The North Borders is as ambitious a record as its predecessor, and it’s just as successful.

This is an album that maintains the joyless musical brand Hutchcraft and Anderson crystallised with their two million selling debut.

After it burrows its way under your skin, The Terror does genuinely feel like something of a dark masterpiece, the album you’ll stick on to discredit anyone who tries to claim The Flaming Lips are lacking in depth or darkness.

Their next release might be a whole ‘nother curveball, but this is a treat on its own terms.

Division Street is Simon’s sweet step into the twilight sun.

Mason might have a lot of worries on his mind, but he’s managed to express them beautifully here.

Despite many excellent tunes, a continual emphasis on effects makes the album slightly grating in parts, feeling a bit like a Wire and Frampton Come Alive! recurring super group nightmare, in which the best and worst aspects of Seventies rock music are forced to combine to beat the Russians.

Over and over again What About Now pitches itself at the same commercially anthemic middle ground as U2, ideal for talent show montages and inspiring moments at award shows but ultimately anemic, soulless and forgettable.

Even when downcast, Love & Devotion is a sensual, lively record and anyone mourning the death of Air France should find much to enjoy here.

Clocking in at just under an hour, its occasionally harrowing contents rendering it an uneasy listen, maybe if BRMC had taken a leaner approach Specter... may have ended up on a few more commercial radars.

All My Relations isn’t a replacement for a brand new Lightning Bolt album, the last one of which dropped in 2009, but it scratches many of those itches, while also fully justifying existence on its own terms.

The Strokes will never get back the raw magic of Is This It? but, with Comedown Machine, they’ve cast a different spell entirely--one that’s almost joyful.

Off the Record is of more interest as a historical document than for the music itself--something Bartos would probably admit.

Whilst it in no way compares with the leap in ambition we saw between his first two albums, The 20/20 Experience is nonetheless another interesting inter-genre move, this time into alternative R&B and neo-soul.

All Hail Bright Futures withers under the glare of its own garish spotlight, and no amount of zest, pep or joviality can save it.

An album as beautifully conceived as If You Leave is one you follow from start to finish, riveted by the story it weaves and the emotion it bleeds.

Like the most memorable trips, this one creates some sublime eidetic imagery.

So swings and roundabouts, then, but for all Bloodsports’ faults, it’s still pretty good.

His work until now can only be seen as preparing the ground for this body of work, an album so satisfying, accomplished and beautiful.

Brand Brauer Frick are unquestionably a force to be reckoned with, yet they seem unsure exactly what direction to take: whether to continue to interpret dance music using classical apparatus, or to move down a darker, more avant garde route.

Having slowed down five per cent, you could imagine The Chronicles of Marnia appealing to anyone who liked Sleater Kinney, or Battles, Dutch Uncles, or even Foals, without having the acquired taste for bands as squirky as Deerhoof or Ponytail.

Despite the occasionally more personal tone to Tooth & Nail, he continues his role as social commentator magnificently.

It’s the sound of Low passing up the opportunity for a twentieth-anniversary blow-out and opting instead for a quiet get-together with old friends.

He’s definitely establishing his own niche with Punk Authority.

With Images Du Futur, though, the band has stretched into unknown territory while remaining true to its own sound.

It is an album that demands attention, not to mention repeated listenings, to draw out the beauty.

There are no duds here, though Bowie definitely misses the hipster mark on occasion.

Musically, she leaves things deliberately underwritten, rooted in bass or scratchy guitar as opposed to the shiny-shiny production of her earlier work. It lets the songs speak for themselves, though it does occasionally expose their flaws as well.