Six years in the making, Mew's sixth album is opulence in excelsis, the Danish dream-weavers gathering all the synths and power chords at their disposal to conjure a feast for the ears.

The result is a maelstrom of noise, both ominous and ecstatic, doomy minor chords and cloud-parting major riffs.

Cherry Bomb might be the tightest, leanest Tyler album yet.

This is an album to file alongside Aphex Twin’s ‘Syro’: one-of-a-kind electronic artist returns reinvigorated and still way ahead of the game.

Their musical range may not yet be as expansive as her vocal one, but any group who are able to segue from the psychotropic ’70s soul of ‘Guess Who’ to the proto-punk sturm und drang of ‘The Greatest’ are clearly no one-trick ponies.

It's a tough record to get a handle on, all fidgety switches of tempo and style, but the slippery acid of 'Industry City' and woozy electronica of 'Closer 2 U' reveal the breadth of Woodhead's vision.

This is a reunited band making music to rival their very best. There’s airmiles aplenty in these Essex Dogs yet.

Only ‘The English Summer’ and ‘Pink Lemonade’ bear much resemblance to the antsy, fidgety post-punk The Wombats made their name with, and both end up falling somewhat flat. In its place are the sleek, synth-laden likes of ‘Be Your Shadow’ and ‘Headspace’ --precision-engineered for mass appeal, but no less effective for it.

After this increasing headway, Ivy Tripp is slicker than its predecessors, but Crutchfield’s emotional rawness hasn’t been glossed over.

The harmonies are still present, but where once they aimed for a weirdy Wicker Man feel, now they combine forces in stirring new ways.

The Very Best still know how to party.

The rattling drums and broad, ambient synths on closer ‘Beams’ represent a rare foray into a fuller sound, but, for the most part, Dark Red plays out like the soundtrack to a creepy sci-fi-horror flick.

If White Men really recalls anything, it’s those early TV On The Radio records made before Dave Sitek had figured out what he was doing--and you can take that as a sincere compliment.

Rather than settling on a unified feel, second album Culture Of Volume also delights in genre-hopping, but it’s less abstract and more coherent than its predecessor.

Their vision remains a bleak one--but it makes resistance sound holy, and love sound like a revolutionary act.

Its high points are so charming you're willing to forgive the occasional low one.

The little dude is a poet. Still, at a relatively lean 30 minutes, it’s hard to argue this is a heavyweight album.

This isn’t so much a progression as a rebirth.

Lyrically and musically, Gallows are a very different band from the one who made ‘Grey Britain’, and the fact that you can’t imagine them making this album (or its predecessor) with Carter will remain a deal-breaker for some.

The assembled talent takes This Is The Kit’s traditional folk to the edge of the avant-garde.

In August 2014, Los Angeles trio Wand released debut ‘Ganglion Reef’, a psychedelic record inspired by a make-believe island. They’ve maintained that imaginative approach for follow-up Golem, which is full of brain-bending riffs, effects and abstract lyrics.

The Great Pretenders is an emotional, emboldened triumph.

One of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest.

Unquestionably, every song has been written to add firepower to the band’s live show, but it’s nonetheless the strongest and most confident Prodigy album since ‘The Fat Of The Land’.

A more diverse and calculated album than a usual Hey Colossus offering, and all the better for it.

Tracks like 'Mortar Remembers You' convey the bleakness of the situation ("I had to build a room to contain all the panic"), but Campbell's voice and the persistent whirling synths infuse the desolation with compelling energy.

An album that, lacking the neatly redemptive arc of 'good kid, mAAd city', is also grand and slightly unwieldy.

Thirteen-minute finale ‘Through The Knowledge Of Those Who Observe Us’ is the crowning glory of their career best album.

He has an uncanny feel for the triangulation of folk, jazz and blues that came from the fleet fingers of Bert Jansch and John Fahey back in the ’60s.

Frenzied excitement still prevails.

A classic, if often over-familiar Cribs album then, but the door is open for the forthcoming Steve Albini-produced ‘punk one’ to be the death-or-glory game-changer.

