In all Too Old To Die Young could be listened to in 20 years and it wouldn’t sound a day older, but it is unlikely to warrant interest past the first weeks of purchase.

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.

While not all of King’s attempts to focus her talent into ‘proper songs’ come off, when she nails it, we can’t help but agree with Dave Grohl that she’s one of the greatest guitarists in the world.

These Are The Good Times People is a mere shadow of its ‘90s counterpart that struggles to retain any of the President’s early charm.

This is a fascinating record that enjoys toying with musical boundaries and unnerving the listener.

Those aforementioned past tense references are telling, because that’s exactly where Go Away White sounds as if it belongs: in the past.

Polished production and an ironing out of the music’s creases creates a less-relaxed feel than we’re used to hearing, but there’s also a sense of warmth which was largely missing from the previous Jicks-aided album, "Pig Lib."

Its layers upon layers of ideas and electronic noise require a level of repeat digestion far, far removed from the instant gratification and heart-on-sleeve emotions dominating the musical landscape. And that’s never a bad thing when done with the innate skill and passion for progression heard here.

It’s a frustrated listen, thanks to unrealised ideas and a potential that you sense has yet to fully unlocked, but there are enough good songs and great moments studded amongst the mire to make Red, Yellow and Blue both a worthwhile purchase to cherry-pick the best from as well as an indicator of good things to come from the Canadian trio.

It’s just brilliant.

The Hamilton, Canada-based songstress has creamed together her best set yet. In Asking For Flowers, Edwards is uncompromising, but sombre.

So there is a lot to love within this album. Its knowing winks to rock’s early ‘70s excesses and sage-like nods to the soulful marriage of rock and rhythm and blues exemplified by Sly and Curtis mean that we’re comforted rather than challenged.

Seventh Tree, though in some respects an organic redrafting of the autoerotic Goldfrapp template, picks up where Supernature left off in its setting of the controls for the heart of the mainstream, and misses badly the slickly subversive tone that lifted the band from the realms of coffee table mediocrity.

Beach House have created as profound an invocation of the sacred and the sentimental as you’re ever likely to hear.

Its minimal drum patterns and and playful touches speak of a deceptive lightness of touch, but four albums in and The Raveonettes are making plain they know what it is to have lusted and lost, and therein lies the key to unlocking Lust Lust Lust’s poignant pleasures.

While the quality and beauty of The Golden Age can stand confidently beside those two classics ["Everclear & "Mercury"], it stands alone as another distinct chapter in the life of this band, precious to those who know them.

It’s the crafting of timeless, crest-fallen melodies infused with gripping characterisations that elevates Darnielle into the upper-crust of musical virtuosity. And that’s exactly where Heretic Pride leaves him: perched atop the pile of today’s try-hardy singer/songwriters.

This album is simply wondrous.

There are times on Let the Blind…, when the music around Cox veers subtly in the right direction, where you can hear the grub’s surprise as he wakes up with Great Admiral wings, ugly white noise turning psychedelic.

Grand Archives offers an impressively alternative take on American indie; blending a number of interesting influences to create a fresh and airy project.

It is ceaselessly pretty, breezy and undemanding (in the best possible way), boding extremely well for future material.

Apes aren’t about to crack that ‘til now ignorant mainstream with this fourth offering, but established acolytes and curious newcomers will find much indeed to be super-stoked about.

Heady swirl, indeed: much of Come Into My House unfolds with all the knacker-shrivelling underwhelmingness of a tepid bath.

For sure, dollops of Franz, Blur and Supergrass have been whisked into this epileptic mix of guttural, quick-witted punk-pop but Little Death is no pre-packaged ready-bake; it’s an improvised, home-cooked palate-whetter, coated in rhythm and sprinkled with bite.

Wired with a sense of opportunity, these little Caesars continue to play mother's favourite rather than the ostracised gurning recluses they initially cast themselves as.

Made In The Dark must rank as something of a missed opportunity, but as a bigger, bolder (if overlong) follow-up to a deservedly popular second album, they’ve succeeded admirably.

Lucky aims high but once again falls short.

While District Line is by no means a classic, it’s a decent addition to the catalogue of a man who could’ve lived out the rest of his days without lifting another finger

Stylistically there is a different kind of freedom (there is even a nod to garage rock on ‘The Queen Of All Returns’) that seems less about affectation or indulgence and more about adhering to the spirit of each individual song, making for harder-fought but longer lasting rewards.

The thing is, Mogis’ ‘Americana’ treatment of Lavender Bridge’s core material all too often saturates each song, soaking though to the core of Hynes’ material and threatening to set in to rot.

While Circular Sounds isn’t quite the modern sound of the American west coast, it feels very much like the classic sound of California: a sound left blissfully alone by the stresses and rigours of a modernity forever on the move.

