It’s a bit nuts, but the ominous, shimmering psychedelia of standout tracks ‘Three Frendz’ and ‘Angel Of The North’ elevate the album beyond a quirky, Watership Down-esque curiosity.

Elegant is the way the record confines Diane’s sadness to the past. It doesn’t wallow, it reassesses.

Not only do his [Reid's] noises fail to carry the songs, he often loses the songs altogether. They drift away from him when he should be dominating them. And this album is a missed opportunity.

The result is an eccentric grab-bag of styles and influences, with enough harps on it to keep Joanna Newsom fans happy, and even a retro 4/4 beat dancing in on the aptly named ‘Disco Compilation’.

Ultimately, it’s sketchy and uneven, ridiculous in as many of the wrong ways as the right, but not quite the disaster its tracklisting would suggest.

You may well be charmed by Ghost Outfit’s acidic battery; but there’s so much going on, you may have trouble remembering how their songs go.

The Bardo Story sounds like a collection of rediscovered ’60s and ’70s gems uploaded to YouTube.

This, then, is AOR: Adult Orientated Rap. Luckily, though, Jay-Z still turns out work of impressive authority.

This, for all the fighting talk, has the feel of a lightweight flailing around for another KO.

Try as he might, though, he can’t cover up his odd but undeniable talents.

She’s every bit the equal of Bat For Lashes, Frida Hyvönen or any member of the Wainwright clan.

He sounds small, beaten and subdued beneath the Lemonheads-meets-Diiv slack drawl of the music. The key thing here? Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he also sounds totally believable.

This is a no-flab 20-song cinematic suite in four movements, featuring Hart’s weather-beaten Bowie-like semi-falsetto in all of its majesty.

They expound spiritual philosophies (“I am a hieroglyph of love!”), grasp the rural jig-folk baton from Mumford & Sons and, post-Beirut, remind everyone it’s supposed to be fun.

It is all-consuming and consistently impressive from the off.

A mix of Trent Reznor and Patrick Wolf, he’s both an industrial piledriver and theatrical show-off, making this debut record disorientating, confusing and exciting.

JBM’s electronically tempered woodsman folk is a blissfully eerie, emotional punch to the guts.

History has rarely been so engaging.

He’s made an engrossing, highly original album with disarmingly simple tools.

Gauntlet Hair’s reference points are sublime, of course, but when they come up with the grudging funk of ‘Simple’, it’s something that’s all their own work.

There’s enough musical ambition, heartbreak and menace on The Big Dream to keep the Lynch nerds absorbed.

As an exercise is sounding totally, defiantly alive, it is a complete success.

You might not want to run into Daughn Gibson on a lonely night, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t listen to him push things forward with such noirish flair.

‘Devil Inside Me’ is the album’s earworm that you’ll end up humming, and ‘Solstice’ is a pleasingly overblown proggy epic, but much of the rest is competent yet uninspiring, and the novelty soon wears off.

The Blackest Beautiful is a strong, focused record from beginning to end.

This is warm, sleepy music that buzzes like a fridge. Best heard lying down.

The quintet deliver a sincere emotional punch.

Discipline plummets you into the band’s shadowy world but remains loveable--like a brighter, warmer Savages.

They mean well, but there’s something conservative about them.

Love the way cricket brings out people’s most eccentric traits? Then love this.

Tides is ambient in the same way as a water feature in a garden: soothing at a glance, but ultimately boring.

Truths rarely come as beautiful as this.

It all ends not with a bang, but a shrug.

Gratuitous filth, basically. It’s funny, but also a pity, because Yeezus is so tight, so bold, that with a few tweaks Kanye could’ve made his rock for the ages. As it is, he’ll have to settle for one of the best records of the year.

Yet another ’90s micro-genre gets the hipster revival treatment on Montreal duo Solar Year’s snazzy debut.

Right from the silly, scary opener ‘RRRR’, it’s daft, hypnotic, erotic, evil and unhinged all at once.

It’s not Flight Of The Conchords quality but, hey, at least it’s not The Midnight Beast.

Though occasionally too florid, this bass cat’s on the path to majesty.

They may never recapture their ‘Dirt’-era majesty, but AiC’s second act is turning out very nicely indeed.

Ultimately it feels short on substance, with the sort of atmosphere that can drain through your fingers.

There’s a lot to love about music that’s as head over heels in love with youth as Soft Will is.

Bosnian Rainbows finds Omar in controlled, more conventional territory than he has been in a while. There’s structure, sub-four-minute songs, melody. It’ll never be Nick Grimshaw’s Record Of The Week and it’s still prog, but it’s a punky prog that at least feels like it is actively trying to make friends with you.

The album begins to lag toward the end as the slower tracks drag their heels, but it’s still an impressive debut.

An utterly charming album.

Ultimately, however, it’s hard not to notice that the production outshines the delivery.

When the energy levels fall off entirely on the maudlin piano-powered closer ‘Never Again’, Idiots' early signs of promise seem a pleasant but distant memory.

The four-piece’s debut is a forcefully soulful affair.

Immunity is expertly paced, and as good for coming down as it is for coming up.

There are a couple of duds, (‘Book Of Love’, ‘Please Say No’), but, as forlorn closer ‘You Were Right’ ably demonstrates, few bands do heartache with as much majesty.

Their fifth album (strung together by a loose concept about an imagined village you needn’t worry about) is as softly satisfying as a bobbly old jumper. One with thumbholes.

