In The Thread That Keeps Us, Calexico have learned to let go a little, to let nature take over. The result is surprisingly comforting.

Altogether different from normality, and further down the path towards minimalist orchestral experimentation than expected, Terrestrials is a challenging listen yet it retains some weird, mystic ability to attract and transfix its audience.

It is arguable that Ones And Sixes is their most fully integrated album to date--a richly satisfying and coherent work drawing together many of the different strands of their career so far.

Those who have managed to adjust to the attention deficit techniques of FlyLo or Prefuse 73 should have little problem in embracing Lynn's new approach, particularly as it appears to have resulted in one of the best albums of the year so far.

Peace On Venus is arguably the band’s finest (half-)hour since Dilate.

In their rousing live shows, Benin City are better able to keep up the momentum and present a case for the preservation of London’s club scene, but Last Night is still a fun late-night journey around the boroughs.

Basically, this is the sound of a band happy to be coasting, which can be a chore to listen to.

Little Dragon clearly weren't broken, so they haven't tried to fix themselves; they have instead filed their art into an incisive point, and with Ritual Union stand at the top of their trade. This is far more than instantly-forgotten ad fodder.

Adam Pierce has concocted a cogitative brew, a fountain of trills 'n' thrills, that has the noisy echo of '80s New York noise bands, glimpses of the Fusion and Latin flair that transfixes the likes of Fila Brasilia and Jimpster, and the gossamery drift of Scandinavian techno-pop.

On only a few listens, it’s clear that Mediation Of Ecstatic Energy is by far the most dynamic of not only these releases but of Wong’s entire career, not only on an instrumental level, but on an emotional level.

A record that marks a wholly welcome return to form.

We emerge from the album into the cold light of day somewhat dazed and maybe even a little overwhelmed, but in no doubt of the incendiary power of what has just been experienced.

The album’s sprawl and ambition is laudable, but also its downfall, as it often feels like a bit of a chore to wade through. As an album it’s too patchy, and as a document of a man’s life, a well-researched biography is probably a better bet.

It may be enigmatic, uneven and flawed in places but at the same time it proves that he is still a single-minded sonic adventurer worth persevering with.

2011’s Circuital was up there with their best work and now Jim James and company are back again with The Waterfall, which maintains their high standards.

A gorgeously warm, fuzzy album by a man wise--and sad--beyond his tender years.

Multi-Love is more than just a brilliantly designed sonic facade--its excoriation of modern psycho-sexual mores is impossible to resist, so too its musical detail and understanding.

Corinne Bailey Rae has completed a remarkable comeback, against titanic odds, and for that she should be applauded. But to do it with a record as powerful as this is extraordinary.

This is, essentially, a folk album, taking the chance to dip in to Peel's Irish connections. And yet the aspect of folk music that wins through is the one that connects directly with the listener, on their level, with few airs and graces.

Featherbrain is another solid album from the unassuming Norwegian, even if it lacks the direction and cohesiveness of her previous offerings.

Love + War is solid rather than spectacular, but contains enough promising signs to suggest his next album could be something special.

Constant Future represents Parts & Labor's most consistent and exciting work to date.

Sure, it is unfocussed and diffuse in places, but it still succeeds in deploying the several and varied voices of its collaborating creators to produce something that ultimately just about hangs together with a valiant, if tattered sort of coherence.

Fast Food is a well-defined and powerful musical statement from an artist enjoying her time in the limelight.

It’s certainly a very different sort of album from Native Speaker, with far more emphasis on glitchy beats and ambient electronica than on their previous record, but after a few listens you can’t help but be impressed by the evolution on display.

This album is full of fun, and peppered with potential classics.

An intriguing album that considers fundamental questions about how music is inspired, interpreted and created.

Insistency and repetition are perhaps Oozing Wound’s most effective weapons.

Shining a searchlight on new terrains for themselves, Fly Pan Am have generously quenched our insatiable appetite for revealing non linear melodramas. Causing a staggering commotion, this sometimes inscrutable, yet eminently danceable, album is a passport to uncover alien customs and engage in orgiastic corporeal activities.

Raffertie’s talent as a producer has never been in question. Sleep Of Reason has been a long time coming, but these 13 pieces of fractured soul represent a supreme triumph.

With some more judicious editing, a good album could have been an outstanding one, but even so, this is still superior, well-crafted noir-pop that maintains Del Rey’s impressive career to date.

While The Mountain Goats will always remain an acquired taste, there’s a case to put that In League With Dragons is possibly one of their most accessible albums. The collaboration with Pallett is a smart one for sure, and Darnielle has refused to let age dull his edge or mischievous eye for lyrical detail.

It's hard to deny the fresh, eclectic sounds of Walls or the sheer beauty in the closing sounds of Volcano, but overall, if this is any indication, Danger Mouse's productions are losing their novelty, and Beck remains at an uneven point in his career.

Love Kraft is the greatest realisation of the Super Furry vision to date.

