Face Control, the new record by Handsome Furs (Alexei Perry and Dan-from-Wolf-Parade), sounds like "Born in the USA," if the Boss had allowed a little more evil in the mix, and tried replicating Alan Vega’s demented yelps. Yeah, it’s THAT good...

Wracked with doubt, contradiction and existential despair, Mama, I’m Swollen strikes out as a weighty, superbly realised endeavour which, for all its oppressive nature, is as eminently listenable and brave an album as any the band have produced.

Twee without being cloying, Bishop Allen have dropped any signifiers that might make us think Tilly & the Wall (the clattering percussion, and urgent male/female vocals), and manage to present their light-hearted lyrics as sincere.

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

In what’s been a tremendous year for female singers thus far (see releases from Marissa Nadler, Bat For Lashes, Emmy The Great and fellow Portland-er Laura Gibson), this is yet another to add to the pile.

Tackling weighty themes and wrestling difficult truths with aplomb, it ultimately emerges triumphant.

The most frustrating part of the brilliance is that it has been all too fleeting. Please Anni, give us more.

As Seen Through Windows is both a progression and an evolution from the band's previous work, and it would be criminal to overlook them this time.

It’s refreshing to hear his music decontextualised--without a wider narrative, or the restraint of having to make an album as a piece, it’s Ashworth’s songwriting that has to hold the collection together.

All in all, a precious record, this.

It's idea after idea after idea, and though TVOTR comparisons are as inevitable as they are fair, billing BLK JKS as the Brooklynite's more giddy cousins is perhaps a little off the mark: better to say both bands tap into the same ultra-distinct vein of murky sonic magic.

It’s a horribly calculated, horrible slice of anthemic horribleness. Throughout, dreadful lyrics are in abundance, pianos are thumped and drums are bashed.

A majority of IMD is destined to end up splattered across car adverts and in film soundtracks where the scene is of a pulsing, throbbing, energetic nature. Sadly, that won't lend it any more substance.

It’s tempting to conflate the fact Middle Cyclone is less outre than her last couple of sets with the fact it last week cracked the US top three, but there’s nothing particularly sell out-ish about it, and certainly with her lyrical gifts and that incredible voice still firmly intact, it’s hard to even really be that disappointed.

Unfortunately, too much of NLOTH sounds staid and uninspired, again maybe due to the changing musical landscape that was going on all around them during the making of the record.

While that’s frustrating the good stuff here is very, very good, and the less impressive fare on offer shouldn’t dissuade curious ears.

Take My Breath Away begins expansively, but rather than proving to be a promising start the opening track turns out, in fact, to be the highlight.

Here she’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs, focussing her talents into ten razor sharp songs, some subtle, some vicious.

As the album ends with disco floor fillers by The Ramones and Blondie by way of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and Franz Ferdinand respectively, you know you have had a fun if not entirely unforgettable experience.

Temple sets out to tinker with rather than drastically disfigure his familiar surroundings and for the most part succeeds, with occasional flashes of casual brilliance. That these flashes occur with minimal fuss merely adds to the enjoyment.

To reiterate, then: it’s not the third Beirut album, like, proper. But as a means of sating collective appetites before that record does arrive--heightening expectations, even--it is a remarkable achievement.

M. Ward turns in a star-studded set that feels at once a logical progression from 2006’s "Post-War" and a step closer to that all-out classic his preceding suggests; an assimilation and appropriation of American blues, gospel, country and folk as lovingly, winningly relayed as we’ve come to expect from the Portland-based troubadour.

Generally, though, its makers can count Common Existence a triumph.

No other band could legitimately produce this record without being accused of extreme plagiarism, and perhaps that goes some way to explaining why, despite its shortcomings, it is still likeable.

if you thought you had a handle on TAP, All aboard Future throws out almost all of the signifiers that would suggest Liars, and reaches back to the late-1970s / early-1980s futurists (This Heat, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle) as much as any contemporaries (Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective).

As a document of the (musical) times, a beautiful, sundry package and admirable unification of today’s very finest towards a common goal, Dark Was The Night is unbeatable.

While it would be hasty to suggest disregarding the main conceptual focus, the truth is that Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee's virtues lie in Ferree's considerable talents as a singer and songwriter, and not as a testament to a forgotten star or as a treatise on youth, fame and loneliness.

So anyhow--crossover album of the year, no contest.