Everything about Jessica Rabbit is visceral--full-force drum slams, the slick claps, Miller’s steely slabs of guitar, lyrics replete with bombs, knives, and natural disasters.

Far from falling under the weight of either expectation or ambition, {awayland} is a far more magnificent progression from Jackal than any of us could have hoped for.

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.

Everything sounds fresh, new and different, but every song is still recognisably Wilco; it just sounds like Wilco at their best.

You would have to search far and wide to find a transformation in an already great band that works as well as this. The key to it all is the vulnerability that MJ is now willing to put on display, giving the newfound musical incisiveness the emotional fuel it needs to really fly. If this isn’t one of the albums of the year then we must be in for something special.

The emotional universality of the debut has certainly carried through to Blisters in the Pit of My Heart.

It's the best representation yet of the sheer force of the band live, a perfect half hour snapshot of the energy and aggression they've never properly captured on tape.

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.

Do yourself a favour and eschew fashion for something with real substance: Outside Closer is an album of the year, fact.

So euphoric are the multiple highlights here that one can overlook the occasional dalliance with silliness.

Where YFIIP meticulously arranged the collective of instrumentation for precision, like a ballet, this self-titled album throws everything into a blender, almost completely overwhelming the pretty melodies underneath - but not quite.

12 immaculately crafted slabs of grandiose sound.

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

Possibly a little early to be wheeling out 'album of the year'-type assertions, but with The English Riviera Mount has set the bar nice and high.

An adrenaline-fueled head-rush of precision-perfect pop tunes about modern life.

One of the great indie-rock releases of the year. ... The new songs are what really impress, glowing with a sparky freshness few saw coming.

Whatever the plan was, Both Directions at Once isn’t just a treat for the hardcore, either in terms of Coltrane or jazz more broadly.

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.

It’s the sound of forbidden affairs, illicit sex with strangers in bars, drunken confessions, of real life. And it feels fantastic.

Whatever the case, 50 Words...demands to be listened to as a whole.

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.

Whilst it would be easy to say that the 136 tracks across five CDs make this boxset a purchase for completists and enthusiasts only, to do so would be reductive.

M. Ward turns in a star-studded set that feels at once a logical progression from 2006’s "Post-War" and a step closer to that all-out classic his preceding suggests; an assimilation and appropriation of American blues, gospel, country and folk as lovingly, winningly relayed as we’ve come to expect from the Portland-based troubadour.

Confident Music For Confident People is exactly what it says on the tin. It's also the most unashamedly addictive record you'll hear all year.

A great starting place if you don’t know anything about library music as the album is chocked full of bangers. Wall-to-wall bangers! It gives you a launch pad to go and geek out over musicians and labels, each being a rabbit hole well worth going down. The abundance of heavy hitters is remarkable.

Far more accessible than anything the act have produced in recent years, Liars shifts perceptions in the way most have come to expect, but with the dense conceptual themes and boundaries limited it is as if they have met most listeners halfway only to lure them back into their own sordid comfort zone, littered with the contents of a fifteen-year-old's bedroom.

Intuit is, unfortunately, probably not a high profile enough release to be mentioned in the end-of-year lists nearly as frequently as any of the aforementioned albums. But it’s easily the equal of any of those releases, in terms of its breadth of vision and depth of emotion, and it really establishing Knopf as a supremely talented and truly heartfelt songwriter.

A brilliant and riveting album.