False Priest is also Of Montreal's first and only adventure in hi-fi, a co-production job with Kanye West consort Jon Brion.

Sex with a z – amusing but dull.

Band Of Joy is an essential purchase... if your dad is having a birthday this month.

The devil be praised that, rather than visiting the shrink or brothel to deal with his sexual dysfunction, the Grinderman went to the studio instead.

Many people who have heard Flamingo have said it sounds a lot like a Killers album. Wrong. It is more that The Killers' albums sounded like Brandon Flowers solo albums, with a bit of indie guitar on top to snare those Reading & Leeds headline slots.

That surprising lack of offensiveness, though, isn't replaced with anything to particularly excite, leaving it a tasteful aural curtain of an album without much of a view beyond.

This collaboration-heavy eighth album tends to fail when it experiments.

Cassius man's production is a deluxe weave of dreamy synths, biting snares, throbbing bass and warbly Vocoders, but it feels as if Chromeo are just doodling knobs over the top.

Once the dust dies down, though, the remainder of Who We Touch feels disappointingly timid in comparison, and the particularly saggy middle section sees them pitch their tent smack bang in the middle of the road.

Produced by Boyz Noize, this is the sound of a rook shuffling with a maverick king, full of harpsichords and pianos and sexy European beats; it will arouse the mind and stimulate interesting positions.

It's got the charm and spark of the Weezer of old, and that's a quality you just can't fake.

It's an unassumingly great record that exists solely to celebrate the pleasures of making a gigantic, melodious racket.

Combining afrobeat, dub and more samba slickness than you can shake a headdress at, the frenzied carnival rhythms of Pop Negro will spark a fire in your newly tropical soul that will still be smoldering come next year's Mardi Gras.

They're clearly not aiming for a worldwide banker, but the seam they mine is creatively profitable and floridly engineered.

This is an album to fall in love to, to break up to, to drown sorrows to, or to bounce around to. One-hit wonders? Well, the wonders part is right.

With not a single duffer over another eight tracks, it looks like our eventual Best Of Body Talk compilation might just be the album of the year.

Overall, Interpol seems cinematic, abstract and complex, but that adds up to something interesting rather than thrilling.

Just when you think Audio Secrecy can get no more infuriating, you find the most overwrought of the ballads lodging their tunes inside the melodic part of your cranium.

Only a joyless weirdo could deny that these are fearsomely well-crafted songs, as clean-lined and immaculate as a well-cut suit.

That's what they do with pop--layer incongruous harmonies and bastardised riffs to make us look at it anew. If that sounds like too much effort, then Man... isn't for you. If however, the thought of it as a brilliantly unsolvable puzzle appeals, then bow at the feet of pop's new Picassos.

Strange Weather, Isn't It? returns as a more disciplined, ziggurat kind of groove odyssey, where the modular sounds are rhombus and the emotional undercurrents darker and more demure.

What is unfortunate is that she allows Lanegan to utterly dominate their duets.

The tender optimism of tracks like "The Morning" and the gorgeous, harpsichord-led symphony "Oh So Lovely" are wonderfully uplifting, but there's still room for some snarky self-deprecation on "Baby Loves Me" too.

Memphis sextet Magic Kids started out in the midst of the city's celebrated garage-punk scene, but you'd hardly know it on the basis of this airheaded and obsessively nice-ified debut album.

A fine evolution.

Sure, there's the odd thoughtful spot of violin, like on "Give Me Shapes," but the record's relentless rawness eventually bleeds into a murky burble.

With Simon Taylor-Davies' walloping guitar scree lancing through it, it also sounds distinctly like the work of four individuals who have transcended the genre-meld they spearheaded when new rave broke in 2007 and become a great British band.

The title track is 11 minutes of painfully celestial balladeering self-indulgence, a mess of standard-Sufjan jittering flutes mixed with the most offensive noise from his best-avoided early electronic period.

It's sonically peculiar, coolly melodic, relentlessly detailed and, frequently, exhilarating.

Now they've reinforced their position as the credible elder statesmen of metal, with a tightly focused, self-referential effort.

This is an album to be held close to your heart and revered as psych-pop scripture.

Like their forebears, these LA beardies get the plaudits for taking raw, honest emotions and richly infusing them into every moment of their music.

Retaining your sprightly playfulness while making a mature comeback isn't easy, but Sky Larkin straddle the two with ease.

They may be Pivot no more, but they're turning heads – and for all the right reasons.

This expansion of sound is also put together with the kind of meticulousness that makes Transit Transit doubly compelling.

