The fact that these titans of the US underground have collectively hoovered enough drugs and booze (and clocked enough jail time) to make Pete Doherty sit up and wonder makes their sheer longevity something to be marvelled at.

They peddle the same sort of fake-rustic rootsiness that seems to be colonising our era: all these flatpack off-the-peg dreams of Ruritania that iPad-stashing mid-lifes have taken up as a counterpoint to their rabid technophilia.

Assembled by the album's main beat-peddling prodigy, Lex Luger, they showcase a masterclass in reductionism; juggernauts of hulking, bruising, brick-to-skull intensity.

Do Whatever...sounds less like inhibitions being shed, less like sex with a tree trunk after a hallucinatory, three-day Haribo bender than their other stuff - and that's kind of a shame, too.

With two songs playing out at over nine minutes long, one feels that a decent edit would change things from somnambulant to plain dreamy.

Shocker! The long-awaited (it says here) follow-up to a sublimely average debut is another half-arsed muppet show executed with the charisma of a terminally ill sloth.

No prizes for guessing who's been reading Guy Debord then, but it's these touches as well as his reverb-laden sound that makes him vaguely modern, unlike some folk artists who'd be happier pretending the 20th century never even happened.

It's as if Garbus is powered by primal, wrong-righting spirits that click like a force of nature.

Where the first four records (and particularly the Matador releases) sounded like a band fighting for their lives – or at least pretty keen to make you listen – this is the sound of a band struggling to muster the energy to go on.

Marian Joan Elliott-Said, Poly Styrene to you, is one of punk's great cult icons. Her band X-Ray Spex was one of the most inventive and fun of the era. Her first record in aeons, Generation Indigo provides ample proof of both aforementioned claims.

The Wombats have aimed low, and in its own special way, This Modern Glitch is a triumph for mediocrity.

Those three seconds of stuttering electronica simply take their reputation for leftfield experimentalism too far. Thankfully, such wilful pretension buggers off, and the rest is a more quality-controlled set.

They could turn even the hardest kids at school into pissy wrecks with the elegant dread-heart blues of this, their fourth album.

Texans Explosions In The Sky have not only stuck faithfully to their roots, they've made the defining album of their career.

It's warm, out-there pop that was worth all the care and attention that has been invested in it.

It could have been so easy for an album that's strung out on the tension between artist as paid-up perma-kid and responsible grown-up to be self-indulgent and, worse still, boring. Instead it's cathartic.

Everything about this album boils down to escape.

It has taken Brooklyn's Vivian Girls three albums to expand their musicality beyond the (unquestionably ace, but repetitive) garage racket that characterised their last two.

A Thousand Heys reeks of wrong-side-of-the-pond, washed-out lo-fi revival as much as the vocals.

Occasionally devastating, often outstanding.

On A Mission is hands-down pop debut of the year, marking the arrival of a completely credible, fresh-faced, mischievous talent to draw the proverbial moustaches on pop's gallery of gurning grotesques.

Wild Divine ain't 'Kid A', but it's hardly musical stagnation.

Mica's choppin' and screwin' attempt at repackaging its intelligence and emotion makes it something fresh that you can feel. Drink up.

Lacking as it does the songwriting spark of Ariel Pink, the record lacks cohesion.

This time with their best songs since "Tell Me When" in 1995. In more ways than one, timeless.

Synth-heavy disco and boogie, sleek Italo and plenty of New Order course equally through their veins; the duo spin a heavily thumbed vinyl library into something largely fresh, and even coax '70s smoove-rocker Michael McDonald into guesting at the end.

Hazy, dark, The Cure-ish dreampop with a Lynchian vibe.

Nine Types...will make those who over-contextualise TVOTR finally quit their chin-stroking and live a little.

Crystal Stilts, like The Cure or The Jesus And Mary Chain before them, understand that the beauty is in the balance.

Sounding as vital as they ever have seven LPs down the track, there's life in them yet.

Sounds like his band are having too much fun.

Only on 'Caretaker' and 'Not Wing Clippers' does their third eye briefly blink; for much of the rest of this debut, the outlook's grey.

