This is a modern masterpiece, it's as simple as that.

It’s the work of a confident, mature songwriter with a clear and distinct voice.

While getting the most out of this work takes a couple listens with at least one (simultaneous) read through with all your concentration, it’s worth every second and every bit of energy.

Even with that super high-gloss finish, it's hard to dispute the depth of songwriting talent throughout American Slang, and as a summer rock album, it's (quite literally) nigh on faultless.

The OOZ creates a brutalist and beautiful terrain, one that we can wander vicariously through King Krule; it’s nothing short of a masterpiece.

Setting out its tracklisting in almost chronological order of release makes Another Splash Of Colour an even more engaging listen.

The result is 7, a record that gets closer to the band's self-imposed boundaries than they ever have before without really threatening to break them down.

He trusts in the strength of his lived-in arrangements and, on another album of beautifully detailed folk songs, he’s absolutely right to do so.

Dye It Blonde has unexpectedly crept into contention for being my favourite record of 2011 so far.

Bursting with new inspiration and direction, After the Party is the triumphant sound of a songwriting duo reaping the rewards of those sacrifices, a group of friends on an unstoppable streak of home runs.

It's feverish, unbalanced, disturbing, and for the most part captivating.

Royal Albert Hall is bursting at the seams with superb reinterpretations of some real classics.

This is a tremendously accomplished piece of work, but one lacking a little of the swagger of previous outings. Give it the time it deserves.

It's not a completely successful experiment, but Le Noise is certainly an important moment in Neil Young's ongoing story.

As with many dance LPs, Swisher is slightly on the long side--65 minutes is more than enough time to get your groove on. But the album never ends up sounding repetitive, the emotions behind the beats don’t allow it to.

It’s unpredictable, ridiculously clever, catchy as hell and as perfect a pop album as you’re ever likely to hear.

Whatever angle you examine it from, Lucky Shiner is an impressive statement, especially for a debut, and when Gold Panda lets the house beat sink into the background and experiments a little more with space and structure the results are gorgeous.

The guitars and brass survive, but everything else is fresh.

It's the sound of a band completely at ease with themselves despite hostile surroundings, where music becomes both a document of life and a means to ease away from its greatest challenges for a little while.

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.

A pleasantly surprising album then that will hopefully earn its creator his fair share of deserved recognition.

Though far from flawless, removed from any brouhaha Street Horrrsing sees Fuck Buttons carve their own niche and not only produce a debut record that will claw at any prejudices over its 40-minute span but show up their drone brethren as too often resiliently stuck in the mud.

Believers isn't a rousing album. Its allure is slow-burning, almost unnoticeable.

An album that wouldn't be out of place if it had come out 30 years ago.

Pitched somewhere between physical pleasure and mental torture, is Oshin, dream-weaving, benevolent, sadistic puppet masters Diiv playing havoc with your sense of contentedness.

It’s a five-tracker with bite, with venom; it’s a reminder that while de la Rocha might age like the rest of us, the fires in his belly haven’t come close to being doused by mundane revivals of his most famous group’s mosh-happy hits.

It's idea after idea after idea, and though TVOTR comparisons are as inevitable as they are fair, billing BLK JKS as the Brooklynite's more giddy cousins is perhaps a little off the mark: better to say both bands tap into the same ultra-distinct vein of murky sonic magic.

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.

The musicians on the album--eight in total including Vic--seesaw between country, folk and indulgent Seventies rock, never reinventing wheels but generally giving the lyrical matter its appropriate platform.

There's a completely unique blend of textures and a desire for musical experimentation running through the bloodstream of The Golden Age of Apocalypse, and it would be a great shame to see that overlooked.

This persistent juxtaposition of dynamics makes for a particularly striking, if challenging, listen.

One or two missteps aside, this is exactly what 9Bach do with Tincian--creating an ambiguous mood piece from fragments of traditional Welsh music and contemporary tension.

Primitive and Deadly is the latest in a recent suite of triumphs- by this point Earth are masters of their game, making music that’s bigger and more powerful than anything mere mortals should be able to create.

Still is Thompson through and through.

All Tense Now Lax, then, is brilliant precisely because of the way it flits disconcertingly between the two extremes presented in its title, between the constant and unrestrained tension of technological progress and the contrasting looseness of our day to day existence alongside it.