Although still fans of start-stop measures and tempo changes, this time around songs are given some welcome room to breathe and the quartet focus on grand, pastoral soundscapes, which loosely recall the likes of Pink Floyd.

One knock-on effect of going professional is that you can now hear the music clearly and properly, and it turns out that Mr. Williams isn't exactly a Mozart in the songwriting stakes.

The Suburbs isn't anything as simple as back to basics--they're a much more accomplished, musically interesting band now.

This album of instrumental sketches is surprisingly bullish, its snotty distorted synths and chiptune funk melodies aligning El-P unexpectedly with the output of young UK producers Joker and Rustie.

It's weirdly powerful stuff this, couch-rock, heartbreak coated in cereal. And with this limelight-stealing album Best Coast are providing an amazing advert for dropping out, having mad crushes and doing very little other than getting high.

Each track on their fourth boasting a captivating blend of experimentalism and depth.

If Burrows gifted Razorlight two of their biggest hits (in "America" and "Before I Fall To Pieces"), what his former band gave him in return was the platform to bring something far more interesting into the light of day. Welcome the new dawn.

It's not the world-claiming masterpiece it could have been. But as an evolutionary step from world-party-queen towards a more complex beast, it's intriguing.

While it's a wiser and more weathered quintet that greets us in 2010, the Londoners return not bruised or broken but infinitely more polished and positively bursting with ideas, passion and optimism.

They've proved themselves to be a band who defy convention with an album stuffed full of subtle invention and an emotional intensity that you really wouldn't expect from a band still too young to grow a beard between them.

Kelis. Genius. Pop auteur. Credible diva. Welcome back.

Aphrodite is her most unified work in ages.

What's finally made it is an expansive, guest-packed 57 minutes that recall the Southern hip-hop bounce of 2003's 'Speakerboxxx', but with an added twist of maturity.

While there are a couple of tracks here that are close to filler, Delphic have proved that they are adept at This Kind Of Thing, which is cause for celebration alone.

Night Work makes no apologies; Stuart Price creates a sound that is fierce and muscular.

3OH!3 are electro-hip-pop white bread American scum.

Macy effortlessly combines the classic pop of Chic and Bill Withers with the sort of flamboyant, contemporary chart-frippery Mika probably thinks he's up to.

Seven albums in and Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons might no longer be raving on the most future-facing side of dancefloor, but their way with an effortless arms-in-the-air banger is undisputable.

"Relapse" should have been the end of his career, but by admitting his mistakes as well as trumpeting his successes, Shady's given himself one last stand.

This album offers an elegant blend of trilling piano, strummed guitar and crisp digital beats, but it's dominated by Mason's voice, and his monastic chants prove as soothing and stirring as when they wafted across The Beta Band's deathless debut 'Dry The Rain'.

It takes half a dozen listens before the quality of it really sinks in, and is so all over the place that only the most devoted won't find it initially maddening. But throughout is a braveness and naive sense of wonder.

This first instalment is impressive, but thin at eight tracks. Would it not have been better to hold back, and release just one, truly stunning record?

It's fair to say Gaslight are a band who have made people's lives immeasurably better simply by existing; American Slang won't change anyone's world and it's unfair to punish it for not, but we just hoped for… more.

It's those constant and predictable superstar interjections that prevent the album from standing out as much as it had potential to do.

They're having their own sonic keg party here: coasting through the fuck-ups on the basic likeability-- the sheer shaggy melodic charm--of the hosts.

The songs compiled here were the public face and sound of that--all-inclusive, heroic and, for the most part, bloody catchy. As eulogies go, it's not half bad.

It’s a late resolution; like their debut, Crystal Castles feels long; not too long for comfort but too long for coherence.

Yes, we could have done without the plodding, church-baiting 'Hash Wednesday', but songs such as 'Explode', and 'On A Fix' more than make up for it and are so incredibly abrasive that you probably shouldn't put 'Eyes & Nines' next to valuable records on your shelf.

While the only revolutions here might be the creaky cogs of the Fannies' 20-year career turning nicely, there's little denying they're still worthy of the reverence they effortlessly garner.

Daring as some of the tracks are, they overwhelmingly loop her vocal around a generic house lick that has the effect of giving her very little to do vocally.

This fifth set (their second since breaking out) pushes the city limits of their fantasy world even wider and masks an uncomfortable truth.

The clarity is chill-wave level rather than that of a tape that had been dropped in a bath, then dried with a hairdryer. And, more importantly, the songs sound better than ever.

This psychedelic folk pop-athon of tickled riffs, snappy elastic basslines, shimmering synths and sweetly sung vocals is all dreamy eccentricity, with a bittersweet hint of rhythmic unrest, from start to finish, and should send Hidden Cameras fans into an amorous tizz after just one listen.

