Goldberg, though, ought not to be penalised for his occasional switch of stance and self-leniency: this is an album that may not grace millions of record collections, but may well enjoy classic status in those that it does.

While the album's last two tracks proper--Go Deep and The Fish Of Little Thoughts--may well have the restive ear agitating for greater variety with their continued gossamer construction and dreamy folk structuring, they leave little doubt as to Snowblink's assured grasp of naturally beautiful melodies formed simply, patiently and organically; Long Live as a whole is the creation that proves it.

There are one or two new ventures into the unknown, but by and large, The Pigeon Detectives haven't made enough progression from Emergency.

This isn't showing off with noise like post-rock can sometimes be accused of; it is, rather, intricate knowledge of how a leaderless band uses its flexibility to craft rises and falls that consume and envelop, making it an essential addition to anyone's list of 2011 records to own.

When you have the knack, as this band most clearly have, of infusing your music with such full and rich emotion, then it makes sense to use that as your primary method of conveying meaning.

It's great to hear this timeless artist so relaxed and enjoying herself. Perhaps if she continues her collaborative relationship with The Siss Boom Bang, future recordings could be even more special.

In a year that's already been rather special for great albums, Merrill Garbus may well have produced the finest record of the year.

Somehow, the expected drama or crescendo never quite arrives, and we are left with an overextended auditory shrug, sadly emblematic of the rest of this strangely unsatisfying album.

It's an album that is truly surprising. It's clever enough with the homages to properly capture the spirit of the period they are referencing, but smart enough to not ever just pastiche it.

It will be intriguing to see where Cass McCombs goes next. A little more light and shade wouldn't go amiss, yet even his dark side is eminently loveable.

In Ponytail, that long-ago art project seems to have spawned the real thing – a band with an imprint and sound all of its own, with much of joy to share around.

From this irrepressible debut, we can deduce that Katy B is a genuinely exciting UK urban vocal talent, the like of which we haven't seen in some time.

While existing fans are catered to generously, the band have brought their sound on in leaps and bounds; an achievement that is testament to Mount's evolving songwriting prowess. They don't come much better than this.

The Constant Pageant--particularly its first half--does indeed rock, and not just by the standards of folk music.

Wild Divine finds Diane attempting new approaches to production and arrangement and should perhaps be seen as a transitional album. At the moment, the performances from within her comfort zone remain the most effective.

Given the impact of All Our Ends, that may be intentional - but it means the album is best experienced as a whole rather than in snippets. Then it can fully reveal its power.

An electronic album that manages to sound intimate, late-summer warmth turning to autumnal melancholy, and a cartoon band that suddenly seems a little fragile.

Chopped & Screwed is a thoughtful experiment at best and a quasi-misfire at worst, but either way it demands to be analyzed--which alone makes it worthy.

Share The Joy finds Vivian Girls trying to broaden their scope and missing the mark a bit. Certainly, fans of the band will find something to like.

It's a competent disco celebration of an album, but Holy Ghost! will need to dig a little deeper into their souls and diversify their influences to make more of a mark in the long run.

There are no secrets, just affecting music. Paper Airplanes is another breath of fresh air from a now legendary band.

Tomboy once again sees Lennox creating a distinctive, hypnotic sound-world - but it sometimes feels too much like a world from which there is a strong desire to escape.

C'Mon is a pause for breath, a likeable but slight addition to an impressive back catalogue.

Nine Types Of Light is another strong early contender for album of the year.

Wasting Light sounds like the work of a band with something to prove, rather than the work of one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Alexander is a thoroughly enjoyable LP, but one that comes across as ever-so-slightly lightweight.

There's the sense that Wild Palms are a band who desperately want to create their own world but Until Spring never quite manages to draw you fully into its bubble.

The final results are of such subtle beauty they take the breath clean away.

Euphoric Heartbreak is a more accomplished, interesting piece of work; a brutal but exhilarating listen. Yet without the hype that surrounded its predecessor, and with a distinct change of tact, it might struggle to find its natural home.

Callahan is never anything less than consistent, however, and Apocalypse has an identity of its own.

For the most part however, this is a focused and enjoyable stomp.

Hunx And His Punx are happily basic, and that has resulted in a half-hour of impeccable golden-age pop, but there's certainly no great cosmic significance here. Yet it's still easy to get excited about a half-hour of impeccable golden-age pop, and in that mindset it's well worth a few spins.

For the tale is only partially told here - which, when you compare The Most Incredible Thing perhaps unfavourably to the great ballets of the 19th or 20th centuries, is the one thing most obviously lacking. For now we should admire the abilities of Tennant and Lowe to move from structures of four minutes to those of an hour and a half, and hope this encourages them to continue in a form in which they have made a very listenable start.

