R Plus Seven can be confusing, jam packed with samples and contrasting elements, but it's never overbearing. At the same time it is hard to put your finger on exactly what is appealing about it.

Push the Sky Away, then, is not the Bad Seeds at their zenith, but pretty bloody spectacular for a fifteenth (or seventeenth, or twentieth) album.

Imperial Wax Solvent is another remarkable batch of brilliantly deranged tales no whiskey-breathed war veteran across the bar could trump.

It's a record that can be enjoyed on a simple music level, but also explored as an interesting take on a particular historical period.

It is a record to indulge in, one melting synth note at a time.

Overall Where the Gods Are in Peace is another solid album in a ridiculously exceptional back catalogue.

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

While the ten songs that follow aren’t quite as arresting, there are still plenty of earworms to be found.

An entrancing, wonderfully surprising record which manages to feel both refreshing new and strangely timeless.

This is music that challenges and provokes.

Full of guest musicians helping to bring his songs to life, this latest record might be a little different to previous Hiss Golden Messenger outings, but it also might be his best.

Every note is considered and played with joy, care and a sense of craft. Together with the record's beautiful packaging, Cervantine feels like a personal historical document, speaking to and from the soul.

I Speak Because I Can is an album of elegance and brilliance. Marling has developed from her debut, and her voice has grown both physically and lyrically.

Overall, Still In A Dream: A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995 is an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in the genre. And while the omission of certain acts make it just fall short of being definitive, there's more than enough sonic gold here to compensate.

It's amazing, actually, that despite having been around for over a decade, through trauma and breakups and now their fifth record, Menomena still sound fresh and uncontrived and, well, endearingly innocent.

Literally, Potential comes from a place of empathy. So it’s not surprising that it’s best when it isolates all the feelings loaded into a single word or phrase.

For all that pomp and bombast, it does remain difficult to fully engage with a record like this, and Strange Keys is never an effortless listen. Nor is it an entirely effective record.

Bright Like Neon Love feels like the record The Human League could have made if they’d remade Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours in 1985. It’s like the soundtrack to the best party you’ve never been too, but always wish you had.

Sprinter manages to be defiant at its most minimal: she may not have made a fully realized masterpiece yet, but she’s staking-out the place between noise and silence where a masterpiece will be built.

Paramore feels far more human and honest than anything the band have committed to tape to date, and even at its most intense, the record feels intimate (or at least like a gig happening in the back corner of your mind).

With or without the four unreleased songs, this was always going to be an essential collection for any Belle & Sebastian obsessive, and the credits are a reminder there’s plenty more to come.

It’s kind of sloppy, but it also sounds pretty astonishing cranked up loud, and despite the mixed emotional messages I suspect it’ll find its calling this summer as the band’s most fun album.

This is an intellectual jaunt that reveals the beauty of pop music, both musically and lyrically.

There might be less going on than with the cut-and-paste stuff elsewhere, but ironically that makes these tracks seem like most fully formed moments here, the points of contrast which, as with all successful collages, make The Way Out work as a whole.

Even when 03/07 – 09/07 seems too cute or too pussy it’s still kind of heartening. Sincere environmentalism isn’t the sort of thing the ironic, narcissistic hipster hordes usually go for, so High Places must be doing something right, right?

This is Marling at her finest, but as she’s proved five times in a row, the best is always yet to come.

Meet the Humans is the most concise and immediate record Mason has released in over a decade.

Jakes and the band have so much inherent chemistry the flaws almost don't matter: the likes of 'Diamond Days' and 'Jaws of Hell' temporarily make the little misfires an afterthought.