The Singles Collection 2001-2011 proves that at times Albarn touched on a warped pop genius, and to his credit comes out of the project with his reputation as creative wanderer intact, but from the off the constructed barrier meant that there was always little to really love, songs hidden too much behind their glitteringly presented shells.

It’s how Interpol would sound like if they dealt with universal themes and reflection rather than singing about fellatio fantasies with Stella, or their length of loves.

Too guarded to reveal much of Mulvey's personality. Too low key to remain long in your memory.

They may not live on as eternal alternative classics, but they feel emphatically, explosively alive. While preserving his natural nonchalant charm, Thurston sounds more vigorous, bellicose, twitchy and forceful than he has in years.

It’s cheeky, and should be gimmicky, but this is a record so sharply made in Kenney’s own non-conformist image, and she gets away with it. On this form, she’s destined for alt-pop greatness.

It's an album almost too personal, too suffocating, to match the transcendence of Portner's best work with Animal Collective; still, his vision of sad swampland, and its beautifully intricate and melancholy soundtrack, is haunting - the sound of someone confronting their demons and coming away stronger.

This is a missed opportunity to stand up and move forward with popular music, and comes off as a backbench cry for how good things used to be before we all started caring about progression.

Sour Soul is sublime. Rather than standing around starstruck, BBNG have more than proven their worth as Ghostface’s backing band.

Thorburn splits his calculated kookiness into two halves: rote indie synthpop vying for your Noughties nostalgia on Taste, and straightforward, more-of-the-same twee rock that also vies for your Noughties nostalgia on Should I Remain Here At Sea?.

The Devil's Walk can be as persuasive and intoxicating as you want it to be. The acute complexity of temptation inevitably boils down to a simple yes or no. You'll take to this record or you won't.

If you've refrained from taking advantage of more illegal means of hearing this thus far in 2011, you really have no excuse not to listen to this subtly charming record.

Listened to as a journey from beginning to end, this is a genuine attempt to progress to pastures new after With Teeth.

As part of a longer discography, Smart Flesh will probably stand as a good, solid point in The Low Anthem's career, a sign of the band developing their sound and their songwriting before delivering something truly special.

Will Oldham's still got it.

This is music that lingers in the mind and seeps into the bones. And while you can view it as melancholic, Scally and Legrand never dwell on sentimentality or allow anything to sink into despondency.

While none of the tracks here equal the individual brilliance of the album standouts ‘Rode Null’ or ‘Barfuss Durch Grass’, Snowflakes and Car Wrecks hangs together far better than a collection of offcuts might reasonably be expected to.

A turn towards pop has alienated some fans of their earlier work, but almost everything here could be released as a single, and that’s an undeniably winning achievement.

Not so much judgement on Oasis as a whole, but y'know, it's just not a fun best of. The second disc is 73 minutes long, contains only two tracks from the golden era, and after a while becomes not unakin to drowning in the colour beige.

You probably won't head to the record store for this one unless you've been obsessive-compulsively collecting all the previous releases, but if you do, you won't be disappointed by what you hear on the turntable. After all it's Sonic Youth.

Comforting, unsettling, danceable; one way or another Macaroni is a record to make you sweat.

What makes the record a success is the way Pinkunoizu harness their varied ideas and refine them into something accessible and engaging.

This Is My Hand is a good example of how sometimes less can be more. But when the ‘less’ is as good as some of the songs in the second half, it’s easy to see why you might want more.

The only constant is the deep, mellow drum tone that brings the band’s disparities together and creates a beautifully cohesive narrative flow.

Tthis is a solid, soulful effort from a performer plagued by so many issues; it’s just a shame that taking the emotions out of the mix, what we’re left with is essentially easy-listening.

To have taken the most complex psychological crisis and distilled it into a record which is not only so powerful but also so coherent and assured is awe-inspiring. Malody is a towering testimony to the power of song and marks the (re)birth of an exceptional artist.

Dare’s vocals have lost none of their emotive brutality; the juxtaposition between his delicate voice and the brutal messages he conveys still fascinates, just as his experiments with heavy synth and drone alongside a solitary piano sound impossible, yet somehow work.

Lucifer is definitely not for everyone, but for some it will be their album of the year.

Everything’s so crisply atmospheric, and Stelmanis is such a talismanic presence, that the album’s momentum never flags, even if there’s sometimes a minute or two without a hook.