This is a slew of hackneyed teenage poetry, trowelled onto a bed of sift-rock cliché.

It's thrilling. It's pantomime. It's what Ross does best.

Like all the great British pop records of the past five years, Devotion combines the present and the past to make a record that sounds both contemporary and timeless.

The only clanger is 'Do It'.... This aside, it's a nest of treasures.

Instead of an album hurtling 100mph in one of those directions, Fragrant World feels like the work of a band with stabilisers on.

Get lost in the haze.

The record as a whole is full of wan acoustic guitar tunes in desperate need of that mysterious quality of oomph.

If you don't already know the Mac, treat this as your way in. You won't be coming out in a hurry.

It's great.

Solid singer-songwriter fare with more longing than your teenage years.

A Canadian producer who manages to strike a balance between the sturdy emotiveness of pop and the shimmering beguilement of ambience.

Gatekeeper's Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkel crunch elements of '80s post-industrial dance, horror/sci-fi soundtracks and computer game music into an enjoyably garish whole.

Melodies bristle, harmonies surge, hooks fly dense as bullets in The Raid and Joe Keefe's lush stoner vocals trace out stories of neighbour-annoying hedonism, missing home and boozing and rocking all the way to the afterlife. Fun-drenched.

Flawed, but impressive.

The result is a weighty collection of tunes that toughens up the band's predilection of a softly rendered, Cure-indebted jangle and nudges the harder edges of Green Day's stadium punk.

While its synthetic atmospheres initially intrigue... The music wavers indecisively between structure and formlessness, ending up as curiously misshapen objects, half-finished designs.

The TNGHT EP packs five explosive instrumental hip-hop tracks, every one dripping with each producer's trademark sonic flourishes.

The Killer starts out monumentally grave, but by its close the sunlight is flooding in.

These songs contain the record's protest element as well as its exemplary musicality: heartbreaking soul choruses, classical samples and '80s rocksteady rhythms.

It's a lot to take in, sure, but each listen is as fresh as the first.

Shrines is a euphoric treat in its own right, made all the more thrilling by its heady potential.

One quibble is that Gossamer never really comes down off its Haribo rush, which gets exhausting. That said, when they do ease up, as on the boudoir-funk 'Constant Conversations', it resembles the two-a-penny synthpop that clogs the blogosphere.

Not be the most inspiring stuff, perhaps, but it is bloody good fun.

Brain-rinsingly psychedelic without needing to tell you about it, they deserve to sit at the table with Current 93 and post-Syd/pre-stadium Pink Floyd.

Your appreciation for this fascinating, frustrating album will ultimately depend on your tolerance for Doseone's unique voice – a strangled croon that threatens to turn milk.

The decision you have to make with Summer Camp is this: do you want dance music that'll stop your feet moving by throwing some thought-provoking lyrics in your direction? Or dance music that'll make you wanna, you know, dance?

This rag-tag collection, dating from between 1999 and 2010, sets out his stall as an outsider savant in an Ariel Pink vein.

Nas doing exactly what he does best.

What the south London quintet have made is an album full of delicious dream-pop.

MTMTMK is all about neon-soaked city raving, and the result is a stiffer, uglier and over-Westernised sound, too reliant on soulless computerisation.

Their third album totaling 75 minutes and spread, slightly unnecessarily, over two CDs, it reaches unexpected new heights in the pantheon of 'metal bands who mellowed out'.

The results range from danceable ('Phoenix', 'Sad') to unnerving ('Telegraph To The Afterlife', 'Sixty') and give off an atmosphere of ghostly melancholy that subtly subverts Elton's reputation as a cosy British institution.

DIIV need you, and you sure as hell need DIIV.

After exploring some most unlikely corners, Swing Lo Magellan is arguably its best at its simplest.

Named after a fabulist, yes, but still not quite fabulous.

They may be revisiting the fossilised concept of boredom, but they're bringing an original perspective.

At its core this is brilliantly slick, dapper rock-pop.

Shellac's Bob Weston throws disorientating tape-loop curveballs throughout, further disturbing Burma's thrilling clatter, which shames bands half their age.

There are enough dreamlike melodies to sustain your attention rather than zoning out completely, but in reality it's all just very comfortable.

In parts Riz's flow is slightly awkward, but his rhymes are tight and full of razor-sharp quips, and the production is slick and energetic.

A wonky, Teutonic thing full of outré drama and should-be pop classics.

Modeselektor bridge the gap between manual-memorising electronics and brick-subtle, MDMA-peppered bouncy abandon.

Yes, this is a mixtape of other people's tunes, like you've made in your bedroom dozens of times before. But it isn't nostalgia, it's very 2012.

It navigates a contemporary confluence of influences with such wit, intelligence and passion that (certainly if you like Joy O or Zomby) you will just simply love it.

