That it’s Portishead’s best album yet is little short of miraculous.

There's going to be a hearty scrap between this lot, Muse and the Monkeys when album of the year time comes round.

Low have always sought to make music that can both swell the heart like a gospel tune and capture the amplified absence of a funeral parlour. It's difficult to imagine a more perfect expression of their vision than this.

Much like the title of his debut, Indiana’s curious ringmaster Stith is a contradiction in terms. Don’t be put off--he’s a contradiction worth losing yourself to.

It still defiantly goes against the grain, but also explodes with immediate, attention-grabbing riffs.

For those of us who still believe in music's power to redeem, 'Funeral' feels like detox, the most cathartic album of the year. [5 Mar 2005, p.49]

It marks the dawning of an era of British music that isn’t just for the casual petrol shop consumer, but stuff so important that you can give yourself to it completely. This is the album that’s going kick open the door for all the great British bands that’ll sweep through in their wake.

Blazing, brilliant second album.

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.

Daft Punk have pulled off a brilliant wheeze by re-inventing the mid-'80s as the coolest pop era ever. And not even the officially approved retro-kitsch cool of Madonna's lukewarm excursions into post-Daft terrain but all the bubble-permed, sports-jacket-and-jeans excesses they can muster.... Mostly, though, 'Discovery' is simply fantastic pop...

'Capture/Release' is fresh, unique, original even; its oh-so-contemporary reference points are revisited with such punk-rock vivacity and hell-for-charity-shop-leather vigour that they might be the first band you’d actually believe when they roll out the old "no, honestly, we were doing this long before we’d even heard of Bloc Party".

Time will tell how Primary Colours stands up to the likes of "Loveless" or "Psychocandy," but right now, this feels like the British art-rock album we’ve all been waiting for.

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

One of the reasons Major Arcana works so well is because it’s addictive and fun, which could explain how these characters got into such a mess in the first place.

There's no possible way of having this much fun without getting the chorus of Handel's 'Messiah' drunk on peach schnapps. [4 Feb 2006, p.29]

Burial’s success has brought with it imitators, but with this EP he’s outwitted them all by introducing a gloriously widened palate to his music that is both instantly familiar and shockingly unlikely.

Holy Fire brings new words to mind. Sharp. Emotive. Massive.

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

It's thrillingly obvious that Junior Boys have made one of the year's best albums. [31 Jul 2004, p.41]

A stunning LP that, in a just world, would do for Roky what the "American Recordings" series did for Johnny Cash.

An astonishing debut of cosmic country noir. [28 Aug 2004, p.57]

Confident, bold, ambitious, bunged with singles and impossible to contain, ‘X&Y’ doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it does reinforce Coldplay as the band of their time.

In an age where even Britpop corpse-botherers Brother trumpet their desire to collaborate with Odd Future, the Monkeys have made a record heavily indebted to late-'80s indie and a small group of white, male '70s singer-songwriters: Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen.

'Icky Thump' is brilliant, there's no way around that.

The nerve of it all is breathtaking. Turbo-beats poke up a gospel-jazz revivalist meeting, a mariachi band wanders into the hazy disco sashay of 'Broken Dreams', a Gary Numan sample gets bludgeoned to credibility in the Van Helden-esque pogo of 'Where's Your Head At?'.

Syro is amazing: bug-eyed, banging rave that sounds quintessentially Aphex while not quite sounding like anything he’s done before.

It has the reckless spirit of a record that hasn't been over-analysed, but with an intense flurry of ideas from someone in the absolute prime of their creativity.

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