Look beneath the surface sheen, then, and you'll see gratefully receive This Gift as the best, most complete, Sons And Daughters long-player to date.

For the most part, this is the heaviest record that they’ve recorded and the most far-out as well.

The production throughout Vampire Weekend is perfect, holding all the various threads together as a coherent whole that manages to sound simple without ever being underwhelming.

Women As Lovers is proof positive that if navel gazing was an extreme sport, Xiu Xiu would be its leading practitioners, wielding an earnest approach which, while occasionally proving scary and even moving, borders heavy-handedness and rapidly becomes oppressive.

An album whose deep felt emotion and effortless execution proves that there’s nothing like a little trial and tribulation to get the artistic synapses firing.

Hey Venus! is the most concise album in the band's history.

This is a wonderfully zealous experience, bristling with realised potential and fulfilled ambition.

Jukebox is an unsurprising album. It sounds exactly how you'd expect–-classic, but not overly well known, songs, like Dylan's 'I Believe In You,' squeezed by the Cat Power sound into tracks that sound like they could feature on "The Greatest."

It never ultimately transports you into his head or heart. All of which doesn’t stop Oracular Spectacular from being a blissful 40 minutes of high-end stereophonic joy, but it does severely hamper the listener from imbuing their own emotions back into it.

The Evening Descends isn’t actually a concept album (at least, I can’t find any hard evidence saying it is), but the mixture of overblown seriousness and misfiring silliness, cut with a bludgeoning lack of subtlety and some well-worn-out running themes, mean it sure as hell sounds like it would’ve been if it’d been given half a chance.

Lyrically, things grate from the off, with cringe-worthy and rudimentary rhyming couplets being Peñate’s irritating stock in trade. By the end, everything has blended into a graceless, jaunty melange of up-down guitar strokes, bellowed vocals and mid-tempo skanks.

What The Portrait Is Finished… evokes is a sense just like that of its inventive title: an ultimately unsatisfying portrait that fails to capture beauty, even though it's clear that true beauty is there to be captured.

Yet even for all the familiarity to be found within its looping guitars and drums, I’ll Be Lightning also announces the arrival of a promising voice.

Save the odd occasion where Merritt opts for smirking affect over emotional resonance, it all adds up to an excellent addition to an already distinguished back catalogue.

Essentially, Made Of Bricks is comprised of a lot of below-par b-sides, three pretty special tracks and then bunch of 'nice tries'...but don't expect anyone to be whistling them in three months' time.

A comparatively sterile shadow of its predecessor.

All in all, it’s the usual captivating chaos.

If you were there and want an audio-postcard of the night when noise and flashing lights broke your brain then add four to the given mark. Otherwise this is like pretty much every live album: pointless and skippable.

Big Doe Rehab is another valuable insight into the skewed world of Ghostface away from Wu’s taming Shaolin stylings.

Shelter from the Ash is another masterpiece.

Trouble is, B-sides have never exactly been Albarn’s strong suit, thanks mainly to his incurable dilettantism and aforementioned onanistic tendencies.

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

It’s a frighteningly powerful album that will be adored by open-minded newcomers and "Miss Machine" converts alike.

Patchy, perhaps, but there's plenty over the course of American Gangster to suggest that, even if sullied by a lack of prolificacy, at least the Brooklyn beatnik is keeping the right company again.

Unbalanced and ill-executed at times, Hvarf-Heim is a supplementary release.

What gives this album more depth is the focus, the rolling symmetry and cinema.

At times the levels of raciness reach Spinal Tap levels of hilarity, as on 'Ooh Ooh Baby's' slinky Glitter Band stomp.

Teenager is consistently rewarding, then; what it lacks though is bite.

Sadly, there’s little to add to that post-Bracket mixtape here; aside from the single and 'UnBiloTitled'--a track that first appeared on internet forums years ago. Sedated by Street's production, the band lose the wild, rubbish quality that Mick Jones' incompetence presented them with just as they're learning how to write focused songs.

It’s a well-rounded album that defies the notion of a man being allowed to rock himself to sleep on the porch of rock’s sappy dotage.

Black Dice still belong in the DIY basement space but with Load Blown they’ve made their most accessible album yet.

It's not that bad an album--it's executed with all the gumption you'd expect from the SOAD mainman--but if you've heard any of the band's previous output you just don't need this in your collection.

It’s no laugh-a-minute ride, but there’s a beauty in Raposa’s misery that’ll appeal to acolytes of Will Oldham and his aforementioned collaborators alike.

Questions aside, it sounds badass; dope, even, like any good hip-hop record should.

Preferring patience and restraint over explosive blasts of atmospheric wailing, iLiKETRAiNS slowly build up these songs to climax, careful not to move to quickly to alter the mood that this entire collection expels.

