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.