This is beautiful, disgusting, danceable, and nightmarish music. It allures and repels in equal measure, bursting with thoughtful concepts and successful experiments in sculpting electronic noises into something danceable, melodic and meaningful.

The inescapable feeling that Don’t Stop probably won’t sell all that many copies makes the songs sound like electric guitars without amplifiers. There are only so many things a musician can provide and sadly Annie has it all but that key component.

The sequencing allows the listener space to breathe at the most opportune moments, and its leaps from ambience into adrenaline-soaked enthusiasm for hand-clap-happy high-jinx are worthy of celebration.

Kiss Each Other Clean makes Sam Beam four for four--more if you count the EPs and 2009's rarities set Around the Well.

The duo manage to create the same raw fervoured energy of Jack 'n Meg, but also utilise a far more diverse array of sound and instruments.

Hummingbird feels wiser, grander, and more knowing.

For the most part, Evertything Ecsatic succeeds, but occasionally Hebden strays from the path.

At this point Rival Schools sound like Nada Surf without the pop nous or OK Go without the videos. Perfectly listenable, perfectly agreeable, absolutely forgettable.

It's the best representation yet of the sheer force of the band live, a perfect half hour snapshot of the energy and aggression they've never properly captured on tape.

It revels in a soulful, brassy buzz that sounds great from the offset and even better on further listening: Swift’s production fantastic and Burhenn’s vocals genuinely spellbinding.

Throughout Infra, Richter's skill lies in his ability to re-emphasise and reinterpret, to construct an instrumental dialogue and a kind of imagined narrative through repetition and subtle alteration.

Their songcraft proves singularly remarkable once more.

There are no preconceptions about an album acting as a whole piece of work, and it’s certainly allowed him to be a little less bogged down in all that and freed him up to just try stuff out.

Every Valley is certainly an important and timely record, but happily it's also an extremely satisfying and moving one. While it may not have the obvious scope of their breakthrough record The Race for Space it has something important to tell us about the times we live in and the hard, heartbreaking lessons we should all be learning from the past.

The new album, Relationship of Command, is one of the most amazing collections of music I have ever heard.

We’ve been the Hold Steady, and You’ve been the Hold Steady, he says predictably... but for once, on a live-recording, you didn’t have to be there.

It’s an unapologetically impressive and precise record that could do more to reach out and connect, rather than just dancing off, expecting the listener to follow.

Potentially most interesting of all is the way parts of Red Barked Tree sound dated in a manner completely unrelated to how some of Wire's records haven't, y'know, aged that well.

Seriously: this is one of 2007’s finest LPs, no question.

The Bride Screamed Murder isnâ??t the best Melvins album ever, but it is rarely less than arresting as a listening experience. Moreover, they sound like theyâ??re having a blast, unconstrained by draconian label expectations.

The record will likely serve newer fans of Bonobo better than those that maintain a stronger fondness for his earlier work, but his journey is a fascinating one and only time will judge its permeance.

These towering moments stretch thin across a record lost in a comatose state of traditional, if beach-bumming, rock-pop tedium.

There's as much silliness and attempted cred-building as there is genuine excitement.

This is a wonderful, intoxicatingly special album that deserves to be cherished, and played and played.

In four minutes of this record there are two tracks that together have more melodies, more moments of joy, than most bands will manage this year.

Sugar Daddy Live reveals a picture of a storied band that is still finding ways to reinvent itself.

However you choose to describe it, or whatever your preconceptions of Hawley and his music, this is definitely an album you should bend a considered ear towards.

For all its manufactured essence, Red remains firmly grounded at the crossroads between innocence and experience.