But most of all, these songs really blow, man. Way to top-load it with three half-decent tracks at the start.

After an auspicious introduction Oblivion With Bells has disappointingly descended into an irreconcilable docile abyss.

Absolutely without spark and wholly forgettable.

Not once does Overpowered really drag its feet, but it never truly impacts with the might one could possibly expect from an artist with such a fine pedigree.

Despite being the unmistakable sound of Beirut, this is not the "Orkestar" extension so widely expected. Rather than congesting the listener with frantic Eastern European folk shanties, a poignant nobility and romantic notion of contemporary France permeates its way into your conscience with unbridled zeal.

As with so many of rock's finer moments, the beauty’s in the overreach, and while newcomers to Krug’s idiosyncratic style may find it easier to warm to the more accessible leanings of the Wolf Parade record, for everyone else, this is essential stuff.

Instrumentally, subtle use of synths, keyboards and strings now embellish the sharp arrangements and add a new, more mature, depth to the bands sound.

Ultimately the Swede’s absorption into his own mind gives him the throat of a man who sounds in control. This control is one of the things that make Kortedala Lekman’s most assured, comfortable record yet.

Hera Ma Nono still possesses an often awkward transition between the jarring Kenyan and North American influences, but this also essentially provides Extra Golden with their character.

There are few who could delve into such weighty issues without succumbing to empty rhetoric, but it's testament to Wyatt's unpretentious approach that he pulls off the trick while retaining a lightness of touch that makes Comicopera such a consistent pleasure to listen to.

The case for ...Carbon Clouds as a fine collection of inventive indie songs enthusiastically rendered is undeniable, but if somehow you’re hankering after more than that, well...you get the picture.

We Are The Pipettes is possibly the only pure-pop record you need own this year.

I have finally arrived at the conclusion that this record somehow actually works. Quite well in fact, so much so that by the time 'Here Comes The Day' reaches its glittering, Broadway-themed conclusion, one almost forgets whose name is on the front cover.

Magic is a strong record, riddled with sad emotion yet a noble intent to carry on.

It's an album sufficiently laced with despair to render the not-committed listener uncomfortable; delve deeper, though, to where the darkness makes way for an eerie underworld glow, and the record's beauty emerges.

With its bones on show and chest wide open, White Chalk may not be the greatest album of all time, it may not be to everyone's tastes, and it may not even be Polly’s finest. But let it and it'll haunt you.

Foo Fighters are now flabby, creaky, and worst of all past it.

What really stands out is how …Dog literally hits the ground running from its opener, 'Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car,' cutting a clear slice from the organic and distinctive junkyard percussion and deep-fried blues stomps of Tom Waits.

On fifth album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon the cast expands again to include erstwhile Strokes guitarists and movie stars, and at points you’re left pining for the eccentric acoustic phrasings of yore.

Again Athlete have purported a musical equivalent to a blank stare. It is there, it may intend to disperse meaning, but in the end it does nothing much, if anything at all. Blah, indeed.

In Our Bedroom After The War feels like the conclusion of a journey towards the summit of mount indie pleasance.

The whole of In Our Nature benefits from the air and space around the songs. Rather than attempting to embellish his new album in an attempt to garner a wider audience, Gonzalez keeps to minimal pleasures that make his work an unfussy yet sophisticated joy.

With everything from the classic symphonic sounds of brass and strings to the creative dimensions of electronic sampling, synths and the violinophone, Mum certainly are experimental. The ambitious nature of which could be too much for some people though.

Sure, Two Gallants might take a good four tracks to get going, but the five that follow are outstanding--alive, almost.

All things considered, this is a record of high quality, and a vehicle for a storyteller of uncommon faculty.

It’s a beguiling mixture of the unknown and well established, and as a cohesive whole it demands your utmost attention for the duration.

Sadly, for all the passion and insight of his lyrical aspersions here, a lot of the messages are left a tad subdued by the conveyor belt plod orchestration.

The aforementioned 'The King' is a string-laden lament on changing times and love in their small pocket of the world, and it's better than most of the songs that precede it. But it’s not enough to pull Once Upon A Time In The West out of it’s own lumpen mediocrity.

It caps it all off to be as blunt, open and insightful as you would expect from someone you're now on first name terms with.

Not since Mansun's "Six" have I heard an album twist its songs into a musical Lombard Street--and I can already picture the audience screaming its approval in the break--before a wall of static and synthesizers takes us home. And home is a little nicer place to be after taking a ride on Spirit If...

Similarities in vocals will mean that Lazy Shins Comparisons are inevitable, but when Rogue Wave break out of the confines of indie-by-association they prove they are a fine band indeed.