She might not want a pedestal, but there aren’t many songwriters who’d make better use of it.

Drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale’s delirious sing-song brings notes of fancy to tracks like ‘Dream Genie’, but Lightning Bolt’s aim remains simple: to batter you into ecstatic submission.

It's an impressively unpredictable record that veers down wildly different paths, in ways no previous Modest Mouse album has dared.

Throughout, singer Bid's smooth baritone paints intriguing vignettes ("He was the best thing that you've ever seen in Swansea", goes 'When I Get To Hollywood'), adding colour to an already rich album.

There's no overarching narrative to Short Movie--it plays out like a series of vignettes, of moods and moments, people and places--but there is a sense of a journey completed, with a hard-won wisdom at the end of it.

While it's still shrouded in the frontman's down-in-the-mouth moodiness, its slinking rhythms offer the album's most striking and effective contrast between light and dark.

Their most complete, most important album yet. Ferocious, thrilling and unrelentingly heavy, it’s an emphatic reminder of who Cancer Bats really are.

Yet although much of it coasts along on autopilot, it can be outrageously good fun.

There are cheesy moments--Jesso pretends to cry on 'Crocodile Tears', and 'Can't Stop Thinking About You' mimics the theme from US sitcom Cheers--but the compelling fragility of his demos remains. Because of that, Goon is a triumph.

Ultimately, Rebel Heart feels like a wasted opportunity.

Policy is a gloriously unhinged sprawl of a record, but fittingly for the man who constructed sparse piano tech-paeans for the soundtrack to Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie Her, the downbeat moments resonate, too.

Sunne is a grotty, grubby and exciting refining of Cheatahs' sound.

The volume remains punishing, but this record triumphs in melodic subtlety, political nuance and conceptual clarity.

Another Eternity is a far more mainstream-sounding album than their 2012 debut ‘Shrines’, but it’s also rooted in sounds from the underground.

What Happens Next is a distracted listen--an experimental Gill production that should be out under his name only.

Chasing Yesterday has its flaws, but they’re far outnumbered by moments where it succeeds in catching up with its titular quarry.

For all the music's cagey intelligence, Drake sounds like the kind of guy who comes sauntering out the traps in a 100m race and immediately breaks out into a victory lap, pausing only to remonstrate with hecklers.

The abrasion and urgency of their sound remains, but magnified, as they explore new territory.

While I Want To Grow Up doesn’t exactly break new ground, it compensates by being affecting, relatable and having occasional gnarly solos.

You can hear Badu’s influence across EarthEE, which flows as freely as its predecessor, but is more sonically detailed and rich.

This resulting debut is a masterpiece of desert blues; blending American guitar licks with Malian groove.

Sure, it has its moments.... However, things come unstuck when Joker swings for romance.

Here they’re more melodic, emphasising tone rather than volume. It pays off.

Even though Gliss Riffer comes with no added extras it still creaks under the weight of its experiments.

The record is littered with painstakingly layered guitar parts, mellifluous melodies and clapping drumbeats that nod to Russell’s posthumous collection ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’.

Closer ‘Sea Of Trees’ is as impressive, its restrained riff suddenly smothered by an almighty dirge. It’s a fitting climax to a record that unsettles from start to finish.

It sounds like the start of another beautiful friendship.

The most electric and exuberant record he’s made since ‘Up The Bracket’.

Mourn exhibits a young band fully aware of their own qualities: fierceness, confidence and brutally simple songwriting.

Tracks like 'Oya', 'Think Of You' and 'River' have a sparse, ghostly quality reminiscent of early Regina Spektor or Björk. Innovative and comforting.

The result is a beguiling--albeit, at seven tracks, rather short--set of intricate, finger-picked songs.

I Know Myself (Montreal)’ revitalises the album version with warped acoustic guitar and brass, and Tanner adds foreboding guitar noise to a narcotic ‘Green Eyes (Music Blues)’. But the rich piano on ‘Love (Montreal)’ is best, crowning an EP that expands on the wealth of ideas McMahon put into Love.

An exuberant record that is well worth your time.

