There's little, if any, regard for structure or convention, meaning that Mole City could be five tracks long or 50 and still happily exist in a brilliantly idiosyncratic bubble all of its own.

The Calexico-ish 'The Lady Is Risen' shows he can get close to a folky barnstormer, but on closer inspection the barn appears to be a set prop that might blow down in a stiff wind.

There are a few moments of elegant sensuality--like the tumbling, androgynous voices of 'He She'--but by and large it's like one of Jeff Koons' uber-kitsch sculptures: gleaming, opulent, but kinda hard to love.

For now, Haim are a rock band who've made one of the best pop albums you'll hear all year.

It's a bit of a mess.

An overly soft mid-section ('Center Your Love', 'Vizion') reveals that chillout-esque pleasantness isn't Stewart's forte, but that's not to say this album's only good when the whipcrack snare madness takes hold.

Where Sky Larkin were once winsome and breezy, Motto pounds ahead with heart-punching defiance and desperation to be heard. Listen up.

'Sticks & Stones', 'Memory Room' and, oddly, the title track add slivers of graceful light to this bleak but captivating collection of noirish tales.

This warm, wonderful record is a joyous, head-spinning delight.

Kiss Land is a fascinating record, Tesfaye defying reservations with the self-absorption of a madman.

This return to drone primitivism might seem somewhat regressive for Gordon, as it doesn't represent anything remotely new for her as a musician or for drone music as a whole. But it is done with a pleasing malevolence.

Placebo have been plumbing the same vein for so long, they've slipped into self-parody and come out the other side with their lipstick all smudged.

He's no Marcel Proust, but full credit for producing what's an unusually thoughtful album in contemporary pop music terms. Even if it is a bit morbid.

All told, while not every track has the immediacy of 'Lies' or 'Recover', there's not a weak one among them.

Sandoval's voice remains an indescribably beautiful thing, while David Roback's guitar provides haunting backing.

It'll do for a fleeting one-night stand, but Mechanical Bull isn't the rekindling of a romance that we'd hoped for.

It’s probably just a little too icy and detached to blow up in the manner of The Weeknd, Jessie Ware or similar indie R&B success stories, but Pull My Hair Back's pop sensibility renders it the most obviously accessible thing Hyperdub have released for a while.

It’s a more honest, human, realistic--and totally wonderful--guide to life.

It’s a self-important album, but an accomplished one.

The album’s first half is fantastic.... The album’s second ‘suite’ is mellower and less consistent.

Musically it’s not a huge departure from Subiza, but if it ain’t broke there’s no point fixing it.

Farewell to Condale, the ’80s teen-flick soundstage for Summer Camp’s brilliant rom-pop 2011 debut; welcome to the slick ’90s house club of their equally impressive second.

Up there with Cash’s ‘American’ series this is not. But 48-year-old Lanegan is a classy bastard, so he just about gets away with it.

MGMT might be an uncomfortable journey at times, but it’s also a transcendental one you’ve never been on before.

The Manics’ 11th album is a subtle, satisfying record that showcases their continuing ability to soar, albeit without digging anywhere near as deep as their politico-punk-pop totems, 1992’s ‘Generation Terrorists’ and 1996’s ‘Everything Must Go’.

Of late he’s adopted a sweeter, eddying Americana, and Dream River takes a turn to lush country-soul.

Its only disappointment is the absence of Roots rapper Black Thought to joust with him.

This 10th album lacks such bite [as 1999’s single Flame].

Mainman Rick Froberg might be midway through his fifth decade, but he and his cohorts can still make one hell of a racket.

There’s not much sugar to sweeten the pill, meaning Trap Lord is often one-note and depressing.

As a whole it’s a bold, beautiful and uncompromising record.

Nine of the ten songs are named after friends, and they’re samey and indulgent.

Salute the heavens, then, that the result is an absolutely belting 10 songs.

Throughout their debut album London Grammar walk a fine line between haunting and boring.

Arctic Monkeys’ fifth record is absolutely and unarguably the most incredible album of their career. It might also be the greatest record of the last decade.

It’s a dark, smart and thrilling debut.

It’s bread and butter blues-rock, packed with lyrical anachronisms and clichés, but it’s done well.

This is not the carefree record Splashh were expected to make, but it is all the better for its dourness.

He doesn’t want to be a powerhouse rap star. Doris may alienate people looking for him to be that. For everyone else, this is a powerful record.

He’s still twisted, but Khan’s genius has never been more obvious.

Like their sonic brothers Iceage, they’ve evolved without losing their edge.

There is little, if any, advancement in the band’s sound, which leaves them predictable after three albums mining The Jesus And Mary Chain and Phil Spector’s girl-group production.

If Christopher Nolan ever does one of his gritty makeovers on Twilight, the soundtrack’s as good as sewn up.

Doherty is actually flirting with optimism on Sequel To The Prequel.

There’s so much packed into these 15 lush, context-evading songs, though, that map references are pretty futile.

Neko Case’s sixth album is typically sumptuous and lusciously heart-rending.

This is the sound of a cleaner, smoother Nine Inch Nails, one that delights in complexities of rhythm more than caustic blasts of rage.

Apart from the weirdly out-of-place vocoder moment on ‘Comrade’, it’s a layered, lush and lovely eight-track affair.

All pleasant enough, but makes you wish he’d just let his songs explode into a euphoric mess every once in a while.

