By far the most accessible and pop-sounding recordings he has recorded in years, here the ship Eno references might serve the dual function as symbolising his own soul finding tranquility in the music once again.

Essentially the real joy is to hear the three original members locking in so tightly together.

There’s plenty of Near to the Wild Heart of Life that carries the essential appeal of the band in spades, namely, a dedication to giving it your all until you collapse with euphoria and exhaustion.

Travels... is a 33 minute monster without a slither of excess fat, and the best thing Andy Falkous has ever put his name to.

You have to turn Girl up loud to hear the 'meshes of voice' that make this a more complex album than on first impression.

Ultimately, this is the best thing Dulli has put his name to since Blackberry Belle.

Where Andrew Bird succeeds so fervently with Noble Beast is in endowing it a vital, quixotic sense of humanity.

Brill Bruisers--like most albums--isn’t as good as Mass Romantic. But its qualities are manifold, and it is a delight to note that after some 15 years together, the New Pornographers seems to have stopped being a supergroup and turned into a band.

This truly is an album you can’t just dip into, it’s a winning concept. And though it may not win millions of hearts, for those with time, it’s a truly rewarding experience.

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.

The instrumental skill that Deerhoof loyalists have come to love abounds, and front and centre is a resounding, absurdist joy.

Like their last record, Album of the Year, Sol Invictus is more concerned with playfully nudging at the boundaries of hard rock conventions rather than attempting a dizzy genre-spanning explosion to rival 1995’s King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime.

Both a likely contender for the finest indie rock record of the year, then, and a breathtakingly chaotic venture far beyond that genre's remit.

Daze challenges the listener more than most dime-a-dozen electronic music.

So This is Goodbye is the perfect example of how aiming for perfection in music can end in alienation.

It’s Greenwood’s own work that’s most compelling. The album runs in a different order to the film itself, although, perhaps incongruously, still includes snippets of Joanna Newsom’s narration; there’s not a great deal of coherent relation to the picture’s narrative, then, and anybody who saw Newsom’s name attached to the project and hoped it might have finally heralded some post-Have One on Me material will be disappointed.

Not only does Sneaks survive the sophomore slump, she dances circles five circles round it without ever (EVER) skipping a beat.

Instead of concerning themselves with matters out of their control, Motion City Soundtrack have knuckled down and at last knocked one out of the park.

Whatever happens with the technology and wherever the arguments over music, art and commerce drag themselves to next, it's these songs that are the triumph here.

The strength of ‘Out From Under’ exposes the weakness of the rest of EP; everything is terribly impressive and texturally nuanced etc, etc, but there is not much of anything to drive the tracks towards a satisfying resolution that would make you want to listen again.

The collection and especially the new songs have the feeling of a last hurrah.

Grievances is yet another remarkable record from one of the UK’s most consistently remarkable underground bands.

While the instrumentals service Barnes well, when guest vocalists--once a hallmark of Leftfield’s work (John Lydon’s vocals on ‘Open Up’ still feel perfect)--the album broaches less solid ground.

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

This is a perfect introduction to new Gainsbourg fans and long standing followers will find plenty to get behind, it just feels that something might have been lost in translation somewhere along the lines.

It makes you puzzle its meaning, ponder on it, burrow nagging ideas into your head. And it is another stupendous record, of the sort nobody else is making, or probably could make.

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.

Like Muse, Mew fly in the face of the zeitgeist, cultivating a devoted following all the while. It’s one that should be sated (and in an ideal world, expanded) no end by No More Stories.