Having always been celebrated for his subtle wit and labyrinthine approach to pop writing, he continues to weave genius from his own mental dictionary.

This album isn’t for you if you like your music handed to you on a plate. It’s not for you if you want constant twists and turns. It is for you if you’re seeking a suite of songs to immerse, and ultimately to lose yourself in.

Dark Young Hearts shines with talent, pop tunes with those secret corners you think were put there just for you to spot. Lyrical flaws aside, it's an indelible mark of grandeur on our decaying decade.

The sisters show an ability to pull different sounds and shapes together to make something extremely enchanting and really very lovely.

Accelerator's savage vitality hasn't diminished one iota in the intervening decade-and-a-half: quite what point it's ultimately trying to make remains typically elusive, but you get the sense that it's somehow been proved right in the long-run.

The songs from St. Vincent that you’ll return to umpteen times are front-loaded into its first 23 minutes.

There’s genuine replay value here, even if the recording of it took about half as long as the convoluted fictional biography (complete with Photoshopped fake album covers) in the liner notes.

If debut In The Court Of The Wrestling Let's was the giddy spin of a colour wheel, then Nursing Home feels ever so slightly more unified in tone and shade, and, if not exactly refined, than certainly a little tighter and more focused in its abandon.

Make your way past the defensive drone it puts up and you will be rewarded with warm, welcoming fuzz.

It's an album heaving with ideas, but just coherent enough to stick together as one piece of work.

Though Hiss Spun probably won't end up as the best of her career, it may well be Wolfe's best so far.

So rather than the fanciful frippery it could so easily have been, The Moths Are Real is instead a fitting document of real life in all its mixed-up glory.

Maximum Balloon really about a great producer/songwriter exhibiting his considerable talents free from the pressure and expectation of his day job.

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

This is the organic culmination of our protagonist’s most singular travels, and he’s reached a most puzzling bliss.

It is unmistakeably A Place To Bury Strangers and they're giving us what we want. The only additional complaint is that there's not enough of it.

This ultimately is Untogether’s crowning victory: despite being mapped by its lack of psychological surroundings, this firmly inward-looking record transports you head-first to Blue Hawaii’s special place, a serene vista where alien syllabic whimsy feels genuinely spiritual, and fuck-giving is most strictly forbidden.

There are few traces of the musician Cooke has presented himself as previously, but if this is how he wants to strike out on his own, the comparisons to his other bands should be incredibly short lived.

This is a hard, dark, inventive record that strongly suggests that give or take an imaginary sister and some fiddles, Jack White is pretty much the same boy we've always known.

The most sophisicated, deliciously out of step pop album of 2004.

The best love songs are the ones that make you want to dance and cry all at once; and Bad Love has them in spades.

Skits and the odd miss accepted, and the Anonymous Nobody… is a grand achievement. Regardless of whether their next project requires outsourced funding or not, De La Soul fans worldwide will just be happy if the group can keep up these standards while never forgoing their wayfaring creativity.

These songs rest quite naturally between the forlorn, heartbroken ballads, making this an album of exceptional and understated maturity and beauty. Sadness has rarely felt this good.

The queasy electronic work on Punk Drunk and Trembling, though, feels fresh, like the breaking of new ground, and you can say the same for ‘Maze’, with Tom Fleming’s baritone floating over an undulating bed of synths.

This is all Broken Boy Soldiers was ever meant to be: an off-the-cuff collaboration between two friends and one which, despite its imperfections, is an effort worthy of applause.

Although the themes in the album vary hugely--uncertainty, fear, hope, regret--the quality and confidence of the music is consistent.

It's predominantly a reflection, a look at things moving slowly and a stirring listen.

The 'odds and ends' packaged at the end of disc one feel like Jay Farrar’s discarded solo off-cuts, although disc two’s collection of demos is an intriguing listen; the ten tracks from the Not Forever, Just For Now tapes being what persuaded Rockville (then Giant) to sign them in the first place.