Crunching rhythms, subtle brass, and tunes as intoxicating as a blood transfusion from Pete Doherty combine as he tells the tale of a disastrous year full of rat infestations, romantic strife and weight loss.

Her songs sound even more spaced out and unreal than ever.

This is a cut above your average US alt.art-rock, most notably on ‘Stranger’, which sounds like The Strokes doing The Shins.

This debut carries you on pillowy reverb and ribboned guitar to places only a handful of bands since Simple Minds have visited.

Inside you’ll find very little deviation from the wistful, narrative-led pop they’ve made a career from.

The result is a set of remarkable electronic rituals with an endearing, mystical quality.

There are few smiles cracked on an album that’s shot through with the loneliness of the night bus home. But this is a record in the true sense of the word: a document of a certain time and place, an emotional account of a cruel, Krule world.

It’s an album that tries not to shout ‘old school Franz are back’, even though it unmistakably signals that old school Franz are back.

Ultimately, Aerotropolis is not just a statement of Ikonika’s personal growth and reinvigoration, but a measured statement of British electronic music’s broader lift-off.

It’s just a shame he can’t bring them together as a coherent whole.

While a couple of songs--most notably ‘Satisfaction’, a three-note guitar riff spun out for eight-and-a-half minutes--suffer from an acute case of stadium bloat, it’s all done in such a jubilant fashion that it hardly matters.

Mawkish and messy.

High up the Mumfords scale, checking the boxes for straining vocals, loud and quiet dynamics, thumping bass drums and American gothic lyrics about rivers and literature.

The results are remarkably plangent and romantic.

Perhaps its issue is that it’s quite hard to feel anything throughout its running time beyond a sense of general malaise.

It’s a difficult album and requires repeated listening for some of the subtler parts to sink in.

It all amounts to a rich, evocative expression of a mother’s optimism and anxieties.

This is wild music, a celestial cabaret that absorbs and unsettles.

As changes of pace go, it should be far more jarring than it actually is, but instead it shows a much softer side to a band who should own this summer with their brilliantly heavy two-man mania.

They lose points, however, for a descent into guitar squall and full-on ‘Baker Street’ sax (‘Perpetual Surrender’), which mar an otherwise intriguing debut.

An album of washed out, happy-sad, semi-psychedelic sounds that glower as much as they gleam, it’s perfect for those 3am mornings when you’re full of alcohol and regret.

Occasionally subtlety spills over into insipidness, but overall this is a masterclass in restrained beauty.

Permanent Signal finds beauty in loneliness.

Only four tracks, but enough firepower to blow up the dancefloor.

Stories Don’t End is smoother than a drive down to Malibu with the Eagles chilling in the back seat.

One of the reasons Major Arcana works so well is because it’s addictive and fun, which could explain how these characters got into such a mess in the first place.

Too often their over-earnest delivery is unbearable.

This is folk music transmitted from the far corner of the universe.

Musically it’s akin to the recent Neon Neon album, but Kilfoyle’s musings on romance and class are all his own.

II is the noise of all their Christmases turning up at once.

The Nextwave Sessions EP careers wildly between moods and atmospheres, and sounds like a band happy to let go and experiment because they’re comfortable with who they are.

As a whole, though, the album’s overall feel is still deadeningly generic.

Mostly, Paracosm is Chromatics if their nocturnal danger was replaced by nocturnal emissions, or Beach House if they got so stoned they forgot to change chords for minutes at a time.

While the music works when it’s slow, sparse and emotional, the band’s debut comes into its own when it steps up the pace.

It’s bonkers, but it’s hard not to be wooed by Moore’s outsider charm.

As ever, he relies too much on accident to achieve interesting textures, flavours and rhythm, and only two tracks--‘Grapes’ and ‘Cheap Treat’--stand out as cohesive pieces.

It’s not an essential listen but it does exhibit plenty of moody gravitas.

His reinvention nears Hot Chip’s disco-pop on ‘Pagliaccio’, flirts with hip-hop via the big beat and looping riff of ‘Turbine’, and blends lyrical emotiveness with slow-tempo electronic touches on ‘SIHFIY’.

The emphasis is on soft, kinetic beats, with melodies pulled out of unpromising materials--discordant synths, laser pulses--and it’s one whacking great testament to what dance music can do with a bit of imagination.

Pond’s fifth album, Hobo Rocket, bristles with unrestrained creativity and sonic exploration, while verging away from pastoral prog towards a harder garage blues slant.

As ever, their relentless chirpiness can grate, but the orchestral indulgence has been pared back, giving ringleader Tim DeLaughter’s songwriting room to breathe.

To The Happy Few might be a fairly transparent attempt to relive Medicine’s salad days, but there are many worse sources they could mine for inspiration.

Uncanny Valley is like listening to a latter-day Oasis album: too weakly reminiscent of past achievements to really satisfy.

Elegant and unusual, this is a gem.

Speck’s mimicry is little more than pale homage to a real eccentric, highlighting the gentle sadness and underlying soulfulness of Pink’s music. PDA lacks this, and comes across as frivolous.

A rough and rabid ride.

The ramshackle energy and unpredictability of their live show has been sanded down into something more clinical and precise.

He and the four gents in his Revue are here to remind you there's nothing more thrilling than the primal howl of proto-rock'n'roll, and this, their third album, is their most convincing sermon yet.

BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.