Kveikur comes as a violent but welcome surprise.

Ultimately this is an album to dance, not cry, to.

The problem is, when you project a futuristic, magical and otherworldly image, you’d better have the sounds to match. And unfortunately, Ice On The Dune is a four-to-the-floor electro-pop album that has literally nothing to do with the cheesy fable invented to go with it.

What could be mistaken for something approaching a masterpiece reveals itself as far more hollow.

There’s still enough dusty amplifier buzz and garagey thump to keep indie aesthetes happy, but intentionally or not, Spectrals now sit in a sonic nook which most resembles the stolid pre-punk orthodoxy of pub rock.

By Benga’s own high standards it feels a little flat.

It’s a tightrope across a canyon down which many a pie-eyed baggy daredevil has fallen. Jagwar Ma make it look effortless.

The good news is that 13 is an amalgam of everything you’d want from a new Black Sabbath album featuring three of the original members.

Some of the album’s charms only emerge when you search hard for them, as on the disjointed gloom of ‘The Light In Your Name’ or the dankness of ‘Spiral’, and there are a few ponderous cold spots.

As Britain suffers from youth unemployment and economic crisis, our greatest currency is the chime of a golden tune. Peace have delivered 10 of them.

More subtle now, but Alice and Kacey are keeping us guessing.

This record is a triumph of belief and dogged determination over those people who thought he was a barnacle on the coattails of his famous friend.

A few tunes--like the Afro-flecked ‘LA Calling’ or ‘Everywhere’--pass muster, but the whole thing is about as cosmic as a hairdresser who’s just read in Grazia that hippies are ‘in’ this summer.

Throughout, Settle will blind you with so much sheen you’ll want to tile your bathroom in it. Sadly, the London Grammar-featuring ‘Help Me Lose My Mind’ is a bit of an unnecessary cool-down.

Josh Homme and his all-star pals prove the virtue of taking your sweet time on a record that’s as self-assured as it is damn sexy.

There's undoubtedly something there with Frankie--those effortless, skippy choruses aren't as easy to do as they seem. But he and his Heartstrings haven't quite found their true north yet.

Like a good new party drug, Lesser Evil finds a sweet spot more often than not if you let it.

Where the songs are slow, the fruity Bontempi keyboards are gruelling and the singing comes on like Jimmy Somerville weeping over a dead pet in a marbled mausoleum. But get past the Bronski Beat animal trauma vibes and Savage's other life is rich and full.

Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is not entirely faultless, then--but it comes close.

Once I Was An Eagle sets a high bar.

Whether she's actually poverty-stricken or just pretending, the 29-year-old has put together a set of songs so delicate it has all the impact of a flutter of nymph wings.

It’s a well-crafted debut from a worthy new artist, but it’s competent rather than compelling.

Bye Bye 17 ditches raunch and irony for old-fashioned songwriting and something approaching sincerity, and the results are kind of amazing.

While it's interesting to hear Grace pour his heart out on 'All Of The Future (All Of The Past)' in a pained fashion, it makes for a record that doesn't really demand repeated listens.

Majical Cloudz may be dark, but there's light poking through.

This album compares favourably to Smog, or PJ Harvey at her most skeletal--not least in the confessional lyrical sexuality.

There are magic moments, but the overall effect might make you drift off rather than have you on the edge of your seat.

They have pulled off another album for the modern age, and its stories live in all of us.

By assembling a cast of their favourite musicians and delving into their adolescent memories, Daft Punk have created something as emotionally honest as any singer-songwriter confessional--and a lot more fun to dance to.

Pure melodic thrills for a while, but those with low twee tolerance should steer clear.

It’ll be under your skin in no time.

Otherworldly pop that’s sweetly gripping.

Not since The Cure’s ‘Faith’ has a group pulled off such a feat of heavy, heady melancholy.

With every step this challenging record shows how grime can respond to and inform other genres while always remaining a force unto itself.

Ultimately the one thing truly lacking on Dungeonesse is the bright spark that makes pop stars so entertaining to obsess over.

Far from being terrifying, it sounds like Smith is actually having fun.

This is a gorgeous album, but sacrifices had to be made. They’ve undeniably lost something that made them special in the first place.

A strange record, but an intriguing planet to get sucked into.

With the core ‘XTRMNTR’ team--the Scream, Shields, producer David Holmes--More Light, the Scream’s 10th album and first in five years, lives up to its bilious billing.

The album could do with being at least half of its 70 minutes, to cut out the self-indulgent meandering.

Album two features some catchy and classy electronic dance music.... Unfortunately though, ‘Broken Record’ sounds like a Eurovision-endorsed soundtrack to Cassack dancing and ‘Satellites’ is a limp version of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light.’

As with some modern art, you may find Silence Yourself leaves you whispering, “I appreciated it, but I didn’t love it.”

This time around Tessa Murray and Greg Hughes give the same tricks a more professional finish.

The Child Of Lov may have started off as a shadowy enigma, but now is when Cole Williams lays his cards on the table. Turns out he was hiding a royal flush.

His new album is a triumph of agitated beats, jazzy keyboards and slurred rap.

The results on their 10th studio album are pleasingly baffling.

Four albums later and it's more of the same, minus the big hooks.

It's a record of rare precision; the kind that comes from figuring out exactly what you want. The kind that comes from being all grown up.