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.

In making this (undoubtedly scary) leap away from what’s expected of them they’ve pulled off the second album reinvention of 2010.

The reality is Free Energy sound like ’90s rock berks Terrorvision. It’s not all woe--‘Bad Stuff’ is like an FM rock Pavement--but it makes us worry that Murphy might be losing his edge.

The tunes, too, are as lush and anthemic as ever.

It's an audacious album of lyrical wit, a defiant record of pugnacious bass, samples from a certain robot-helmet-wearing French electro duo, tangential guitar, synth noise and dark mutterings, much of which concern Smith's experience of the medical profession following a spate of broken bones.

Across Forgiveness there's countless reminders of why you loved BSS.

Picking us up where the laptop prof's 'Los Angeles' debut dropped us for another nocturnal journey through LA that serves as a moody, widescreen, be-bopping riposte to UK dubstep. Only this time it's a flashier ride.

They stake a firm claim for parity with arguably their most consistent set yet.

A brilliant, invigorating reintroduction.

Tracks such as "Excuses," "Animal Backwards" and, in particular, "Into the Mirror" caress the ears with hypnotic funk, yet these triumphs are only ripples against a stronger tide, as lyrically Omni is a damp blanket.