Yet even for all the familiarity to be found within its looping guitars and drums, I’ll Be Lightning also announces the arrival of a promising voice.

A remarkable record that simply demands your attention.

In Cascade the loop is repeated fairly cleanly, although the piano is drenched in a magical, woozy and slightly unsettling echo; while it is certainly quite relaxing and takes you on a wonderful eleven minute journey there is something oddly otherworldly and plaintive about the whole thing.

Heaven takes another firm and measured stride forward in what is rapidly becoming a celebratory jog towards brilliance: a re-affirmation of what heart, skill, craft and guile can birth given time and experience.

Its their frivolous experimentalism and willingness to toy with all aspects of the past that make Girls such an invitingly warm and honest proposition

As we approach the centre, the violent and promiscuous impulses usually reserved for men bubble into view, reclaimed firmly in terms that Trent Reznor only wishes he could convey again. Caught undertow in this wreckage, you might mistake such a layout for entropy; step back, however, and the boarders and subdivisions wrought by EMA’s hand become clear.

Let's just call it an hour's worth of creepy, organic, nearly always-tension-building electronic ambience which certainly owes as much, if not more, to the hidden influences as the obvious ones.

His songs are chiefly good, and there's little more you want of a loose garage punk rock record than that.

Overall, Rewind The Film won't be afforded the same reverence as Manic Street Preachers more definitive outings. Nevertheless, in the context of the present, it's the sound of a band growing old gracefully in reminiscent mood yet firmly at ease with their lot.

Mason might have a lot of worries on his mind, but he’s managed to express them beautifully here.

There are ten fine new songs here, each beautiful and sorrowful, sparse and complex, sacred and profane: this is what to expect from a new record by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

There’s a lot more going on besides, maybe a touchstone too much at times, but you’d have to have either incredibly specific or incredibly boring taste to not find some gold herein.

One Breath benefits from its variety and from a taste for experimentation which, striking subtle chords that invite the listener to stay and revisit.

Ruins is at once more formally stately than those [previous] albums, with Harris accompanied only by a stiff piano, and more emotionally obtuse, her lyrics back under a slight veil, taken out of the stark glare that made songs like ‘We’ve Become Invisible’ so touching.

El-P has masterfully used New York’s dark corners as a productive muse on I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead.

A warm and personable record then, but one that doesn’t put its head above the parapet often enough to properly engage.

It seems a little mean to judge this against song-based records - if anything, the narrative arc suggests it's 'about' the deterioration of meaning / tunefulness / drama into the inconsequentiality of real life; still, on its own terms, it's rather precious.

This feels like a deeper record than its predecessor, 2012’s well-received Blunderbuss, not as pretty but certainly sharper and more elegantly formed, something that’s reflected in the respective titles.

Above all and aside from the frustrations, the album is a well-crafted beast, beautifully constructed.

Since her emergence as a solo artist, Hannigan has been drawn to all things nautical. On her third full length, she continues that fascination, treading new water and exploring new routes on many of the tracks, but still ultimately in search of new shores.

With Bright Sunny South, Amidon has taken a huge step forward as a folk artist, creating arrangements which preserve his musicianship, while deepening the maturity of his interpretive skills.

It’s clear that after a year on the road with the same musicians he’s back into thinking in band mode and how songs will best be served by a four piece line-up. This result is more fully-realised songs.

On the Water is surely one of the most unconventionally beautiful records of the year.

If you're tempted to go for a heavy dose of head nodding psychedelia any time soon, you probably won't find a better example released this year.

Death Is This Communion slays in all the right places, but had it ventured into some of the wrong places we might’ve had an album really worth dribbling about.

It is a record which drinks deeply from the well of the past but could only have been made today. Megafaun have cast off the weight of the canon and are spreading their wings.

Swing Lo Magellan, then--deadly serious even at its most eccentric, wilfully awkward even at its most accessible, dense and intricate even at its most freewheeling. Same as it ever was.

Lost Songs ain't a new direction for ToD. Far from it. But it's a frenetic, committed album oozing passion at every turn, and the world would be poorer without it.