The hooks have gotten naggier, the production crisper, to the point where 'LP4''s wide-eyed squelchy funk is carving them an oxymoronic niche: 'utterly compelling background music'.

There's depth, sincerity and beauty in abundance here.

Back with less pressure, Champ packs that sweet sucker-punch we craved the first time around.

Their careers adviser-flouting debut is in the mould of the greats rather than carving a new sound.

Their spooky, sexy, dark folk is kept bare and bolshy, like Laura Marling with sex and humour.

It's a collection of ludicrously fresh-sounding, short and sharp material (the majority of tracks are under two-and a-half minutes) that confirms he's in the midst of a seriously impressive rebirth.

Though The Futureheads' established formula still sticks steadfast, there are enough wild cards peppered throughout to prove that, far from stuck in a rut, they're still moving playfully forward.

Although Cruz’s downfall comes when he acts the player (‘Break Your Heart’, ‘Dirty Picture’), it’s obvious his real talent comes when he exchanges vocal manipulation for balladeering as on ‘Falling In Love’, and disregards romantic cynicism for a rather hopeful ‘The 11th Hour’.

This album is an onslaught of brutal drumming and bowel-loosening riffs, occasionally leavened by surprisingly delicate vocal interplay.

‘Say It’ recalls the airy refreshment of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Contra’ and the garage-pop fun of Jonathan Richman’s ‘Rock’N’Roll With The Modern Lovers’.

Yet it’s also a record that’s in denial of things like the atomic bomb, IBM, the internet and the fucking millennium. And that really is the true spirit of nihilism, no matter how well you dress it up in your parents’ rags.

Drawing influence across the board, it's a work that not so much mixes genres as smashes them into one visceral, jaw-dropping hybrid.

Fly Yellow Moon sounds like Guillemots with all the wonky bits weeded out.

As curious a party piece that is, it rather overshadows their phenomenal way with gorgeous melodies and heart-melting harmonies.

An album with a distinct dual personality, Marina’s dazzling ‘The Family Jewels’ pitches the confident, MTV Awards-headlining superstar of our dreams against a more self-deprecating girl-next-door Marina who’s dead set on Supertramping and vamping her way out of her fug.

As things stand, it too often feels like a watered-down version of what Jack White peddles.

Other than the fantastically chaotic "Watcher, Tell Us Of The Night" ushering in a rallying final quarter, it makes for a frustratingly unfocused listen from a fine artist lost in his own magnificent noises.

If ‘This Is Happening’ must be a parting shot from this smartest and most human of dance machines, it’s a fine one. Though by LCD’s own standards this takes second place to ‘Sound Of Silver’’s unquestionable gold medal, by any other current band’s measure this is an all-out classic.

No great leaps forward from ‘Everything All The Time’ and ‘Cease To Begin’, just lovely, warm-hearted, full-throated harmonies and gentle melancholy.

The Black Keys are clearly determined not to get stuck in any such rut, with ‘Brothers’ marking the midway point between the garage-rock stylings of their first few albums and the hip-hop influence of last year’s Blackroc side-project album.

Britain’s foremost whiteboy funkateer has learned enough since his 2005 major label debut ‘Multiply’ for ‘Compass’ to pull off a neat trick. With his heart as his guide, Lidell gives us a tour of soul through his geographically-removed ears.

Her ambition is flabbergasting, let alone that she executes it with bundles of fun and a fizzing personality.

Sea Of Cowards, then, is the record The Dead Weather should have come out with first, casting them firmly as a real band, albeit one that sound like they’d roofie their fan club soon as look at them. It’s actually supremely brave and exhilarating.

Goddamn it's taken a while, but with 'High Violet' The National's slow and steady evolution can no longer be ignored. This lot are fully grown-up, coloured in and going overground.

Like a modern empowered woman, Keane are obsessed with ‘having it all’. Juggling a career, great hair and kids equates for them to making safe, dowdy AOR while giving the finger to those who call them safe, dowdy AOR.

This is a fine record and you can add an extra point to the score if your stereo cost over a grand.

Grey Oceans is CocoRosie's most beautiful and, more importantly, least bloody irritating record to date.

The result is purest punk bubblegum, and deserves to be blasted long and loud all summer long.

Antique keyboards pulse, fretless basses thrum and a variety of voices echo in and out, underlying the trippy feel and making this pretty much the most scintillating and daring record of the year so far.

Swiftly recorded in just one day, Warm Slime is an intuitively-conceived, addictively impulsive lesson in peculiarity.