Crack-Up is perhaps Fleet Foxes' most epic and inventive record yet.

There are a lot of sweeping strings throughout ...and the Pioneer Saboteurs, but don't come along expecting a smooth ride. Although he might look and occasionally sound like Richard Hawley's younger, scruffier brother, Hinson shares little of the Brit's romance here.

The positivity is never over the top, nor does the pure sincerity exhibited throughout ever feel excessively earnest. It’s this which sets this band apart from their indie-pop contemporaries, and makes Try To Be Hopeful a record which should be revered as a truly important piece of work.

Produced differently, A Deeper Understanding could be really startling stuff; as it is, it feels like The War on Drugs have made an agreeable, fan-pleasing album to escape into and hide in, not to a record to take on the world--but perhaps that’s not such a bad thing in 2017.

The record isn't perfect either, though it's enjoyable in places.

While New View may be musically somewhat muted, sonically a touch predictable and backward-looking, Friedberger still crafts utterly charming songs with brilliantly observed moments and a real sense of life’s great adventure.

With Pastoral Bernholz, excavates beneath the superficial lush turf of England’s green and pleasant land to reveal an angry mix of ancient and contemporary pus-filled sores.

It is, all in all, a pretty solid front half of a Spiritualized album that sort of transmits intermittently in the middle and then totally falls on its arse for the last three tracks.

Whether or not it is as defining a release as OK Cowboy even feels somewhat incidental in the end, as Flashmob is easily the most enjoyable, addictive, air-keyboard-inducing electronic record that the year is likely to produce.

Villains isn’t a terrible record, but it’s not a fantastic record either, and that’s perhaps the least kind thing that could be said about new material from a band which we’ve come to expect a lot from.

The opening half of 'Penance...' alone blows every so-called rock act polluting our airwaves clean away, such is the savage malevolence that resonates within every single syllable that spouts from Joe Cardamone's mouthful of poison.

Perhaps Nightmare Ending would have been a more interesting record if Cooper had let himself off the leash rather more and explored ‘flawed’ ideas and sounds more purposefully.

Kveikur is as melodic and, in places, as fragile as anything the band have released before.

If there is one thing in this world that can elevate even the weakest of lyrics from the trough of personal diary hell, it’s a catchy melody. Thankfully this record overflows with them.

The Age of Adz is not an unqualified success; occasionally it does feel like a little too much, and until the dust has settled it is difficult to say where it will sit in his discography as a whole.

Lyrically, it's a broad, emotionally-led investigation into 'the state of things'. By no means, however, is it bogged down by the precise or the singular or the definitive. Within its lyrical muddlings, we might be able to tease of a forecast of things to come, or it might just be fooling us with a potent swirling of punchy psychedelic rock.

The album's brevity is its strength here: much longer, and you risk burning out or blunting the intensity of the riffage. Any shorter, and it risks leaving you unsated. As it is, The Blind Hole is just right.

Master is a record of real and rare magnificence.

From Scotland with Love stands testimony to the increasing genius of Anderson and his craft.

By playing it straight and singing it even straighter, he's created an intensely listenable and emotional album that's impossible not to relate to.

Oneohtrix Point Never has gone further than most, especially with Replica, in proving that our heritage doesn't always need to be "rehashed" to be replicated with real style.

All in all Explosions In the Sky still retain their vitality in strong melody and melodramatic disposition, it’s just at times you wish they were a little more daring.

If All I Was Was Black contains performances as powerful as any she has given.

Ty Segall and White Fence haven't reinvented themselves, nor have they revolutionised garage rock, but Hair stands as a welcome reminder of how enjoyable guitar and drum music can be both to play and to hear.

It’s a clever and often highly entertaining album with inbuilt limitations, but if you buy one record this year whose title is possibly a reference to Bumblebee Man from The Simpsons, it should probably be this one.

Brutal, violent and disturbing though it may be, its surreal hybrid of human and simulation has some strange beauty to it.

The best way to approach this band is to stop comparing them to the usual reference points--instead, it's far more rewarding to accept Offend Maggie as a land of its own making, something to be indulged, explored and, finally, cherished.

At its best Sound & Color is very strong indeed.... Elsewhere it can be a little business-as-usual.