Good Morning To The Night is not going to reinvent the wheel, provide breathtaking new revelations on Elton John's back catalogue or shine new light on Pnau's songwriting abilities....But for all of that, toes will tap.

Through it all, Delicate Steve does what so few composers are able to do: his billowing compilation resonates without words, its sterling procession an otherworldly creation that remains grounded somehow.

It's an album of razor-sharp irreverence, infectious energy and, beneath its surface, genuinely intelligent songwriting.

There really is nothing of great merit to this album.

Confess isn't just steeped in the sounds of an era, but in its films, feel, stories and sense of aspiration. It's an album about love and lust behind the bleachers, in the dark of a multiplex, on the back of a motorcycle, in bathroom cubicles, under the neon glare of America's bright lights - and it's wholly, wholly brilliant.

Mission of Burma have successfully walked that fine line between being consistent and running out of ideas.

Kitsune is a powerful and fragile album and composes itself with the grace required to step ahead of the current glut of bands that are revisiting the post-rock genre, believing that all that all post-rock requires is distortion pedals and patience.

A carefully considered, exotic and mature record that stands out as a blueprint of how to handle the move from lo-fi to, well, just –fi.

A wise, personal and vigorously ambitious album of the year.

Swing Lo Magellan, then--deadly serious even at its most eccentric, wilfully awkward even at its most accessible, dense and intricate even at its most freewheeling. Same as it ever was.

While this isn't a mainstream record, it's perhaps Blackshaw at his most accessible.

Without undermining the worth of the sort of material that forms Beak>'s bread and butter, >> really hit its peaks when it blurs genre distinctions.

The album is the real star here, sounding as fresh, vital and universally accessible as ever 25 years down the line.

There are just enough love songs in there to keep it rock, just enough instrumentals to edge it back towards the cinematic, and more than the usual helping of skill to smooth off the edges and end up with a beautifully rounded, awesome debut album.

The songcraft is back, but the romance is still missing.

Wonderfully accomplished in construction, devastatingly powerful in delivery, Echo Lake have just raised the bar one notch higher for everyone around them.

Pitched somewhere between physical pleasure and mental torture, is Oshin, dream-weaving, benevolent, sadistic puppet masters Diiv playing havoc with your sense of contentedness.

It's certainly the most arresting record that she's made.

A swift punch of an album which inevitably hits some artistic limitations, but succinctly delivers all the timeless qualities of in-yer-face riffage from a snotty garage band.

The Raveonettes take you to the dark side and articulate every sharp pang of aching heartbreak and rejection you ever felt but they make it sound so goddamn lovely.

Brutal, violent and disturbing though it may be, its surreal hybrid of human and simulation has some strange beauty to it.

While these jams document an undoubtedly exciting collaboration, only a few of them go so far as to offer anything that sounds like this project's true potential, despite frequently being tantalisingly close.

The scope might be limited, but at least one truth shines out: he writes songs of unembellished rawness, sharp as a knife and tight as the proletariat wallet.

All we're presented with here is a collection of half-baked, badly-produced versions of sounds we heard a couple of years ago.

Lucifer is definitely not for everyone, but for some it will be their album of the year.

The Lost Tapes isn't an easy album to listen to, but then that was never the case with Can. Nonetheless, as the years pass and more bands form, by default their influence grows, which makes this a fascinating addition to any collection.

The National Health gives the likeable quintet a firm footing from which to stop their seemingly inevitable decline.

So a game of two halves, with enough excitement from Arbouretum to keep it interesting--but cosmic Americana fans may find more solace in their (excellent) previous two records The Gathering and Song of the Pearl than they will here.