Impossible Truth is among the year’s most vivid and evocative albums so far, revealing new and absorbing details with every listen.

There’s a lot to love about The Art Of The Lie, but it also feels a bit like hard work at times: the pair of songs that close the album, Laura Lou and Zeitgeist are both heavy on the vocoder which you feel you’ve heard far too much of over the past hour.

If you know what's good for you, however, you'll drink the whole album in, because intelligently constructed and musically thrilling records like this are a rare, rare find.

Divorce have served quite a calling card with this debut, and it’s fair to say that, by the sounds of it, they’re in it for the long haul.

If you need a soundtrack to your 90 in 90, this is it. The pitfalls, the purity, the piousness of recovery. Just promise you’ll listen to it at least three times. It’s worth it.

Sleep Well Beast is as sad a record as The National have ever made, and yet it also feels like their most hopeful.

Héloïse Letissier’s synth-driven record is a more subtle, catch-you-unaware affair.

A singular, striking piece of work from an artist on top form, this record is not to be missed.

There may be nothing to touch Pretenders classics like Brass In Pocket or Don’t Get Me Wrong, but Relentless is an appropriately named album – the sound of a band constantly moving forward and refusing to submit to the dying of the light.

Wonderfully morose lyrics (and funny!), a pitch-perfect retro sound design that alternates between deadly serious and utterly comical, and a cohesive vision that represents the very best of their craft. Lovely stuff.

The xx have taken in all the experiences and lessons they have learned since their breakthrough and come up with their most adventurous and quietly uplifting release to date. It’s so good, it may even banish those January blues.

While her 10th album doesn’t make instant classic status like 1989, and Evermore and Folklore remain her masterpieces, it is still an understated, beguiling look into the mind of one of the biggest pop stars of our age.

Helplessness Blues sees the band finally reach the top of Barringer Hill and set off in majestic flight over the sunshine blessed countryside.

It’s one of those albums where favourite tracks keep changing and new things to enjoy are found upon each listen. In short, this is life-improving, morale-restoring music from three artists operating at the peak of their powers.

Kozelek is a songwriter operating with audacity and confidence, composing wry and forthright confessionals that investigate areas of everyday darkness and despair too rarely explored in popular song.

What we ultimately get with New Moon feels in part like a Best Of retrospective, but also in part a surreptitious and rather voyeuristic peek at Smith's innermost workings and thoughts.

Seasons Of My Soul... rarely moves above midtempo or out of 6/8 time, and in its warm duvet of production it makes for a soupy listen, even more so on the second or third spin. But that won't diminish the album's efficacy as music for dinner parties or - let's face it - tender baby-making.

In a world where Ed Sheeran and Drake are pretty much sharing the entire Top 20 singles chart, an album as wildly experimental and as much damn fun as this one is should be required listening.

It’s lacking an Espresso, so to speak – but as it is, this debut album is quite the introduction to an impressively talented young woman.

We Were Made Of Prey is an intense, haunting listen – it may not be the place to come to if you want an album of singalong tunes, but the raw emotion that Joseph and Campbell can conjure up is something to behold.

This is a deep and heartfelt album, being Kae Tempest’s strongest and most powerful statement yet. Instinctive and raw, yet tender to the touch, it demands to be heard.

This is out in the margins, removed from 'pop' and 'alternative' genres by the scale of its reach, its bloody and bold ambition. It is complex, multilayered, densely plotted, wordy. It's also scary, harsh and bruised.

You wouldn’t wish the circumstances that brought about Weirdo on anyone, but it’s resulted in an album unafraid to take risks and one which only underlines Thackray’s huge talent.

The whole of Atrocity Exhibition takes Brown’s craft to a new level, even if his delivery occasionally grates. It’s by far the best thing he’s released and confirms his arrival among the rap elite.

while Silent Movie felt like a minor departure, this record still manages to sound deeply connected to its predecessors.

Transangelic Exodus is a beautiful, dark, twisted, painful and yet hopeful tale.

While it stands apart, this is an evolution that will please both Wild Beasts' early adopters and the many converts that will surely follow from what is, without doubt, one of the stand out releases of the year.

It might take a week, a month, or even a year for it to yield up all its treasures; but after only a week in its company, this reviewer's instincts tell him that Have One On Me is a masterpiece.