It hardly makes for the most exciting record of the year.... But it is clearly a very accomplished album.

It’s easy to see them as a very promising one act; a band taking familiar styles and crafting them into a memorable, accessible whole, with a strong stream of creativity flowing throughout.

Like horror films or ghost stories, the upside of ADULT.’s brand of dark paranoia is its visceral thrill; it’s as nasty as electro can get whilst maintaining a remnant of a reassuring pop edge.

As an album to invest in, feel sentimental about, or be genuinely thrilled by, Ultraviolence falls short. Take it simply as a sumptuously-presented pop record, though, and you have to wonder if you’ll hear a better one this year.

Keeping a band going for 25 years is no easy task, and there’s not many in the world who can still keep pushing forwards, but without losing what it is about them that’s so unique. Tortoise manage that weirdness, that jazz infused strangeness, and that downright groove that they’ve always traded in, but re-mould it for 2016.

With Evil Spirits, you have to halt, to concentrate entirely to absorb the main message. Close your eyes; and it’s a politically charged electro-pop-rock love-spell to our tumultuous political times--but without the band’s names on the front, you wouldn’t even begin to place which dimension this demon came from.

Unplugged is another in a very long line of R.E.M. live releases you wouldn’t exactly call essential, if only because they set the bar so high with their concert films Tour Film and Road Movie. But things don’t have to be essential to be worth owning.

Maybe at some points the eastern influences are more prominent, on tracks like 'Panic In Babylon', but on the whole it's classic BJM.

In this debut, she emerges fully-formed yet ethereal, a spirit slipping between silky and sassy, between clattering beats and electro grinds.

Three albums in, and the four folks who identify as Terry continue to defy simple categories, even when their zigzag pop songs take you for a leisurely cruise.

Stripped bare of anything other than Stevens’ voice, a guitar and a slightly imperfect recording, their power and beauty still shine through. The added bells-and-whistles of remixes and alternate versions are an interesting side-note, sure, but still, in the end, lead you back to the original album in all its complex, bruised and beautiful glory.

This is by far The White Stripes’ most peculiar record.

Sixes & Sevens might be a drawn-out mess, but break it down to its constituent parts and you suddenly have rich pickings for the perfect mix-tape.

It's not an album that will be remembered for its songs, but it's coherent enough as a whole to make up for that. In 2016, it's refreshing to indulge in a collection of songs that work best when they're heard all together.

Just two years on from Barrett's debut record, Bass Drum of Death shows a definite creative expansion--and he shows no sign of losing his way with a hook.

As a whole, Heavy Ghost is considerably subtler even than "The Crying Light."

Overall, Wildness is a really great comeback record. There are a few dud tracks in there, especially in the first half of the album, but these are more than compensated for by the excellence of the remainder of the record.

It’s not they’ve gone back on themselves or regressed; it’s just that Band of Horses have naturally, and happily, managed to wind their way back home.

Galore is an odd proposition for a debut album. It feels more transitional than a definitive statement of who Thumpers are, and that’s a hugely exciting thing.

The midas pop touch that ran through 1989, on which she struck the perfect balance between her past and present selves, is lacking here; she’s sacrificed some of it for such a wholesale acceptance of current pop trappings. What’s refreshing about Reputation, though, is that she’s no holding holding the mask so tightly to her face.

The lack of any real experimentation does mean that it fails to match the very best of the Joan Of Arc, but the consistency and restraint on display puts Life Like in a lot, lot better light then some of the group's hugely varied output

What Another One does provide--in abundance--is proof that DeMarco has the songwriting chops to back up his reputation as one of indie rock’s last true characters.

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.

While this isn't Wild Nothing stalling, Empty Estate never coalesces into anything as confident as his previous releases, leaving the impression that for now he's running on the spot.

The songs are little self-contained vignettes about various characters and their journeys, resembling campfire or drinking songs. Some are really bland and instantly forgettable, others--really poetic and imaginative.

For completists Obscurities is a must. For Magnetic Fields fans it's a worthwhile starting point for Stephin Merritt's other projects. For newcomers, start with 69 Love Songs and come back when you've fallen in love with everything else.

As an album King Animal remains a somewhat numbing listen, its components, as excellent as they individually often are, making for a rather wearing collective, undeniably muscular but curiously unmemorable.

Whether this collection of 12 new versions, five of which have been heard before, works as a coherent album is open to debate. There can be no denying, however, that all of them honour the vision of The Race for Space in its original form.