PJ Harvey can be exhilarating, thrilling, or offer up a disturbingly hysterical variant on black humour, but she ain't fun. A Woman A Man Walked By is kinda, sorta fun.

Play might be a bit of a thrown together casserole of tracks, but it's an enjoyable one that only the coldest hipster would begrudge the Brewises.

Whether it is a sense of longing or nostalgia at stake, Moon Tides is a solid, inebriating listen that will guide you through your personal transitions and leave you wanting for more.

Lush, cathartic and surprisingly brief, Promise Everything is the record that makes good on everything Further Sky promised.

Sodium does slay. But Dasher whizz through in such a hardcore blur, that the highlights of the album get buried in the carnage.

It's a record that certainly stands up to comparison with their previous outings - sometimes bettering them--and, if you've been seduced by their charms in the past, be prepared to fall in lust all over again.

Preteen Weaponry’s psychedelic rout may be far from their finest hour, but it serves to remind all that these jesters should belong as part of the furniture.

With Digital Garage, Mudhoney have provided the noise-escape of the year. The war may never be won, but at least now we’ve got somewhere to hide when it all gets a bit much.

Some listeners may lament this retreat from the hefty barrage of sound that was 2009's Farm, but it is crucial that a band such as this progresses and varies itself, and it is somewhat adorable that J is loosely retreading the road that his group took beforehand, only this time he is doing it the right way, with his pals Lou and Murph along for the ride.

The overall sound of The Foley Room is unquestionably Tobin's, even though it sounds like a step forward rather than a re-tread.

Pictured on the album’s cover taking aim at a heart-shaped pinata, Thao once again sings in a way that conveys both breathless astonishment and world-weary wisdom.

Occasionally they over-indulge, and it’s certainly not their best LP, but it's easy to forgive them given the obvious love that’s contained within the tracks here.

It’s from this multi-layered hive of instrumentation and exquisite verb-spouting though where ExitingARM begins to flourish.

Fortunately, the role of curator suits Cunningham's talents, and despite the choppy mixing and non-continuous programming, DJ-Kicks never feels as alienating and outright strange as some of his past mixes.

Youth Novels is a twinkle-toed debut that dares to suggest what others can only make tediously plain, and leaves us in the rarely-enjoyed position of actually wanting more.

This is a solid collection of pop-tunes, but not for connoisseurs.

A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction is yet more proof that Earth were, and indeed still are, vitally different to so much of what's come before them, after them and even surrounded them.

Some of the characters created here are more fully formed than others.

Although it falls a few steps shy of wowing unreservedly, The Knot remains a poised and compelling second album.

While it might not be as iconic as the records it admires, Chewed Corners is an invigorating return for the Planet Mu head honcho.

Ultimately, Sex & Food is a very impressive record from not only Nielsen but also just to possess during these troubling times. There’s a lot to be scared about right now, but there’s also a lot out there to love, and thanks to UMO, we now have a soundtrack for that.

What makes the largest impression though, as ever, is Darnielle's ability to build the most affecting of scenes from the smallest suggestion.

When it's at its best, After Roberts harbours a brave sense of adventurism, a fearless experimentalism. And yes, it can sound like a million other things. But more often that not, it's just the glorious sound of nothing else.

Crosseyed Heart will serve as proof that it ain’t Keef who’s over the hill.

The imagery threaded throughout is at once arresting and functions on multiple levels, but perhaps its greatest achievements arrive in the form of songs like ‘Double Life’ and, pertinently, ‘You Are Your Mother’s Child’.

Intense, cutting and clever, this is an album that unfolds at a near blistering pace.

In the hands of a different producer maybe the material assembled for When The Devil's Loose could step forward into something more Technicolor, as its faults are minor, but they are the faults which separate merely pleasant albums from great ones. As it is, When The Devil’s Loose is the former.

Love Yes feels like a radical step forward for the Brooklyn-based group. It’s a coming of age struggle wrapped in the slick, veneer of Eighties glamour, and ultimately TEEN’s synth-pop dreams are hard to beat.