For Skelethon is the kind of record an artist only makes once in their career; the culmination of long-gestation, departing loved ones and having to innovate out of your comfort zone.

Sure, there are imperfections along the way, but this is an immeasurably intriguing and constantly developing journey that's best experienced alone.

It strikes the prefect balance: accessible, yet with enough idiosyncrasy to make it more than just a formulaic retread of past glories.

Indeed, as their debut for Kills Rocks Stars, Now We Can See is an album fit to carry the torch in 2009 for one of the underground’s most fearlessly exciting labels.

‘Organic’ is a word that has influence and is often applied, but hardly does justice to so otherworldly a record as Yesterday and Today’. A pulse very rarely makes you feel this alive.

A Place To Bury Strangers have managed to strike a perfect balance between noise and tune, and as a result created one of 2009's most ingenious records.

He’s definitely establishing his own niche with Punk Authority.

Their debut was already loose enough, but EarthEE slackens to a level of shapelessness, and is gloomier with it to boot.

Like most of the album, “Soft Place to Land” is precise in language, but not in meaning. The album’s songwriting strength lies primarily in this sort of poesy, as effective as it is understated, and resisting paraphrase.

This is a remarkable, compelling record that hits the heights of the heavenly poetical but also dredges the deep dark of cruelty and meanness that flashes through us all at times (though through Kozelek more than most it would seem).

When ambition is your only criticism, you know you’re probably onto something quite special.

Earl Grey works so well because the three women at its heart have uniqueness as players and chemistry as a band, and it’s rare to get both. There’s a respect for melody here, in both Hankin’s way with chorus and riff, and especially in Moss’s ear-candy bass lines.

Completely nonsensical, yes; yet also the perfect way of describing this album as the whimsy-filled journey through life it is.

Marshall has created an album with a nuance and polish she didn’t have in her early days of just her and her guitar. Even if the territory is somewhat familiar, she’s never made an album quite like this before.

There may be plenty of meat left on his bones, but for this fine album to take the plaudits it truly deserves, we have to hope that there are many with open ears and hearts. Richard Hawley: troubadour in chief for this generation.

It’s tempting to conflate the fact Middle Cyclone is less outre than her last couple of sets with the fact it last week cracked the US top three, but there’s nothing particularly sell out-ish about it, and certainly with her lyrical gifts and that incredible voice still firmly intact, it’s hard to even really be that disappointed.

The accomplished sonic collages of Howlin' finely balance Jagwar Ma's influences and in doing so transcends into something singularly thrilling and cohesive.

A record built on restraint, tinged by poignancy and wrapped up in poetic human emotion. Quite wonderful.

What really sets Psychedelic Pill out as some of Young's strongest work in a while though are those other epic tracks, which deliver that expansive, explorative sound with some deeper voyages into the singer's thoughts.

Here she’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs, focussing her talents into ten razor sharp songs, some subtle, some vicious.

On this record, Merril Garbus manages the impressive feat of condensing much of the decade’s more interesting musical trends into one very well delivered tapestry.

To the novice listener, it won’t make a whole lot of sense, fails to indicate any kind of coherence to their overall output, and is probably not the best place to get to grips with them (although where that would be is anyone’s guess). This, no doubt, is the whole point of Trans Am — to confuse and confound, to take inexplicable U-turns just to see what happens, to irritate and amuse at the same time, to lurch from incredibly catchy pop to attempting a critique of the war in Iraq in an instrumental format.

Just enjoy their album for what it is, an absolute blast.

This album runs the same gauntlet as any best of: inevitably any one given will adore 50 per cent of the selections and being various-levels-of-nonplussed about the remainder. While the collection does slightly skew towards the contemporary material, May Death Never Stop You essentially plays out like an evolutionary tree of My Chemical Romance’s sound.

It’s another excellent Gruff Rhys album then, tied around an unusual concept but not bogged down by it.

This is not a wild departure from either of the duo’s bands, but it is a pleasingly fruitful one.

Girlpool make themselves a deliciously relatable pair, filling the songs with as much soft warmth as harsh fire, putting a sharp, snotty edge onto a new wave of riot grrrl. They’re exactly the sort of act 2014 needs.

On its own, Orphaned Deejay Selek 2006-2008 definitely manages to holds its own as a brilliant slice of pure AFX acid, and a sure fire way to get your Aphix for a couple of months.