As intimate, beautiful and witty as ever, there’s an impassioned life in Leonard that's missing from many artists a quarter of his age.

What lies beneath is frequently glorious, especially in the second half, where rolling, Afrobeat-infused rhythms underpin their best work.

Syro is amazing: bug-eyed, banging rave that sounds quintessentially Aphex while not quite sounding like anything he’s done before.

From the frantic 'Smoking Kills' to the joyously frank drinking song 'Bottle To Bottle', there's more than enough evidence to suggest the Brighton trio are the caustic blast of honesty and character the UK punk scene's been lacking recently.

This Is All Yours engulfs you like a deep forest. Alt-J Mk II, then: an impressive expansion, with hugely improved connectivity.

Repeated listens unmask 'Ryan Adams' as a great record, and a sleek departure from 2011's 'Ashes & Fire.'

This Is My Hand should see her join him, her other collaborators and St Vincent in the US experimental pop pantheon.

[Songs Of Innocence] has only a handful of standouts.... This is a serious mis-step that might win a week's worth of good publicity, but could foreshadow a year's worth of bad.

Warm and welcoming, Alphaville sounds a great place to lose yourself.

Rather than evolution, Listen offers questionable overindulgence in funk, soul and chopped beats.

Scruffy melodies informed debut album 'A Thousand Heys' and they return here ('Vapour Trails') but Jack Cooper's homegrown themes are interwoven expertly.

It’s heavenly, in its own troubled way.

It’s less nightclub, more drunken iPod selection, typical of late-period Tricky: brilliant, frustrating and fatally inconsistent.

Her debut LP is good, but not up to the standard its title suggests.

At times throwaway, at others raw, intimate and charming, there’s plenty here you’ll want to get your mate to ask out for you.

His outfit have returned with an album that skirts close to perfection in its 35 minutes of glorious madness and transcendent, George Harrison-like guitar solos.

They have returned hungry and wired to shake us out of our digital comas.

On this evidence, SMD aren't quite there and the result is, sadly, a bit boring.

It's a success, the influence of the body on the music making it sound positively alive.

There's something a little too ‘phone advert’ about it all to properly excite.

While the band's long-standing interest in songs about monsters, vampires and zombies is absent, Fair's yelps of enthusiasm and lightning-strike guitar could wake the dead.

It’s nothing you won’t have heard before--the clue, after all, is right there in the title--but hearing it done as well as this is rare indeed.

Carefully constructed and wonderfully cohesive, it's an album or earnest, yearning rock that shows Lonely The Brave are aiming for the fire cannons and shirtless mega-gigs that Biffy Clyro have worked so hard for.

Of course, the whole venture has about as much cultural currency now as an octopus's garden, but it's a lovely timewarp to slip into.

If there's a quibble, it's an avoidable tendency to let songs drift into overtly tasteful territory, but on point, Ballet School do their heroes proud.

Hopefully Total Control can continue because, brutal as it is, Typical System is the year's finest punk album.

Production comes from Steve Albini but here, unlike his work with (well, wouldn't you know) PJ Harvey and Slint, his less-is-more approach is the only point of weakness on an otherwise impressively dramatic record.

Fifth time round, they're proving there's still plenty of value in their elegantly downtrodden aesthetic.

A little more variation would have been nice, but you know what they say about stopped clocks.

Sadly, the promise of desert-rock heaviness is, if anything, underplayed.

Along with his collaborators (including David Byrne and Damon Albarn), he has neatly stitched a tapestry of musical cultures into a cohesive, convincing whole.

Blonde Redhead continue to splinter off into an exciting world of their own.

While they’ve never been terribly fashionable, they’ve always used that to their advantage, projecting a underdog siege mentality whilst simultaneously selling out arenas. Concrete Love, however, is nothing to beat their own drum about.

On Always Returning, their fourth album, they've delivered yet again.

It makes for a more organically toned collection that proves the grey wizard doesn’t need heavy distortion to stay at the top of his game.

Green Language is an adventurous, enthralling, emotional and frequently brilliant album, then. And yet, from an artist of such rare talent, it’s also a frustrating, slightly underwhelming one.

Nothing new, then, but the Jaxx's sound returns re-energised. Call it the Disclosure effect.