Little Fictions, their seventh, is, reliably, a very good Elbow album.

This attempt to marry together two equally confrontational (in their own distinct ways) musical forms reaps real rewards, and undoubtedly makes Wake in Fright a more consistently provocative record than the duo’s debut.

This record is a testament to its creators’ endurance. It has also resulted in an absolute creative peak.

Future Ruins progresses at a pleasing rate, though it never really pushes beyond its genre confines. Every track here is solid-to-good-to-occasionally-great with a friendly, familiar vibe of a bygone nature without ever really presenting anything new or challenging.

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.

While Dylan fans surely miss his original tunes, this honest, affecting tribute to a bygone era of music is a treat in itself.

So yes, these are intimate lyrics and stories told first person for the first time--and not just intimate, but vulnerable, self knowing, open and loving. And definitely not embarrassing.

Don't like it? Well Cee-Lo has two words for you.

Despite perhaps being a little too tasteful to truly excite, Big Black Coat is an accomplished, soulful effort that will reward casual listeners and audiophiles alike.

Nothing Is Wrong would have been a better record had that time been spent eking the emotion out of their own lives, rather than their record collections.

Take the receipt and lose it--you won’t be returning this record anytime soon.

Despite its abrasiveness, You’re Nothing is resolutely conservative in its insular aim of pleasing the only audience that matters: Iceage themselves.

There is a really great album rattling around in here and Howard's invention and ambition should be celebrated as such, it's just not quite at the level it could be.

Music doesn't always need to be about preaching, grand-slam bombastic leanings or pushing the envelope forward – that's a fallacy. Sometimes it can just be sonically gorgeous, layered and pleasing to your hearing and thought - just as Marissa Nadler ends up being.

Spoon are equally as enjoyable, and perhaps that bit more intriguing, when they are a little bit harder to fathom. Plus, to put it simply, there ain't a duff track to be found here.

Despite his vocal inflexions bearing more than a passing resemblance to those of the great man, he is a formidable artist in his own right with an ever-expanding canon of powerful and affecting songs. Not everything works quite as well.

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

Bruner/Thundercat has tamed (to some extent at least) his scope and ambition through his various influences and thoughts to make his third full-length album a joyful, crazy, substance-fuelled epic in an area where most of his contemporaries would take themselves endlessly seriously. Here, Bruner has harnessed all that into maybe his best record yet.

The Snake for the first time is a journey riddled with surprise--that almost nothing can be nailed down or predicted even after the seven-minutes-thirty of closer of 'My Heart' is pure 'lucky dip' stuff. Each time you dip in, you seem to come out with an even bigger handful of sweetness.

Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, can simultaneously be one of the most delicate, affecting albums of the year, and, yet, at the same time have such a strange, menacing name.

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 a piece of masterful craftsmanship tucked snugly into the singer-songwriter tradition, filled with country-soul ballads and grungy laments driven by jangly guitars, family band harmonies, rumbling pianos and cinematic string passages that should appeal broadly to fans of the genre without alienating his own die-hards.

Spiderwebbed is dreamy, it's beautiful and it's one of 2012's finest debut albums without question.

Hayman has given us a beautifully crafted love-letter to the real humanity that is the soul and centre of socialism, both sad and sweet, melancholy and inspiring--a collection of songs that belong to everyone and cement Hayman’s place as a nationalised treasure.

It’s what Bright Eyes coulda done if he put the songs off I’m Wide Awake onto the canvas of Digital Ash.

Hookworms never come across as arrogant, showy or self-indulgent. They have managed to follow a logical musical progression which will undoubtedly blow many minds.

It might be churlish to suggest that First Aid Kit introduce some rougher edges or explore some other musical avenues, when they’ve nailed what they do so exquisitely. However, over time they’ll have to if they're serious about taking the roads their heroes have travelled.

If Pop Levi’s intention was to create an ornate pop star persona, then he’s definitely succeeded. However, his songwriting skills leave a lot to be desired.

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.

Whereas previous Oneida albums could be criticised for being inconsistent and almost too art-rock for their own good, this sounds both absolutely complete and wonderfully concise.

Having set high standards for two-and-a-half decades, Modern Nature serves as another prized addition to The Charlatans' already wealthy canon.

If the elitist few who hold Regina almost too close to their bosom can get past the shiny façade of the first few tracks, they'll find a whole new Regina to love.

