Still Light for what it is and its unlikely you will end up disappointed.

If perhaps before Lewis's music had a tendency to be swamped by small-print, here the songs know when to step back, to give way to a catchy chorus or a hummable riff.

Clues offer precisely that: hints at considerable future potential, and, for any budding gumshoes keen to probe the mysterious fate of The Unicorns, arguably something of smoking gun.

Though the songs are both numerous and short, they’re mostly a solitary musical idea that tends not to be explored too far, well done as it might be.

There are certainly some succulent dishes on the album ('Xerses' and 'Eats Darkness' for me) but all together I do wonder if someone ordered a bit too much?

Though no longer flavour of the month in 'cool' circles, as far as The Warlocks are concerned it's business as usual, and The Mirror Explodes is up there with their finest works to date.

There’s no doubting that sensory sensations offered here can hold the listener, but most likely they'll be enjoyed a helluva lot more while chemically-enhanced; essentially this is not a record designed for home listening.

Quicken The Heart represents Maximo Park settling into a rut, albeit an intermittently attractive one.

For all the darkness of Actor's concerns, however, it remains an exceptionally pleasurable album to listen to.

Ultimately, Peaches shows herself developing, late in her career, but unlikely to infiltrate the market she's targeted.

There are plenty of fine moments in all the songs, whether it's a sudden burst of harmonies, or unexpected instrumental flourishes, from behind the singer.

In many ways, Outer South feels almost like a coming of age for Oberst. His voice is way stronger than it has been in the past.

It’s a bold album, even in its prettiest, most pastoral moments.

Primary Colours is a reminder that young British bands can actually progress to brilliant new heights, and perhaps, just perhaps, the occasional surprise in these media saturated times isn’t as endangered a beast as previously thought.

This is a solid collection of pop-tunes, but not for connoisseurs.

It’s a proper album, in the sense that a divide is made at four of seven, the title track a segue between halves – its makers clearly bear download culture little respect, constructing their latest so that it’s best experienced as a whole, bridging arrangements as vital as the blustering bombast and constitutional inflections of grandly designed standout pieces.

It’s vital for the maintenance of Gallows’ present profile that they curb their enthusiasm for experimentation and pushing the envelope of aggressiveness to some degree, and by doing this sensibly, they’ve produced an album that’s big on surprises but that also ticks the essential boxes of heaviness and melody.

Anyone who owns the 1992 Sub Pop compilation The Way of the Vaselines might be thinking there's nothing for them here, but beyond the re-mastering adding significant depth to Dum Dum (the difference it's made to the EPs is negligible to my admittedly rather damaged ears) there's also a second disc of previously unreleased material.

It seems a little mean to judge this against song-based records - if anything, the narrative arc suggests it's 'about' the deterioration of meaning / tunefulness / drama into the inconsequentiality of real life; still, on its own terms, it's rather precious.

Really, what you’re left with is an accomplished album, delivered with passion and feeling, that’s easy to acknowledge as pretty good--to admire, even--but hard to be seriously moved by.

Not that anyone really expected or wanted a laugh a minute, but whilst these 13 tracks are certainly eclectic in style, the atmosphere throughout, with the exception of the bubbling melodic analogue chug of opener ‘A New Error’, is almost uniformly bleak.

Like any covers album that translates between genres, there’s an occasional sense of frustration or compromise...but that's "occasional" within tracks--there are no duds here.

Despite the so-called grandiose statements of intent such as strings, pianos and soul-trained female backing vocalists, this is simply a case of mutton dressed as lamb and those lambs eventually being slaughtered.

It’s just a shame to have squandered the momentum of the Brits by turning in a weaker album than the lower key "Fundamental;" a good two decades after the event, the Pet Shop Boys have well and truly entered middle age.

If it’s their lighter side that appeals, they’ve never made such a consistent pop album, and I use the term with not the slightest hint of cynicism.

Sounds Of The Universe arguably goes on for a bit too long--it doesn't help that closer 'Corrupt' is throwbackish bobbins--and it certainly could have done without token Gore vocal ‘Jezebel’. But other than that it’s just a damn fine record, possessed of the kind of unshowy high quality the Basildon band have seemingly actively opposed in the past.

Occasionally shrouded in sadness but with happiness always beating from its core, My Maudlin Career lays bare the sweet melancholy of love.

It stands alone as an album which is well-rounded--there's not much here which is lacking in quality, but much is lacking oomph.