The eerie, mist-shrouded 'Running On Fumes' is the standout track, but really, Diamond Mine should be taken as a whole, at night, in the dark, with some Scotch and a blanket.

It traverses a spacious, synth-dusted soundworld many future-dreampop miles from their girl-group and grit beginnings; the ambition will be a sonic shock to those who wanted the band to stay the 'working-class heroes' they wryly joke about being. It shouldn't, really.

[They] not only resemble hoity-toity Fields Of The Nephilim lookalikes but are just as godawful to listen to.

What disappoints, though, is how numbingly comfortable he is within these nostalgic boundaries.

If Sidewalks is husband-and-wife duo Matt and Kim's vision of a perfect night on the tiles, then partying with them must be hellish.

It's business as usual on the whole.

The whole album brims with the laidback confidence of someone who knows she's back on top. Britney claims it's her best work yet. She's not wrong.

As long as Braids can escape unscathed from the hype machine, this could be an amazing journey.

Wiz proclaims that his "life is like a movie". Maybe so, but he needs to delete some scenes.

Considering the scattered legacy that feeds the roots of this album, and the other OTT keyboard abusers of our times, some foolishness is only right and proper. Fortunately, there's some belting tunes to chew on too.

The Vaccines' debut does a wonderful thing--it reminds you that guitar music still works.

Ten tracks of exuberant, blissful pop later and it looks like the Mackem lads have actually come good on their promise.

It's only rock'n'roll but you'll probably like it.

Weirdest of all, though, is that no matter how much Jessie J sings about being herself, we don't really ever get a sense of who, or what, that is.

Perhaps it's the introduction of an outside producer (Per Sunding) for the first time, but they're sounding like a band with something to prove.

Save for the brief reprieves of the barbed, anti-everything 'Words I Never Said' and the historical rewrite of 'All Black Everything', Lasers walks a fine line between conscious hip-hop and sleepwalking.

Producer Mark Ronson does an astounding job of taking them back to the Fab Five glory days of Rio.

Undersexed and over here, let's send them back to where they, indeed, belong.

More magpies than nightingales across these 13 tracks, they stitch up a glorious grab-bag of modern psych.

Bread And Circuses isn't bad enough to be s death knell, but neither is it good enough to be their commercial rebirth.

Occasionally they hit an addictive groove, but you'd hope so given that the songs are each five to 10 minutes long. Messy, and not in the good way.

A fine record from an ever-impressive band.

Now shorn of vibraphonist Keaton Snyder, San Francisco's The Dodos remain a three-piece with the addition of alt.country chanteuse Neko Case.

The fact is, there's a vitality, a shamelessness, an energy retained throughout here that shows why they mattered so damn much, and why they shouldn't – and couldn't – ever consider doing anything else.

Ultimately, though, its success still falls on Lightburn's shoulders, a vocalist who's always straddled the line between impassioned and overwrought.

Angles isn't perfect, but if it marks a new phase of creativity and togetherness for the group, then it could be more of a success than even Is This It.

Basically, the album's a mess of melody, noise, stupidity, screaming and big choruses that does its bit for the all-important Campaign Against Intellectualism In Rock. Fun.

Last retains the intimacy of their previous recordings, but it's augmented with more orchestral flourishes.

A classic case of ugly and beautiful: TN&F's passive melodicism and aggressive innovation clash in a dazzling blaze of psych/sonic fireworks.

Welcome Home offers both a different approach and a welcome return.

They're not so much fiddling while Rome burns as clattering bass and drums magnificently while they take a torch to Redcar.

Happily, it makes a good go of bucking the trend here and there, with singer Bill Janovitz's full-throated delivery investing his words with the kind of gritty undercurrent of self-loathing and inner torment that makes Skins jolt with bursts of fresh energy.

Immersion is less fun, harder work than In Silico. It feels like Pendulum are trying to be more than an anonymous CD you put on at a party when everyone's too boxed to DJ any more. They shouldn't.

By letting their heads float off into the clouds and planting their brogues firmly on the ground, Those Dancing Days have created an album of fizzing indie-pop to charm both the starry-eyed teen and the world-weary indie connoisseur.