Painful as they may be, Crutchfield's lyrics are perfect all over her fourth album. Instantaneously direct, but not without using imagery that is both recognisable and relatable.

Everything In Between is undoubtedly a step onward from its predecessors--it's more developed in every way, though admittedly lacks a little of the sheer raw bite that made Weirdo Rippers in particular so exhilarating.

Nine of the 13 tracks go over the five minute mark, and despite the combined fertility of Arcade Fire and producer James Murphy’s creative minds, very few tracks justify their running times.

Her abstract notion seems to unfold halfway through opener ‘Spells’, as she starts engaging in a form of scat singing, amid wispy solos and a dreamy chorus.

IRM is an album that refuses to cast Gainsbourg as the chanteuse some would like to see her as, and her willingness to gamble with her persona and musical style is laudable. However, this risk-taking attitude results in an inconsistent jumble of ideas that ends up being much less of a peek inside what it is to be human than the title might suggest.

A good deal of the success of C'mon is down to its solid foundations – its quality song-writing and deft sequencing.

'Warmer Corners' is a timely reminder that the art of songwriting hasn't died - it just goes away and hibernates in the Adelaide Hills every so often.

It's a stunning collection of the most forward thinking dance and electronica I've heard all year.

There’s a marked step forward in the deceptive depth of Sun Coming Down, and Ought perhaps traded in some of their debut longplayer’s immediacy in getting it, but their wit and emotional complexity remain stronger than ever.

These songs don't linger too long, and the album--with its 36-minute runtime--feels efficient and complete.

A number of songs suggest brilliance before stumbling rather into the bland.

The record is certainly the best distillation to date of a band whose careening fun places equal value on Radiohead at their most brow-furrowed and novelty chart hits without any trace of preening post-irony.

At its best Director's Cut is a dazzling affirmation of Bush's genius as songwriter, performer and producer. Maybe one day we'll take her for granted again. But not today.

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.

Mr M is an honest but tough old ride.

It's so different from the majority of his previous output that it might take some time to truly get to grips with. The coherence of the whole record is a joy.

Breaking Kayfabe is a record that demands and deserves undivided attention, its creator fashioning a brain-searing patchwork of ragged rap, electronic flourishes and truncated rhythms.

Chardiet’s electronic manipulations are subtler and more thought out than those of many of her peers. This, ultimately, means that Bestial Burden, like Abandon before it, deserves to be considered as near the top of its class.

Grid of Points is the sound of what’s left after the winds have subsided. It’s astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly, painfully real.

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 is an impressive work but sans context, it largely will pass a casual listener by as merely a moody and atmospheric soundtrack without much for them to sink their teeth into.

Warp & Weft is a welcome return from Veirs and proves the chemistry between her and her producer husband Tucket Martine. The instrumentation, songwriting and melody-making effortlessly comes together thanks to the clever layering and lovingly crafted placement of each and every sound.

Here there can be no snobbish derision and calls of 'selling out' or playing to the average man; in creating an album showcasing the very best of the band’s talents they have created one so perfectly fit for, as Scott so vividly puts, “the soft, soft static” of popular radio.

These songs are timeless. These songs are addictive. These songs are great. Why can't every album be like this?

Endless Falls is the most complete version of Morgan's vision for Loscil to date. It's an album that's easy to get lost in after a few cursory wanders into the ether, where the amalgamation of barely-musical sounds sucks you in and seems to produce something different every time.

You’re listening to Jordan grow on Lush at the same time as you’re wondering how much room she’s left herself to develop creatively; she’s already sounding polished and bracingly mature.

There’s no denying that the band has released a fully coherent statement.

Beyond Hütz’s maniacal wail lies a bed of musicianship so textured, so emotionally captivating, it entraps you with the alluring gaze of an Eastern-block temptress under a blanket of silky unrestrained rhythm.

Are The Roaring Night is by no means a perfect record, and there are minor flaws to stand alongside the frequent moments of brilliance, but what cannot be questioned is how skilled they are at shaping layers of sound to form an enveloping whole, with each overlapping texture or shifting tempo plunging the listener further and further into the darkness.

From the very start, The Libertines is the sound of the band at its most muzzled; paralysed by poor production, underdeveloped songs and private lives that have become more sensational and noteworthy than the music.