That it isn’t resoundingly terrible (as background music it’s passable, as long as you can’t actually hear it properly) is due to its general beigeness rather than the sparse flashes that illuminate it.

Mostly, though, The Dodos’ little quirks--the lack of bass, the blustery drumming, the lyrics that threaten to say something profound but never do--irritate rather than intrigue.

While not their best, it’s decent enough to ensure there’ll be more-- even though the truly off-the-wall moments are either rare or misguided, meaning the record feels slightly anonymous.

Not quite Animal Collective or Stereolab, but at times sounding like an Ibiza chill-out album, there are hot flushes of brilliance here but they are few and far between.

Wild Beasts have undergone a sea change, and this beautiful album is a treasure that deserves plundering.

If you’ve ever been enticed by Spanish guitar, here’s your rock’n’roll introduction.

Despite bringing in all these names to make it an event album, The Blueprint 3 delivers because of hefty beats and quality rapsmanship, nothing else.

Red may only be a fleetingly satisfying confection, but maybe that was the plan all along.

Music theory waffle/spiritual musings aside, this sees the pair expand their austere template with new instruments and ideas to great effect.

Always inventive, often beautiful and occasionally totally sublime, Mew have always stood out from the pack, and this latest--with producer Rich Costey back on board--sees them raise the bar that extra inch higher.

This barrage of generalised morality is cozened by overwrought production that sees the sun-baked reggae backbone of his previous efforts stripped out to make way for a confusing hotch-potch of styles and an overwhelming sense of desperation.

Origin: Orphan is the sound of The Hidden Cameras finally proving they can make records as wham-bam powerful as their performances, with deliciously sumptuous results.

Jack Penate has made a record that’s light on its feet, has glamour bordering on sex appeal and that doesn’t make you wish a fatwa upon its author.

As impressive as her gossamer-light voice layered over the strings and breakbeats on ‘Bad Boy’ is, Speech can do upbeat as well as down.

Watch Me Fall’ finds him with space to show off the full genius of his songwriting, turning the fuzz down, the jangle up and taking the (for him) radical decision to throw in violins and even some pianos.

It’s a shame that Quirk’s quirky vibrato is so prominent as it ruins an album that otherwise sits somewhere between untroublesome and mildly enjoyable

That’s what’s frustrating here--although, like Waits, he’s obviously a truly poetic lyricist, the instrumentation is much more engaging than Henry’s placid voice.

What makes it so compelling is the simplicity of concept: like everyone, they get pissed off by jerkish behaviour, subdued by small misfortunes and comfort themselves with life’s small pleasures.

A set of sombre fingerpicked fables, Luminous Night’is heavy in spirit. It is cold to the core, as if it’s being played in the long shadow of a tombstone.

It’s arty, it’s farty, it’s at times strangely hypnotic and if you leave it on your record collection it will make you look really cool. If that’s your thing...

Wander no more, Lanegan. It’s clear to see that, with Soulsavers, you’ve found salvation.

The Bachelor is a thoughtful record whose greatest flaw is only that it’s overthought (though to the fans obsessive enough to fund it, that’s probably a bonus).

There’s enough sonic meat here to gain him fans, but not enough depth to build a fanbase that will remember him once he’s off the airwaves.

His new set is disarmingly jaunty, occasionally odd – as on the scratchy electro-folk of ‘Don’t Want To Sleep Tonight’ – and frequently lovely, chiefly on the parched reverie of ‘Ballad Of Fuck All.’

OCD Go Go Go Girls is, as ‘Think’ was, simply an imperfect heads-up for Lovvers’ live skills.

Their debut is a gale-force riot, a virtual tempest of joyous abandon.

This is a flawed, sometimes absurd, but always intriguing album that repeatedly approaches being something special.

‘The Whale Song’ may offer a solitary crumb for old skool Micers to nibble, but unfortunately this EP will not offer much else.

It's just nothing. Complete plastic nothingness from the outset.

The message is simple: the joke isn’t funny any more, last orders rang long ago and the game is well and truly up.

It comes a little unstuck by the end of course, but overall this is a delight, going bump in the night in more ways than one.

I’m Going Away sees The Fiery Furnaces abandon their surrealist tendencies to work outside their comfort zone, experimenting with structure and euphony to reassert their status as our most vital musical siblings.

Riceboy Sleeps' is a tedious album of orchestral drones, produced by manipulating piano, strings and choir samples on solar-powered laptops

Blue Roses, you see, is less Nash and more Bush, a dizzyingly beautiful set of delicate folk songs that sound like they’ve been sprinkled with pixie dust and reincarnated from some perfect bygone age.

Nothing especially groundbreaking here compared with compilations such as the Kitsuné Maison series, but listenable nonetheless.