Depending on your standpoint as regards selling out and cashing in, you'll either be baffled or delighted to discover that they've adjusted their modus operandi not one jot on the follow-up, O Shudder.

For the most part, Peace have made their 'difficult' second album look surprisingly straightforward.

Childish’s defiant presence guides.

Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt 2--don’t go looking for a part one, you won’t find it--sounds like it’s on its own strange course.

A freshly squeezed record with the pulp left in it.

Both modern and natural, tragedy has tugged defiance from The Charlatans once more.

It's odd that parts of it sound too careful.

It's all wildly self-indulgent, but pleasant enough.

Written around the time Tillman got hitched to this girlfriend, it's a hugely ambitious, caustically funny album about the redemptive possibilities of love, and being heartily sick of your own bullshit.

This year’s first great pop record bowls in with a rapturous celebration of the genre's rebellious, trashy potential (and a bottle of champagne and a pocketful of pills to boot).

It’s not a bad record, but, ultimately, All We Are lacks energy.

A buoyant record that should widen his audience, up to now largely confined to his Bandcamp page--a trove of gently weird psychedelia.

None of which is to say it’s a bad album, just a lightweight one.

It’s not an easy listen, but a brave, beautiful and affecting album--an attempt to find order in chaos that, as she wishes for it, offers a “crutch” to the heartbroken.

It all adds up to an emphatic showcase of Pond’s personality, and their ability to inflict their eccentric spirit on any genre they fancy.

Uptown Special is Ronson’s moment of absolution: you can try to hate it, but in the end, as with all the best pop music, resistance is futile.

Fans of Women’s challenging melodies will appreciate the songcraft here, but Viet Cong are very much their own animal; with deep forays into demonic white noise ('Continental Shelf'), clanging post-punk ('Silhouettes') and psychedelic/prog-rock on sprawling closer 'Death', they're expanding into adventurous new directions.

It's no classic, but perhaps the surprise here is that Manson’s music can work without the shock shtick.

It’s a shame that on The Mindsweep, Shikari's message is occasionally lost among the madness.

A very weird album, but a very intriguing one too.

Menace Beach’s debut may relish a world on the brink of chaos, but this is a band with their shit together.

It’s heavy, assured and profound--a terrific record alone, but also one that sits in the Sleater-Kinney catalogue naturally, like they’ve never been away.

Opener ‘Teenage Exorcists’ really would have been an awkward fit on ‘Rave Tapes’, a rare vocal-led effort with the enveloping guitar of shoegaze and REM’s anthemic tenderness. More plausible is the idea that ‘History Day’ and ‘HMP Shaun William Ryder’ were left off the album because they’re basically Mogwai-by-numbers. Of the remixes, Fuck Buttons’ Ben Power, trading as Blanck Mass, triumphs.

It’s easy to confuse simplicity with triteness, but the pair have a knack for magnetic and clearly considered ditties.

The Sun Kil Moon frontman may revel in the role of indie-rock’s great white grinch, but as Sings Christmas Carols proves, he’s no more immune to the spirit of the season than his furry green counterpart was.

Right up to the cover of Mud’s ‘Lonely This Christmas’ done as though it’s East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’, this is a Christmas riot.

The turgid ‘Robots From Hell’ aside, they carry it off.

‘The Balcony’ is informed both by their struggle and their noughties indie elders. All this adds up to a dated sound.

The fragile piano melody of 'Just Like You' stands out, but this 90-minute piece is best digested whole, as another accomplished Reznor film score.

After 64 minutes of the same, it all starts to feel like a bit of a grind.

The good--no, the astonishing--news is that this constantly engrossing record repays a decade and a half's faith and patience. D'Angelo has scuttled down the digital chimney with an early Christmas gift with long-lasting rewards: not just one of the best records of 2014, but one that will stay with you throughout next year, too.

A sublime farewell from the millennium's finest synth act.

Recorded in sessions at a French convent and a San Francisco studio and featuring analogue electronics alongside strings, brass and woodwind, Geocidal is monolithic.

They’re too wilfully mad to emulate Tame Impala’s success, but if you’re after a freaking out, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s outrageous noise deserves attention.