Even peering through the gauze of the back-story, Cat Power's ninth album is a feat of musical and emotional maturity.

The Seer is the culmination of Gira's 30-year-journey; his finest two hours, if you will.

This is an utterly pointless record with no artistic merit, creative spark or genuine ambition whatsoever.

There's no doubt that the familiarity of Dear's style after several records means Beams has to work a bit harder to hold your attention than previous efforts..... The good news is that until that issue is resolved, there's plenty here to hold your interest.

Solo Piano II's classical leanings and modernistic execution are testament to the piano's ever-lasting ability to dazzle the masses.

No one concept album, even one with the complexity of America, could ever hope to fully address the manifold problems of the USA, but in searching for his own answers Dan Deacon has crafted an unique testament to this fact and to his own inimitable, and ever increasing, talents.

Fragrant World is by far the band's most immersive and consistent record, a buzzingly exotic mass of nervy future soul and paranoid disco that grows in stature with each listen.

If you're tempted to go for a heavy dose of head nodding psychedelia any time soon, you probably won't find a better example released this year.

Both the Laurel Halo and Panda Bear collaborations are sadly somewhat dreary by comparison, making Tracer sag at its centre.

Devotion contains just enough variety to make for an enticing listen.

This collection is worth picking up, purely because it is nice as a listener to have a rummage around 60-odd songs in the search of something good; the challenge might be to narrow that batch down to ten songs worth keeping, and to forward those songs onto someone you know.

Whilst it would be easy to say that the 136 tracks across five CDs make this boxset a purchase for completists and enthusiasts only, to do so would be reductive.

It all adds to the feeling that there's no particular point or guiding aesthetic here.

It's still discernibly a James Yorkston record, and full of what you'd expect from one, but there's enough shading in the corners and drawing over the lines to add new sparks of interest.

Taragana Pyjarama is unstimulating, oddly soothing in an anesthetized way, hypnotic in the most guileful sense.

After this confrontational opening ditty, Ill Manors becomes less overtly political but no less vivid, as the remaining tracks depict in gruesome detail the dismal lives of London's underclass.

Major moves some distance away from Fang Island's core aims, and their first record's core strengths--instead offering up a collection of tracks which do far too little, for far too long.

The best moments are those which eschew any attempt to write proper 'songs' and instead simply try to convince the listener that he or she is travelling on an epic, wobbly, thrilling and frightening, mind-expanding journey through outer space.

Shrines is the sound of the air beneath your bed whispering when you rest.

To pretend that Life is Good is flawless would be misleading, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable return to form.

Beyond genre lines, racial lines, sexuality lines, any lines you can think of, it's that all-too-rare gem: a universal story you'll come back to long after the hype's been and gone.

As an insight to a world within a world of black American music, Personal Space elicits interest. As a compilation, it fails to sustain it very long.

As long as sincerity still counts for something and melody remains king, we'll let these qualms lie and lap up a record that's chock-a-block with comfort food choruses.

Advaitic Songs shares a lot of the same strengths as the recent output by Earth--every listen unfolds another texture, another line gets embedded in the brain.

In Time to Voices is aggressive, it is irreverent, yet also very ambitious.

While retaining this overactive production style, Angelakos manages to make Gossamer feel more effortlessly human, more like the self-realised artistic vision of an individual than Manners ever came close to being.

Micachu and the Shapes are fun. Their new album is fun.

On A Bedroom Wall is a work of music that won't be matched this year for its pained beauty.