Kingdom Of Rust is a triumph, and the best album the band have ever produced.

Yet by the time the final notes of the acoustic closer I Wish I Were Here have faded away, then you're more than convinced that this is yet another triumph for the Wainwright family.

Fortunately the lack of ambition displayed during the album-naming sessions doesn't correspond to this work's contents. It's a bold, dramatic, more than a little screwed-up and stunningly exciting statement.

For everyone who felt that eight year break was an eternity, Take Her Up To Monto will be manna from heaven. It’s yet another gloriously odd missive from Ms Murphy.

The big success of The Melodic Blue is in its versatility, proving that while Keem is most known for a somewhat goofy style, he can also emote authentically and cater to different moods.

It’s hard not to see Playground In A Lake as the most ambitious Clark release to date, an adventurous collision of different musical worlds that also carries an important underlying environmental message. It offers a bold pointer towards the future, both in terms of Clark’s own ongoing musical journey and the broader fate of the planet.

It might have been largely inspired by events that took place in the past but this is a forward-looking album by a band that has rediscovered their place in the world.

Its real strength lies in the fact that it implores you to return for repeated visits to a world riddled with other people's cast-offs. Ironically, it recycles nothing; everything here is box fresh.

When so many performers are trying to push the boundaries, sometimes it's nice to have something so plain and straightforward.

Overall the lingering feeling is that I Don’t Run is a pleasant enough listen, and one that would happily soundtrack many a summer barbecue, but it falls short of the promise of their debut.

The layered and intricate soundscapes that embody Isles are testament to the vast and diverse musical influences that Ferguson and McBriar have explored and savoured over the years. Bittersweet and introspective, yet hopeful and spellbinding.

Delivering on all his potential with the sort of nonchalance and assurance we’ve come to expect from the young man, 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is a special album, from a special artist.

Merrie Land feels like the perfect soundtrack for these uncertain, worrying times.

Standing alone, Fantasies is an accomplished, enjoyable LP. Next to its siblings in the Metric back catalogue, however, it seems to lack urgency, a sense of the essential, dynamism, and even the touch of righteous anger that made itself known now and then.

This is exhilarating from start to finish, and it makes Hyetal stand out from what is an overcrowded market.

Over three tracks in under an hour, the microtonal performer traces a luminous and defiant path against the historic threat of religious tyranny, delivering a provocative expression of devotional purity.

This is completely cohesive, despite the range of styles; relentlessly engaging, despite the range of moods; and utterly enthralling throughout.

It’s the sort of album that can provide a soothing balm to a bruised soul – by the time the theatrical, fuzz-drenched melodies of Werewolf Ending bring Life Slime to a close, you may well be converted to the healing properties of goo and gunge yourself.

The Main Thing offers no grand statements, no needless experimentalism, no left-turns or tacky rebranding. It’s just Real Estate, doing their thing, and doing it better than anybody can do it, no matter how hard they try.

It’s a record which will make a fine introduction to Stars for any newcomers, while long-term fans will hail it as their finest work since Set Yourself On Fire. At its essence, From Capelton Hill is a distillation of what makes Stars so great.

Concise and defined, the 10 tracks here distill Marina’s thoughts on modern day society and all its horrors into a short, sharp shock. ... If there’s anything the album lacks though it’s some of the knowing playfulness of her previous work.

Love From London is by no means an Earth-shaking or life-changing record, but its virtues are plentiful, and so well balanced that its title is by equal measures sarcastic and sincere.

While The Terror feels at first glance like an exercise in noise and disintegration, repeated listens reveal it to be a dark, challenging, and ultimately rewarding work of genius. It may be their best yet.

Casual and smartly-attired passers-by alike may find little to separate this excursion into meta-pop from the last.

It adds another fine collection of songs to her already impressive catalogue, songs whose inwardly-focused subject matter renders the music more restrained than the punky pop of career highlight Cyrk.

With music sounding this raw, vibrant and strikingly different to the current generation yet achingly familiar to those that will remember the original post-punk era, Viet Cong have tapped into something exciting, something too big to be contained in a Canadian city most famous for winter sports, and something that could just be the tip of the iceberg for yet another intriguing Canadian act.

Like much of his best work, it’s a slow-burner of an album: at first listen, it sounds a pretty decent radio-friendly record, but it’s only on repeated plays that the full emotional scale which Adams is displaying becomes clear.

Despite the 22-year hiatus, Crime & The City Solution sound as if they’ve never been away, and with such a strong comeback there’s no reason why they can’t finally make an attempt of gaining the recognition they deserve.

Iit’s not a huge leap from previous albums The Magic Place and Nepenthe, but the overall sound is richer and lusher than ever before.

There are certainly things to enjoy here, but too often Steeple is searching for its soul. It's a soul that will probably forever be caught in a bygone time.

Privateering is arguably Knopfler's strongest solo effort and one which shows off his ability as a guitarist, a vocalist and a songwriter.

The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories) is certainly an intense listen, but it is ultimately a rewarding one, despite its ability to frustrate or confound.