Adventurous, forward-looking and luxurious, all at the same time.

Their eagerness to look into music's past only serves to make them sound timeless.

When it works, it works.

It's largely the usual semi-hilarious histrionica to which we've become accustomed

On their fifth album there's a newfound clarity in the production that provides an added dimension to their tunes.

'Sad' is an Adele-apeing weepie, 'Payphone' has a guest rap from Wiz Khalifa, and both 'Lucky Strike' and 'Fortune Teller' feature cod-dubstep breakdowns.

It all adds up to a deeply deranged and intermittently great listen, and serves as a decent stopgap 'til the band's next album proper.

The result is an album as art smart as Franz, as disco droll as Hot Chip, as pose pop as The Naked And Famous and as catchy and cool as the Two Door lot on the other lot's Indian cycling holiday.

Not a bad choice for zoned-out afterhours sessions or long lost summer afternoons, but it's just too indifferent to recommend with any real conviction.

Despite being a good 30 years out of time, it's absolutely brilliant.

This is ambitious electronic music rewarding persistence.

Overall it just about balances out.

It's more chillout room than chillwave, all dub and little step, and the better for all of that.

It's heady stuff.

The tension created by the lyrics and music is wonderful and uneasy, ensuring that The Idler is endlessly fascinating and unlike anything else you're likely to hear this year.

The Lost Tapes is no barrel-scraping… it's more dark magic straight from the source.

It's compelling, and finds new territory.... But it doesn't do a huge amount to lodge itself in your memory

Mostly: total bliss session.

This is a thrilling joy ride of an album.

An obsession with sex that's rarely heard outside Lil Wayne albums is combined with the woozy sizzurp lilt of A$AP Rocky and his own stunningly sinister devil's whisper delivery to create something remarkably dark and original.

The lyrics, meanwhile, continue to move FOTL up two or three rungs of excellence.

Tasteful and perfectly executed, but workmanlike.

The only problem is that at times, it feels like all parties are a little intimidated by each other, stopping just short of going the whole way with the primal force that the best moments prove Womack is still capable of.

They're staying put, yet somehow they're kicking harder than ever.

The first glitchy music released this year that you could happily have sex to.

Sébastien invites you to follow him, like a sexy David Koresh, and with tunes like 'Sedulous', 'Pepito Bleu' and the aforementioned 'Cochon Ville' ('pig city' en Anglais), the call might just prove irresistible.

There's something missing here, and that something is soul.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

When Dinowalrus get it right, they do Britrock rather well indeed. From 'Riding Eazy''s shimmering funk to the dance-punk strut of 'The Gift Shop', there's a lot to like--even if on paper it does all appear terribly clichéd.

Aside from an introductory impersonation of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' (on the title track), they continue where their 2010 debut left off.

They're at their strongest when at their hardest.

A few strokes of fortune might send this London quintet--or, say, Clock Opera or Fixers--towards stratospheric hugeness.

Of the most recent phases of Patti Smith's musical output (always surprising since 1996's Kurt Cobain tribute 'Gone Again'), Banga is by far the most successful.

Let it be said that Lex Hives is amazing.

While it's briefly thrilling to hear Young's bolshy take on Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land', it's nowhere near Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin standards, or even a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

What WIXIW's working process has given them instead is yet another way to find the manifold, melancholy and menacing nature of Liars.

It's good to have them back--but only just.

There's nothing on Anxiety so arrestingly new or comfortably familiar.

Kill For Love keeps in this spirit, playing with the attention to detail of an art-house movie (and a near 1½-hour running time).

Manifest! is back-loaded with the big hitters, so you need faith and tenacity to find the gems.

It all suggests a promising future for the reinvigorated band.

Japandroids know how to bring the ruckus. But elsewhere the power-chord pummelage gets a bit one-note.

Heavenly.

It breaks very little new ground--which does have the upside of the songs sounding catchy because you feel like you've heard it all before.

Quarantine is less concerned with the tropes of olde world dance music, more fixated on gloopy post-club ambience.

The only problem is they always just come up short when trying to make their own version of FTP's 'Pumped Up Kicks'.

Business-as-usual has rarely sounded this beautiful.

A mixed bag, sure, but there's signs that they are still fighting the good fight for weirdos everywhere.

It might be coming from the cheap seats, but for the most part, this is classy stuff.

This Is PiL is a relatively edgeless makeover, albeit infused with the progressive spirit of '79, and bolstered by what has always served Lydon well.

Urban Turban is more grin-inducing than a piano-playing cat.

Here they're going through the motions, missionary style, with mechanical jangly pop and the wince-inducing triteness of Cosentino's lyrics.

Hope In Dirt City is the most soulful and hazy he's ever sounded.

A brilliantly disquieting debut.