So far, Sov’s done well for playing to her strengths, but it’s too short an album for filler, and a song about being unable to play the guitar is pointless, however melodic and Northern Soul the cello-part happens to be.

As it stands, it’s an emphatically rich and addictive work. It does sound a whole lot like Dylan, yes. But it’s a whole lot of excellent itself, thanks very much.

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.

Does Tentacles live up to those high standards? Nah, but it doesn’t embarrass itself, and that’s praise enough.

With Sun Gangs it’s as if they've finished the whole cake and the house burst, bricks and mortar exploding through the sky like fireworks.

Ultimately this odd couple have made for a very merry musical marriage, artists from seemingly disparate musical backgrounds proving themselves capable of collaborating on music that is worth listening to in its own right, as opposed to merely being a interesting genre-crossing exercise.

The album brims with quick 'from the gut' compositions that have been uncomplicatedly produced using simple instrumentation.

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.

Play Music is a good idea poorly executed.

Hey Everyone! manages to occupy a space all of its own--an achievement in itself.

It's Blitz reveals just how much the trio have grown and how well they know exactly the strange angular planet that their music inhabits.

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.

Rules may not be the shape of what’s to come, but there’s also little offence to be found in its unobtrusive ways.

She may be about to extract herself from the heat-warped dazzle pop of Good Evening, which is probably a good idea considering the amount of opaque imitators crushing hard on her heels, but for now Gonzalez has created one of the most understated and beautifully murky pop records of 2009.

Who knows what Knife-man Olof Dreijer will bring back from his (literal) exploration of the Amazon, intended for an electronic opera about "The Origin of Species" (due September 2009); for now, this may be his sister’s most artistically satisfying album.

Pete Doherty has made a solo album with Stephen Street producing, and the result is some pretty good music.

To conclude that Bromst is a triumph of inventiveness is too easy. It is wildly inventive, but what impresses most is that for all the levity, Dan Deacon has managed to impressively reign in his flights of fancy.

The narrative doesn't get in the way of the tunes, and the choruses are pretty versatile as anthems go.

Wanna hear the real masters of puppets? Pop this record on and recoil as you realise the aforementioned are but limp and loose-limbed marionettes compared to Mastodon’s array of all-conquering modern metal cacophonies.

There’s genuine replay value here, even if the recording of it took about half as long as the convoluted fictional biography (complete with Photoshopped fake album covers) in the liner notes.

This still isn’t for everyone, but it’s sounding less like a side-project, and more like a super-group.

Ten is just Ten, and I guess for all their reservations, the band have come to accept that: there’s no mystery to the new cover, just Pearl Jam in plain view, big shorts and all.

Gripes aside, a good chunk of BORN LIKE THIS.. shows an angrier, more cynical, and, hell, maybe even better DOOM. A day may come when the mask starts to rust, but it's not just yet.

It’s one of the best late-night albums of the year so far, and deserves to be remembered in the best of 2009 polls.

It's that all-too-rare example of a band combining myriad shared influences (early Blur, Radiohead, Suede... The Faint?) into something that seems to exist only in its own brilliant context, regardless of trends or cultural norms.

On the whole, To Lose My Life is a solid debut that will certainly divide opinion, but approach with an open mind and dividends will be reaped en masse.

An obvious problem of the arrangements is that "big" often means cluttered, and most of the songs feel like they should have finished a verse and a chorus sooner.

Wavvves does tend to tail off down repetition high street towards the end, but all in all, even where the experimental interlude segments of 'Goth Girls' and 'Killr Punx, Scary Demons' knit the record together like butterfly clips around a gaping wound, there's enough here to suggest Nathan Williams has the potential to become a very special talent indeed in the none too distant future.