It makes for a good entry point for anyone who hasn’t heard any Nils Frahm before, and is also an extra treat for any long-term fans desperate for some new material.

Sprawling, strange, baffling and beguiling, this psychedelic treasure is unlikely to appeal to the unadventurous, but it’s hard to imagine there will be another album released anywhere this year that’s quite like it.

Office Politics is, as with most Divine Comedy releases, a record with its finger firmly on the pulse of this zeitgeist.

As the album progresses the grooves get more pronounced, as though the night’s movement is getting into gear.

72 Seasons is monstrously long – 77 minutes to be precise – but the bloated run time actually does it some favours, particularly as the band turn in some of their most creative work to date.

This was undoubtably an excellent night out if you were lucky enough to be in the audience, but as an album it’s a mild diversion at best, which will probably end up directing you back to the Dylan original.

If there’s a fault to We Are Love, it’s probably that the immediate hooks that define The Charlatans’ best moments are missing. It’s an album more built on atmosphere and feel, and you do sometimes miss that exhilarating rush that tracks like One To Another, Love Is The Key or Weirdo had in spades.

Hey Venus!, then, is not the type of progressing heavyweight that has marked the output of later day Super Furries. As a shorter, lighter effort, though, it is every bit as tantalising, thickly coated in SFA-brand special sauce and still worth its weight in goal.

Those who choose to embrace and eulogise anything the great man releases will no doubt laud Fallen Angels as another triumph, but the harsh reality is this is Bob on auto-pilot.

Send A Prayer My Way is an album that confidently plays to its strengths and one that’s very much built on the undeniable chemistry between the two leads. Hopefully, it’s a collaboration that will be revisited in the not too distant future.

It may well wander all over the place and sound in need of a firm guiding hand at times, but it also contains some genuinely inventive and thrilling pop music.

Being a live album, some tracks are stretched out beyond their natural lifespan (the average length of the songs here is about six and a half minutes), but even then it's a joy to listen to the interaction between Thompson and his band.

Unlike anything else on the album, Clear Spirits stands out, with its submerged melodies, insistent basslines, and cascading guitars. If nothing else it proves that Les Savy Fav can still be vital and are still writing challenging, inventive material.

At The Down-Turned Jagged Rim Of The Sky is a startling album full of nuance, menace and wonder.

It arrives with sharp impact, melding abstraction and direct sound to impressive effect.

Emotional Mugger is a wild-eyed beast of a record; unafraid to stamp through the effects pedals with a delirious glee.

It's really rather good.

Galaxy Garden is a compelling exploration of Matt Culter's experiences of dance culture over two decades and its nods to the past, coupled with Lone's infinitely fresh and modern twist, make this one of the premier dance records of 2012 so far.

The Savage Heart is often just that,uncompromisingly breaking new, often bleakly fertile, ground for the band, showing they can still evolve emotionally.

The overwhelming feeling at the end of Black Rat is that this is a band with a lot more up their sleeve.

Carousel One exists as an album on which “meticulous” is the watchword; on which Sexsmith’s mastery of his craft is more readily apparent than ever; and on which a decades-long career has taken a turn for the cheerful.

While the album’s more maximalist aesthetic may bring challenges for the casual listener, for those who commit it succeeds in being a cohesive and impactful listen.

The DJing skills are still there and the grooves hold together throughout, though there is rarely much of interest on top of them. ... There are also precisely eight bars in The Cards’ mid-section where the drums hit just right, before they’re replaced with yet more poorly-mixed elements. These moments are so few and far between, however, that it’s hard to justify the album’s raison d’être.

Messy has been given time to come to fruition, and that shows through every note. It’s a fine demonstration of Olivia Dean’s talent, and sounds every inch a marker of a long and successful career.

If Young’s Archives were tiered by quality (with Homegrown and Way Down in the Rust Bucket at the top), then Oceanside Countryside is at least a B+. It’s a very enjoyable, consistent and relaxing listen that doesn’t come with any of the baggage of many of Young’s heavier releases. Just splendid.

It is a glorious statement of intent from one of pop's most misunderstood characters.

Dirty Projectors may be a breakup record, and one with its fair share of petty sniping (Keep Your Name’s pointed “What I want from art is truth, what you want is fame” is fairly hard to swallow without the suggestions elsewhere that Longstreth is playing characters) but, cathartic and redemptive, it’s one worth getting to know.

The folk elements lend Sylvan Esso a calm, and a daytime splendour, but Sanborn’s dance-oriented production, especially on the more electronic tracks, are set to be perfect 2am jams. This LP is the complete package.

Liberty, her seventh album, feels like the record she’s been desperate to make for some time.

Keys has pitched this album as genreless and, although the sonics are manifold – reggae, R&B, funk and even country – you get the sense that Keys has her eyes more on the narrative. There is genuine hope, despair, frustration and even ambivalence. In a world more in need of a key change than ever, we need this Alicia.