Ultimately Borrell 1 is a better-than-serviceable rock record complicated by myriad preconceptions, all which are further skewered by some fantastically hubristic song titles.

The album is called I Want You To Destroy Me and all it wants to do is live.

It's not a classic and it won't get him back in the NME, but it'll more than entertain those willing to listen.

It is beautiful, ethereal and organic, breathing with life and is as far removed from the clean overly produced dance music which he holds in such distain. It has been a long wait, but on this showing it has certainly been worth it.

Slow Focus isn’t alienating, it’s other, and it’s a pleasure to take a wander around its unfamiliar landscapes.

What does make sense is songs that can be related to the world over, not just in Williamsburg, and the songs on Any Port In A Storm fall very much into this category. A brilliant record.

The Argument's cataclysmic clashes and multitudinous puzzle pieces that never quite fit together are the stuff of a deeply flawed classic.

The lack of bang, where a band like The Whip for instance might do a good job with a similar collection of tracks, is well and truly compensated by its overall arc and atmosphere, its leisurely strides into a lazer-filled sunset proving climax enough without gimmicky drops and pandering.

As a whole the EP doesn’t hit the mark. Not only is the only link between the tracks that they are vaguely related to Animal Collective, but within the tracks themselves there are often many ideas out of context with one another.

Unreal's feel is of the hangover following the hedonistic romp that was Yuck--reassembling a broken self into a positive whole, and taking an auspicious step in a new direction.

Slave Vows is--easily the finest guitar album The Icarus Line have produced since Aaron North precariously sprinted across a row of trembling amps to crash out the window and join Nine Inch Nails in 2005.

Somewhere under all this reverb and murk, Gauntlet Hair may yet have the makings of a fine band, but the album burns out long before they have an opportunity to reveal wether this is true.

Magna Carta... Holy Grail isn't a total bust, but neither is it anywhere close to Jay-Z's finest moments. Instead it's a strange and anodyne record, that speaks of a king, nay a god, who may not have lost his crown, but would benefit from leaving his lofty boardroom once in a while.

It continues one of the most singular artistic visions of modern times and while it may not push it any further it’s often so damn charming as to make you forget about all that and just drift away into Lynch’s meditative world, in wrong love with the weird.

Apart from that and ‘Micro Chip (Say No)’--which succeeds ‘Rebel’, closes the album and suffers from autotune abuse and the claim to be “the sons and daughters of Bob Marley”--Jungle Revolution consistently hits bullseyes.

All in all, Empire is a rather decent garage rock album.

Rather than sound like two guys in their fifties messing around with some expensive equipment to recapture their past glories, it’s strikingly modern.

So while there are a few moments of blandness, a few moments where tradition sits a little too comfortably for a little too long and where some of us may be a little lost lyrically, there is never any question of the inherent power of Staples’ voice.

Stripping away the frills, at heart Major Arcana is a mournful treasure that asks to be celebrated.

Palms is best at its tightest, but is perhaps a tad messier than it really needs to be.

They’ve refined their scope to create an album that you want to blast out of your car, your house party--or ideally a boombox having been transported back to a street corner in Eighties New York.

Me Moan is a remarkable record that takes a genre rooted in formulae and clichés--country--and spins it into something fresh, compelling and edgy. A stunning follow up.

Overall, it’s fair to say that Long Distance Song Effects is pretty much what you’d expect if you were one of the few who heard Goldheart Assembly’s debut album, without some of the instant hit that record delivered, but with plenty of depth to be found once you’ve peered beneath the skin.

Tides [is] a somewhat unbalanced listen, with both genuine highs and a few frustrating lows.

Lyrically lightweight though it may be, Icky Blossoms can be impassioned and angry, primarily when Pressnall takes on the vocals.

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.

Solar Year manage to take traditional choral music and refract it through a modern prism. It seems at once on the pulse of the zeitgiest, yet at the same time strangely timeless. The lush production creates an atmosphere of sustained reverie, which envelops a listener in a warm yet visceral way.

Cricket and rock music have a long history, and at points it all gets a bit glamorous. Sticky Wickets isn’t concerned with those though: it takes the thinga that makes the loner, the geek, the loser, the tragic feel all warm and fuzzy, and then makes that sound like ELO. And nothing this year has made me feel happier than that.