While the album may not fully scale D'Agostino's high bar, in attempting to make that leap Cymbals Eat Guitars have made their best album to date as well as a touching goodbye to a friend.

It's clever, brave and seamless enough to become a classic.

Tinged with Grandaddy and full of hooks that twinkle like the diodes on a robot from 1984, this is an obscenely enjoyable return.

When The Wytches employ a lighter ‘Suck It And See’-era Arctic Monkeys touch they’re capable of ‘Wire Frame Mattress’ and ‘Track 13’, exceptional songs full of both melody and menace.

Despite being Segall's longest, packing 17 tracks into just under an hour, it’s also his most focused.

There's light, shade and careful nuance throughout.

Michaelson’s oaken, hefty voice is flecked with creaks of optimism, while the band slump elegantly into their forlorn Americana, to stand proudly alongside the likes of Bill Callahan and The National.

While charming, Albumin suffers from a distinct lack of harmony.

His [singer Brian Fallon] dramatic vocals might be in full force, but conspicuous by their absence are The Gaslight Anthem's usual lyrical canvases of Americana, save for a couple of brief glimpses of the old dive bar-dwelling, jukebox-thumping badasses in the pair of back-to-back weepies that close the album.

The hangover may be setting in, but DZ Deathrays have found new ways to party.

It’s an impressive display, but the contrast between the two sides is so vast they could easily be two different records.

The result is not just unimaginative and lyrically anodyne--it’s boring.

At 30 minutes long, the trip is brief, but it covers so much ground.

Across a leisurely hour, the slow double bass pull of ‘Broken Wave (A Blues For Doogie)’, the deadpan spoken word and pattering steel drums of ‘Guy Fawkes’ Signature’ and the chatty lyricism on cuckolding regret ‘The Very, Very Best’ stand out, but it’s all golden.

Great Divide is a love letter to the power of music itself; earnest, yes, but as heart-warming a rock record as it's possible to imagine.

His debut lives and breathes the Deep South, from the Chuck Berry references (most effective on opener 'Violent Shiver') to the slower, more hushed tones of 'I Thought I Heard You Screaming', which sees Booker take his vocal cues straight from Bobbie Gentry's late-’60s peak.

Most of these 33 tracks are uptempo bolts of energy.

Catchy and abstract in equal measure, Sea When Absent is the thrilling sound of shoegazing introverts coming out of their shells.

Their imagery may be impenetrable--all "teardrops on the wires" and particles "falling into space"--but the tunes haunt the mind long after they've faded.

If Pe’ahi is a tribute to Sune’s father, it’s a warts-and-all portrayal of a turbulent relationship, but one delivered with a tenderness and intensity that propels the very concept of the retro garage duo into a fresh sonic stratosphere. Drop in, it’s an exhilarating descent.

Overall, it makes for a fascinating listen that rewards close attention, even if a lack of true standouts means the album is more impressive than loveable.

Taking common inspiration and twisting it into their own shape, Childhood have concocted a debut that’s more than capable of standing up to the rougher approach of their geographical peers. In doing so, they've uncovered a diamond.

The album title promises much in the way of forthright antagonism and the Jessie J hair she sports suggests some kind of ironic statement on the chart mainstream, but the content fails to deliver, save for two isolated moments.

The cream of their output is undeniable--the Air-like stringed beauty of ‘Les Nuits’, gut-wobbling soul wailer ‘I Am You’ and early singles ‘Dextrous’ and ‘Aftermath’--but there’s an awful lot of so-so wallpaper here, especially for a Best Of.

Moments do [stand alone]--instrumental 'Enrolment' is dark, stark and almost krautrocky, while closer 'Graduation' lilts with beautiful melancholy--yet, devoid of its context, it all feels somewhat banal.

Their records once had a two-sided feel, Angus' songs lacking the drama of his sister's, Julia lacking her brother's restraint. Here, particularly on 'Death Defying Acts' and 'Little Whiskey', they've got the balance just right.

This pervading sense of control and commitment to her art proves that Twigs is set on building the sound of the future all by herself.

The messy trip-hop of 'If I Could' and screeching synth line of 'First Snow' mean Nausea lacks consistency, but it's a clever and rewarding record.