Away from his day job, White is less creatively liberated, and surrounding The Dead Weather there's a very strong whiff of conventional, rather clumpy Middle-America jock rock.

While the harsher edges of their previous efforts have been sanded off long ago, frontman Neil Fallon still has a bucketload of fire and brimstone left in his belly and no-one does the possessed preacher man schtick quite like him.

Welcome To The Walk Alone may have the skeletal blueprint of pop genius running through it like words in a stick of rock but it verges on insulting.

Sleepy Sun are at their best when they revel in both light and dark, unleashing throatily riffing guitars to disrupt pastoral interludes.

With a bit of luck, Broken Records won’t be afraid to indulge themselves a little more in the future, because it would be a minor tragedy to see such a worldly band opt to wallow in mediocrity

These vipers may be tiny, but there’s a bite to Fortino’s harrowing vocal that’s sure to leave its mark.

Overall, you get the kind of lush musings that’ll soundtrack all the pivotal moments of your wayward summer romance. Blissful.

Sure, this isn’t going to frighten the rabbits just yet, but they do occupy a beguiling space between playful celtic reverie and the pits of drone-rock hell.

The fact that this mad man’s breakfast is actually nothing short of jaw-dropping should be the cause of spontaneous mass copulation in the streets.

This is an album of long, mysterious love songs to get lost in for days--seek it out.

Taking Mangum’s recorded-on-cardboard lo-fi folk epics as their ground zero, TRAA turn in the best alt.debut of the year.

The record lurches between cliched harpsichord-driven ditties and cringeworthy soft-rock pop songs that rely on the inventiveness of their concept over the originality of their music.

If I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose is the band's Everest, not only do they conquer it with unassuming boyish romance, but they've also created the most poignant anthology of what it means to be young and restless in the city since fellow Londoners Bloc Party's "Silent Alarm"--though they're a lot less frosty than Okereke et al.

Unsurprisingly, when the sax is told to sit in the corner and eat less pick’n’mix, and the rest of the band get a turn, the quality rises.

The band have covered all bases this time; pushing themselves to experiment while still celebrating what makes their music so catchy and compelling.

Wait For Me, though, mostly confirms even cheap-sounding wallpaper remains, sadly, wallpaper.

Their future as a metal act with their fingers on the button seems assured.

Those looking for a live greatest hits-style album will be a bit disappointed by the CD portion of Voltaic, which misses as many of Björk’s big songs as it hits. The DVD, however, manages to get to almost all of them.

Dando’s at it again, with a whole album full of mix-and-match covers which comfortably sit just on the right side of bizarre.

There’s also no denying the power of their bittersweet, socially inept aggression, and the ferocity of their sound on Farm. But, as truly gifted as Mascis is on the guitar and as surly as Barlow is vocally, this is merely Dinosaur fossilised, leaving you hankering for something a little more daring.

This might be their ‘reflective’ effort, but it’s classic MV.

Far goes some distance to halt a slide into mere radio-friendly pleasantness, though.

We feel like we got sold herbal E and it didn’t even get us stoned.

Tortoise have made a welcome escape from the dusty ’90s indie crypt.

The band batter you around the head with the kitchen sink in an attempt to get you to sit up and take notice, sometimes to the point where it simply gives you a headache.

As ’80s revivalism hits its self-fellating peak, it’s a pleasure to hear an album that knows escapism isn’t dressing up like a fucking unicorn--it’s shutting your eyes and screaming until your throat burns.

He’s named after his father’s best fishing fly, but the pastoral folk moments on Stephen Wilkinson’s fifth album of chummy electronica pale next to the glut of nostalgic yearning.

This album encapsulates the nostalgic elements of ESG, ELO, Tom Tom Club, The Doors and Sly And The Family Stone, applies a gloss of New York cool and then re-packages it with the modern production of the LCD Soundsystem, CSS and Beck variety. Forget the handclap, they'll take a standing ovation.

Ireton’s voice has an unschooled grace which elevates ‘Hiding Neath My Umbrella’ to the status of an interesting, if flimsy, curio in Murdoch’s canon. It’s just a shame the rest of the record, and the new recruits, are so fucking woeful.

Singer Matt Popieluch transcends his past as Peter Bjorn And John’s bongo player as he helms the hyper-melodic ‘Vacationing People’, while ‘Wait in This Chair’ proves a moving ode to inertia, casting a spell only a televised fashion disaster could break.

But from supposedly passionate Vonnegut fans we could do without ‘Sons Of Privilege’ and its student union pop at Uncle Sam (chief findings: U.S.A.=B.A.D.), while much of the rest slips into shouty default mode.

If you have to buy one painfully esoteric, scrotum-tighteningly hip, show-off album this year, you may want to make it this one.