This album ought to further Bibio's reputation as a talented producer, capable of bending his music to fit several styles at once without making it sound forced, which is quite an achievement.

Cold Cave are not shooting for nuance; the tracks here all beg to be the highlights, striving for anthemic bliss without any modesty.

It's an album that deserves the limelight, regardless of how it got there.

Kassidy have proved they're as serious about recording as they are performing and if their debut album is any indication, they're in it for the long haul.

Submarine is the sound of the real Turner emerging to the surface, and it offers a depth charge to the age of the lazy movie soundtrack.

Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis (a husband and wife duo from Madison, Wisconsin, the latter formerly a member of Numbers) have toned down the noisier elements of their sound without sacrificing interest or depth to create this, the most successful of their two full lengths so far.

Four square club rhythms are jettisoned in favour of a series of weirdly compelling sound collages, in which percussion and electronics combine together in natural and seemingly effortless improvisations.

Much of, if not all of What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? suffers from a complete lack of intelligence, candidness or originality: elements that help make guitar-based music interesting.

Any one of these songs has the potential to be a dance floor filler and that's what they've been designed for. There is nothing too original here, nothing big nor clever neither, but then if you like guitars and songs about teenage love you're going to be well catered for.

For a record that veers between hit and miss, there is a certain amount of charm and vibrancy that keeps one coming back for more.

All Eternals Deck sees The Mountain Goats deliver their most assured sound and Darnielle his most profound poetry.

With great pop hooks a-plenty, Daydreams And Nightmares amply demonstrates that growing up doesn't always have to be boring.

Stark yet still overtly dramatic, it's an astonishing showcase of confessional songwriting.

Though it has become something of a tired old format in much incidental music for the moving image, Greenwood shows how the string orchestra remains a descriptive force in the right hands.

Horses And High Heels is another impressive entry in her catalogue, as genuine as anything she's done since the 1979 classic Broken English.

In her first offering, Jessie J's only real failing appears to be her attempt to be everything to everyone. As a result the album fails to live up to its title, for by the end of it you're left none the wiser when it comes to the identity of Jessie J.

With The People's Key, he continues to solidify his place as one of the great songwriters of his generation. Here's hoping he doesn't hang it up anytime soon.

All You Need Is Now is unlikely to win over any new fans, but it might reignite or validate forgotten guilty pleasures and, for Duranies, it's an album to sit alongside its older relatives with pride.

It's hard to go into explicit detail on Music Sounds Better With You, simply because of how happily delightful it is.

They don't offer much that's new, but this album is far too enjoyable to squabble over that.

Musically, lyrically and emotionally, it works.

Apart from a short reprise of the McNally-penned title track this, then, is how the album closes, and the lasting image that it leaves you with. It is a fitting summary of all that is great, and troubling about this unique, uncompromising band.

Disjointed, hyperactive, experimental, whatever. Angles is the album to beat this year.

So from no albums in 13 years to two high quality long players in the space of six months - the star of Gil Scott-Heron is very much in the ascendency again, his influence on today's culture thrown into ever greater relevance by one of its finest new producers. It's that rare thing--a properly fine remix album.

Armageddon is a sop to the disaffected fans of FFAF's pomp, and in seeking to recapture their ardour it tries too hard to pander to their needs. And from the few tracks that evidence what could have been, that's a shame.

Burn Your Town makes a refreshing change from your average debut indie LP for a couple of primary reasons. Firstly, it's showcasing a band who, rather than going down the easy route, actually care a lot more about first impressions than most of their contemporaries. Secondly, it hints that they could grow and mature nicely.

To ears trained on western classical harmony, rock and roll, or even much of the jazz tradition, this will sound fearsomely complex. What is truly impressive about these three players is how confident and effortless they make it all sound.

By virtue of the last track sitting in such stark, depressive contrast to the rest, Spiera probably accidentally, but definitely effectively, makes you want to skip back to the start - an analogy for the underlying feelings he gives away over Beau Velasco.

The use of the church organ is a particular masterstroke and it imbues Hecker's compositions here not with grandiosity, but with a sort of faded grandeur that chimes brilliantly with his familiar themes. It also offers a superb range of texture and sound, sometimes attacking and aggressive, at others soft and warm.

Julianna Barwick is crafting gorgeously effecting sounds in a way that nobody has quite heard before, far beyond the snickering Enya comparisons or the reductive ties to Eno's ambience, this isn't music for thinking or studying, this is just music for living.

Given that it follows a possible career-best Dinosaur Jr album - 2009's superb Farm - long-term Dino fans will hope that Several Shades Of Why isn't the start of a permanent solo career. But Mascis followers will find plenty to enjoy here.