It’s a fatal flaw that rears itself again and again as a bastardised version of blue-collar Americana is force-fed a mass-produced strain of bland modern rock throughout all eleven tracks.

There are moments of decently sassy pop-rock here, songs that you can just about see someone singing along to, hairbrush for microphone, in front of the mirror before a night out. But these moments are few and far between, and are exclusively the tracks featuring a vaguely vibrant BPM count.

Throughout, Sitek’s production dusts the stark techno basslines and percussion with ambient touches, and renders them human again, embellishing with swathes of guitars and treated synths, and allowing the vocals to come to the surface; untreated and clear as glass.

To that extent Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle seems like a return to older pastures--Callahan’s vocals again dominate, the production is more intimate, the songs themselves are again driven forward by the self-same rhythmic percussion and simple guitar riffs that became Callahan’s signature style over the last decade.

You can’t help but feel that all those who have ignored Metric in 2009 are simply missing out. Fantasies is proof that you can make big event music that doesn’t make you die on the inside.

Even a past-it Smashing Pumpkins ‘reunion’ with only Corgan remaining is more acceptable than this awful mimickery and that’s not a good place for a band to be.

Amongst the nine tracks are some of Black's best work but although the album's ambience shifts - from the darkness in 'Black Suit' and 'Long Song' to the whimsy in 'Volcano!' and the breezy 'Break The Angels'--the consistency does not.

It's a matter of personal taste, but Herren has largely shaken off these doubts with a rich and intriguing piece of work, the strengths of Everything She Touched... largely outweighing any reservations towards this sonically evocative album.

It’s a swaggering, pyschedelic road album, which we’ve generously been allowed to ride shotgun on. Buy the record, take the ride.

Overall, Spring Tides is the record Jeniferever have undoubtedly spent the past thirteen years of their existence building towards; an epochal moment that was well worth the wait, and can only whet the appetite in further anticipation of where their next journey of discovery will take them--in their own time, of course.

This record is one made with the artist’s full investment, every ounce of heart and soul poured into it visible for all to see.

Thrillingly improbable pop made by a grade-A maverick. Three cheers to that.

Even if the album loses its way with its final two tracks, you are left so exhausted by this stage that it almost comes with a sense of relief. By reinventing what they do best, Doves have fearlessly strutted back onto everyone's radar.

So far, Sov’s done well for playing to her strengths, but it’s too short an album for filler, and a song about being unable to play the guitar is pointless, however melodic and Northern Soul the cello-part happens to be.

As it stands, it’s an emphatically rich and addictive work. It does sound a whole lot like Dylan, yes. But it’s a whole lot of excellent itself, thanks very much.

Indeed, as their debut for Kills Rocks Stars, Now We Can See is an album fit to carry the torch in 2009 for one of the underground’s most fearlessly exciting labels.

Does Tentacles live up to those high standards? Nah, but it doesn’t embarrass itself, and that’s praise enough.

With Sun Gangs it’s as if they've finished the whole cake and the house burst, bricks and mortar exploding through the sky like fireworks.

Ultimately this odd couple have made for a very merry musical marriage, artists from seemingly disparate musical backgrounds proving themselves capable of collaborating on music that is worth listening to in its own right, as opposed to merely being a interesting genre-crossing exercise.

The album brims with quick 'from the gut' compositions that have been uncomplicatedly produced using simple instrumentation.

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.

Play Music is a good idea poorly executed.

Hey Everyone! manages to occupy a space all of its own--an achievement in itself.

It's Blitz reveals just how much the trio have grown and how well they know exactly the strange angular planet that their music inhabits.

PJ Harvey can be exhilarating, thrilling, or offer up a disturbingly hysterical variant on black humour, but she ain't fun. A Woman A Man Walked By is kinda, sorta fun.

Rules may not be the shape of what’s to come, but there’s also little offence to be found in its unobtrusive ways.

She may be about to extract herself from the heat-warped dazzle pop of Good Evening, which is probably a good idea considering the amount of opaque imitators crushing hard on her heels, but for now Gonzalez has created one of the most understated and beautifully murky pop records of 2009.

Who knows what Knife-man Olof Dreijer will bring back from his (literal) exploration of the Amazon, intended for an electronic opera about "The Origin of Species" (due September 2009); for now, this may be his sister’s most artistically satisfying album.

Pete Doherty has made a solo album with Stephen Street producing, and the result is some pretty good music.

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.

The narrative doesn't get in the way of the tunes, and the choruses are pretty versatile as anthems go.