For all its prettiness, though, Passerby is a record that boasts about as much excitement as a gentle breeze, and its rewards are too few and far between.

The album is split into 10 blasts of discordant brilliance.

The result is joyous electropop with depth--dance beats, '80s-ish synths and Caila's soulful, voluminous vocals fanning out into gorgeous harmonies.

By the time you reach the gentle conclusion of ‘Bonedigger’, it’s clear Adult Jazz will be inspiring their own army of rip-offs before long.

They Want My Soul is a cult record in the making from the quintessential cult group. Normal service has been resumed.

While there’s nothing quite as dynamic as the best work of Shelton’s labelmates Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, Cold World provides a rousing listen for fans of vintage soul.

Intrepid it ain’t, but sometimes the straightforward approach has its rewards.

‘Flatlands And The Flemish Roads’ evokes feelings of motion, ‘Ode To Viennese Streets’ a sense of relaxation, but strip away their titles and the concept evaporates, leaving a warm but undemanding album.

No Time is a fine and strange album.

Ultimately, the pop sheen Adams applies on The Voyager is at odds with Lewis' songs. By always opting for directness, he's failed to let her do justice, musically, to the darkness of her inspiration.

As a statement of blingy opulence, it’s a big look. As gangsta move, it’s pretty potent too. At the same time, though, it proves that while Shabazz Palaces are definitely moving in hip-hop’s orbit, they’re spinning further out than most.

It won’t convert the unconvinced, but Petty sounds as inspired as ever.

Equal parts The Runaways and Weezer, but still going, and still good.

The Black Angels’ psych scholarship pays dividends here.

The result is not unlike Lana Del Rey, but with fun instead of fatalistic gloom.

Lyrically 2 Chainz knows he's no street Shakespeare, but as this EP shows, he can certainly knows his way around an arresting tune.

The two-piece create an irresistible sense of longing that’s more disarming than Donovan’s smoothest pants-off line.

Having now racked up multiple albums of tastefully burbling electronics and inscrutable guitar oddness, Instrument still suits the term: rarely does it ‘rock’ at all, so TRR may as well have progressed beyond it. It’s by no means without merit, though.

Creosote’s first album since doesn’t have quite the same woozy charm, trading the lush and eerie textures for gentler, more traditional ditties, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still pleasures to be plundered.

[A] great debut record laced with melancholy and beautiful moments.

It’s not much more than the sum of its influences, but when its influences are this strong, it really doesn’t matter.

It’s bolder than before, and easily their best-executed album yet.

In spite of all the terror and uncertainty, it's the warmth that lingers.

Most of the scattershot pastiches hit their targets.

The result is a record that fully embraces the theatricality of its genre but falls just on the right side of ridiculous.

They fare better on the more tuneful, less screechy 'Midnight Hours', but as a whole the album would have benefited from some ruthless editing and extra production spit and polish.

Although Leven recites a fair number of hippie clichés (“Make some peace, everyone” implores ‘Seasoned Sun’), it’s her inventive use of an arsenal of rich, vintage synths that rescues Season Sun from cloying sweetness.

There’s a reason that the London-via-Kendall four-piece, centred around siblings Fiona and Will Burgess, have been attracting such attention. In fact, there are 11 of them on this debut full-length. Much of it’s down to Fiona Burgess’ sad yet sultry vocals and the way they stretch across these dreamy, largely synth-based songs.

For all the flash and flair, the freshest, most intimate moments here are the result of holding back.

Here he delivers a 14-minute psychedelic disco odyssey ('Comment Revoir Oursinet?') about missing his teddy bear. The rest of 'L'Aventura', his sixth album, is deep-pile funk ('Sous Les Rayons Du Soleil'), bouncing electro-soul ('Aller Vers Le Soleil') and as cheesy as a Camembert cravat.

It’s respectable enough but a stronger dose of Fink’s maverick tendencies would be welcome.

The doomed relationship cycle in eternal motion or the sound of a heart that won’t stay mended, Honeyblood is visceral pop music giving its prettiest snarl.

Just as Moz's stance as a one-man outsider army and ringleader of the tormentors is restated, so is his standing as the godfather of indie disaffection and despair.