For four songs you'll find it tender and comforting – then you just start craving VOLUME.

This is the sort of chorus-heavy stoopid punk-rock record that makes you want to punch children in their silly faces from the sheer joy of being alive.

Specifically speaking, Elbow have retained their crowns as everyman kings.

It is an elegant and, quite frankly, utterly beautiful record.

They've made a sincere, unironic record about how great life can be if you want it to be.

There is a tail-off in quality at the end, but every track still has a chorus that Swedish song factories would sell their grannies for and, most of all, there's a sense that Take That are genuinely challenging themselves here.

Rival Schools have finally returned from an inexplicably long hiatus to demonstrate why they're such luminaries for today's post-hardcore hordes.

The overall impression is of gloomy landscape paintings with a spooky, residual feeling that God might be hiding behind every cloud or passing tumbleweed - electrifying.

So, you're a founding member of the legendary hip-hip combo Wu Tang Clan. And your fans are extremely pissed because you went and done a track with that Justin Bieber.

It's certainly a messy record, made by half of a broken legend.

It allows this album to coast through even its dodgy moments and emerge as a loose and easy proposition.

The simple fact she's intent on change makes her and the rest of her career infinitely more intriguing.

The juxtaposition of the melancholic with the mellifluous melds majestically atop delicate lap steel, brushed drums and double bass on this country tearjerker.

They have the relentless persistence needed to stick to the wall long enough (this is their third self-released album), but despite their striving for the grandiose (Kings producer Ethan Johns provides the country-ish bluster) and breaks (a spot in rom-com Going The Distance for last album "Union"), there's still that dark sparkle missing.

Dulli generally succeeds in keeping things as darkly hypnotic as a rain-lashed midnight motorway.

Banjo Or Freakout effortlessly mates electronic distortions, low-end theory and achingly gorgeous pop melody – with emphasis very much on the latter.

To bypass Yuck would be imbecilic simply because their debut contains some of the most effortlessly hard-hitting, heart-hitting pop of 2011.

The novelty-obsessed stay-at-homes who made Toro Y Moi the buzz hit of 2009 might react unfavourably to all this accessibility, but by digging deep, Underneath The Pine shows Toro Y Moi setting down roots and, perhaps more swiftly than expected, flourishing.

So We're New Here isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it showcases a producer so in love with the music of now that he not only preserves the power of his source material, but makes it more relevant.

As is the case with twee-pop even at its best, there are moments when Allo Darlin' can get carried away with its cutesy sensibilities, when smiles can turn into winces

Whipping up a surplus of creeping, insistent sophistication--climaxing with ping-ponging head-wrecker 'Aspic'--you can once again envisage techno overlords such as Sven Vath dropping SMD, rather than daytime radio DJs.

Perhaps Oberst finds it tough to bring his brilliant bile to bear upon a synth the way he attacks an acoustic; a shame, as The People's Key is otherwise synthetic perfection.

Beyond the sonics, the lyrics are embarrassingly piss-poor as well.

If the band scraped away the torrential bluster in favour of more subtlety, then their next record could be a portrait of artists. As it stands, they're not there yet.

With his finest tracks lasso'd together, you can notice the immaculate progression of James Murphy.

If Little Comets played to their strengths they could burn far brighter.

Sure enough Freddy Ruppert's second album as Former Ghosts is as warm, life-affirming and snuggly as a coatless night on the Siberian steppes.

Let England Shake is an album that only the Polly Harvey of today could have written.

More than anything, annoying for the fact that in its moments of brilliance, it's the catchiest, danciest jangly guitar pop you'll hear this side of the summer. Sadly, those moments are few and far between.

From its cover in, there's a knowing, bustling swagger to The Streets' finale, if only in its relishing of a quick dart for the exit.

Gruff's skills as a songwriter married up with his gentle, accommodating tones can, at their best, elicit the fuzzy feeling one gets listening to a Burt Bacharach classic, but this falls short of such lofty comparisons.

By giving a wide berth to the safety of the post-rock label they've long despised, Mogwai have recorded some of their finest songs since "Mr Beast."