So, though it’ll be a while before they shake off the inevitable age fixation, TMOT have produced an album that’s a stroke of genius regardless of age.

The 2009 Projectors have adopted a more enjoyable model, thanks in part to Longstreth holding back that horn.

Both cerebral and corporeal, sacred and profane, The Eternal sees this band approach the level of The Velvet Underground, where chaos and beauty ravish each other within the same song. Clever old sods.

It’s true that in parts Battle For The Sun, Placebo’s [sixth] studio album, will give the open-minded/easily-fooled aspartame butterflies in the stomach, methadone iris dilation and nicotine-patch heart tremors.

It's a surprise and a pleasure to report that much of The Ecstatic is--whisper it--simply good, honest hardcore hip-hop given a twist by MD's slurred, inebriated delivery and use of odd imagery.

Sounding more like Animal Collective than The La’s, in these times when one wrong move is seeing bands of Kasabian’s stature sink like stones, it seemed a brave comeback.

Miike Snow’s debut is a curious affair: clad in icy, inscrutable packaging a la Sigur Ros with american singer Andrew Wyatt carefully enunciating every overwrought word, it’s also jam-packed with the kind of dazzling pop tricks you might expect from three chaps whose day job is churning out radio hits for the likes of and Jordin Sparks.

A welcome addition to the intricate patchwork quilt of the new wave of Americana.

They get the sentiment of a thousand anguished FT editorials across in a mere 30 minutes.

This isn’t an album you can dip into; instead dive in and sink to the bottom and let it all gloriously wash over you.

Here he summons the spirit of Zappa, Blackalicious and Gil Scott-Heron to stunning effect. But when he’s speeding through neighbourhoods of clownish rhyme schemes, alliterative gibberish and sped-up Mozart sonatas, you wish he’d take his foot off the pedal slightly.

Sticking to the formula followed by fellow Welsh emo posers Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend, the generic metalcore verses and overblown choruses are all present and correct.

When it works it’s potent enough to rival his 2003 breakbeat opus ‘We Want Your Soul’. When it doesn’t, such as on opener ‘Do You!’ and the turgid ‘Best Fish Tacos In Ensenada’ (every bit as lame as its title suggests), it sounds like the kind of crap that gets played early on at Reflex on student night.

Only on ‘Nice To Be Dead’ does he veer into heavy guitar territory, but it fits seamlessly into the mix, making for not just his strangest set in years, but also his best.

There’s nothing on Hombre Lobo (Spanish for werewolf) that couldn’t be constructed by breaking down the DNA of the previous six Eels albums and repiling the strands up in some melodically fresh but warmly recognisable way.

They appear to be sincere in their sloganeering so you’ve got to admire them, but, really, the message of a song like ‘New Orleans’ gets seriously undermined by the shiny Busted balloon it’s caught inside.

If you were merely whelmed by FF’s anaemic third, then this album of dub versions could be the infusion you’re looking for.

Moondagger is a tune-rich excursion into lo-fi romanticism, with 'Parallelogram’s' multitracked vocals harmonizing over a groundswell of glockenspiels sharing DNA with Animal Collective.

For those patient enough to wait for this record to relinquish its quiet delights, the treasures waiting to be discovered it are rich indeed.

The real star of the show isn’t the often-bloodless figure of Thomas Mars, it’s the brilliantly detailed production, centred around the dovetailing drum and guitar chops, best heard via headphones for the full stroboscopic effect.

Eating Us is their fourth full-length, and it’s a delight.

From the robotic churn of ‘Blue Lights’ to the wiry rock’n’roll of ‘Tin Birds’, there’s little cohesion--rhaps understandably, given Sniper’s penchant for releasing new material every couple of days--t that simply makes it feel of a lovingly-crafted mixtape.

So swathed in electronic trickery, space-age swoops and super-produced vocals is My Electric Family, though, that it ends up a little soulless; individually the tracks have a removed piquancy, but an hour’s solid exposure leaves you yearning for a crackle, some fuzz, or any human intervention.

Admirable, if not necessarily lovable.

Three decades on, a mini Canadian chap is bringing things full-circle and thanks to an all-star cast including the brothers Soulwax and Gonzales, he almost pulls off this grand appropriation.

Often, fantastically, all at the same time.

It’s decent in places but it’s just… you know that feeling you get when someone you love is so wracked with pointless worry that you just want to shake them and shake them until they snap out of it?

The overriding feel is of an album just too jaded, too joyless to truly count as a return to form.

Twin drummers Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson are oustanding, but it’s Patterson who’s the real star – an all-American frontman whose honey-coated voice is practically begging for adoration.

There are times when the album feels strangely medicated; the positivity, when heaped upon the listener in brutal doses, makes you feel trapped in one of those American self-help groups.