This is a staggering record, displaying not only a golden streak of songwriting but also a band newly energised to their cause - making it a return to form of near biblical proportions. Highly recommended.

It goes beyond technically supreme homages into the realms of risk-taking and unpredictability. The vibe is nevertheless still every bit as cool, relaxed and controlled as might be expected from Elling. Not everything pays off, but Elling is branching out in courageous style.

In essence Shapes And Shadows sounds unfinished, an album for the sake of notching "solo career" into Ottewell's bedpost, and completely inessential in the grand scheme of things.

Essentially this is an album about escapism, whether it's from a city (as in Tonight's The Kind Of Night) or the place in life that these characters find themselves.

Let Me Come Home is a very straight faced record, yet for all of its apparently bleak subject matter; it is an album that revels in the restorative healing power of music and song. It is also beautifully written and performed and deserves to be up there with this year's best.

In their own, low key, understated way, Elbow continue to beguile and impress.

Boys And Diamonds is a madcap trek around the postmodern musical landscape of a world on the brink of catastrophe.

It successfully establishes an effective common ground between the musical traditions of Africa and the Caribbean. It's also a sweet, appealing and vibrant set delivered with a satisfying combination of energy and sensitivity.

Collapse Into Now is a fine album, and one that's far better than any band together for three decades has any right to be. What a pity, then, that they're not going to tour it.

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

An all-out disco party record is waiting to be unleashed amongst it all somewhere, but Discodeine's debut is something of a mixed bag.

The Papercuts project seems destined for bigger and brighter stages on the back of Fading Parade; a fine testament to Quever, jack of all trades, master of some.

The best thing about Malachai is that they're delightfully odd.

He has talent, he's capable, and he's got a future - there are occasional flashes of creativity-stuffed aptitude - but this time around they're merely flashes.

Full of derision that the less talented one out of Oasis is going to be found out on his own? You won't be dissuaded.

If you ignore the obvious filler and give it time to wash over, Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under is an enjoyable set of songs that will linger long in the memory.

Generally there's not too much straying away from the Nashville sound and Wagner's production keeps things sounding impressively full and remarkably fresh considering the age of the source material.

Fans of Joan Wasser's previous releases Real Life and To Survive will find plenty to fall in love with on this third album.

Holding the eclectic mix together is Tabor's characteristic raw yet tender voice, which carries the weight of the world while looking out from a rugged and brutal shore across a bleak, grey but ultimately beautiful ocean.

There are too many unlistenable experiments left in, too much bland monotony. What little goodness remains simply isn't worth the effort.

The problem here is that all these competing styles result in a bit of a lack in a distinctive voice for the band.

King Of Limbs is a subtle, muti-layered affair - surprisingly low-key in places, and it certainly won't win back any fans who checked out in the late '90s.

Joyful and experimental in equal measure, Fluorescence is an album that challenges you without you even realising.

It won't be remembered for long, but in 40 minutes the album offers an amorous walk through a woman's keen strength in a style of music that will never sound dated.

Its gentleness is affecting and transporting and the whole album is carefully constructed and beautifully performed. It is also brilliantly sequenced--a work that very much needs to be digested as a whole.

It's sustainable, technically sound, and part of a much bigger feast that happened a couple years ago.

There is also swagger to it all that suggests Holub and Led Bib are still, on their fifth album, trying to prove themselves. A little more space would have made for a more fully satisfying listening experience.

The Aussie portion of the band bring a ray of sunshine that will soundtrack your summer, but its sharp lyrics and occasional down-beat moments mean it's not sickly sweet. Expect them to grab the indie-pop baton and run with it.

Delicacies lacks the pop craftsmanship and euphoric electro of Attack and the singular outstanding tracks of Temporary Pleasures, never attempting to introduce vocals to supplement their evident ability to create an intriguing techno dance track.

As such, the experimentations, and their hit-and-miss nature, doesn't make for an album you want to play over and over again; in fact, a fair amount of tunes are rather forgettable and don't really offer much.

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.

With much to commend them and their sound, Chapel Club may not have the newest or freshest set of ideas on the block, but the inner confidence coursing through their veins suggests they are open to invention and greater emotion on future records.

By switching voices and languages, and throwing in string quartets alongside swooning electronica, he pushes different versions of reality, and while on the whole it slips into background noise, there are moments when Excerpts packs a punch. And there's plenty to capture a more vivid and patient imagination.

Napa Asylum graces us with moments of understated beauty, and when it's not terrifying us with bad trips, leaves a feeling of contentment and fuzzy warmth with the world. However, 22 tracks is gratuitous and excessive, and the repetitiveness inherent in some of the tracks shows that quantity, and not always quality, swayed the making of the final cut.