Try as he might, though, he can’t cover up his odd but undeniable talents.

She’s every bit the equal of Bat For Lashes, Frida Hyvönen or any member of the Wainwright clan.

He sounds small, beaten and subdued beneath the Lemonheads-meets-Diiv slack drawl of the music. The key thing here? Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he also sounds totally believable.

This is a no-flab 20-song cinematic suite in four movements, featuring Hart’s weather-beaten Bowie-like semi-falsetto in all of its majesty.

They expound spiritual philosophies (“I am a hieroglyph of love!”), grasp the rural jig-folk baton from Mumford & Sons and, post-Beirut, remind everyone it’s supposed to be fun.

It is all-consuming and consistently impressive from the off.

A mix of Trent Reznor and Patrick Wolf, he’s both an industrial piledriver and theatrical show-off, making this debut record disorientating, confusing and exciting.

JBM’s electronically tempered woodsman folk is a blissfully eerie, emotional punch to the guts.

History has rarely been so engaging.

He’s made an engrossing, highly original album with disarmingly simple tools.

Gauntlet Hair’s reference points are sublime, of course, but when they come up with the grudging funk of ‘Simple’, it’s something that’s all their own work.

There’s enough musical ambition, heartbreak and menace on The Big Dream to keep the Lynch nerds absorbed.

As an exercise is sounding totally, defiantly alive, it is a complete success.

You might not want to run into Daughn Gibson on a lonely night, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t listen to him push things forward with such noirish flair.

‘Devil Inside Me’ is the album’s earworm that you’ll end up humming, and ‘Solstice’ is a pleasingly overblown proggy epic, but much of the rest is competent yet uninspiring, and the novelty soon wears off.

The Blackest Beautiful is a strong, focused record from beginning to end.

This is warm, sleepy music that buzzes like a fridge. Best heard lying down.

The quintet deliver a sincere emotional punch.

Discipline plummets you into the band’s shadowy world but remains loveable--like a brighter, warmer Savages.

They mean well, but there’s something conservative about them.

Love the way cricket brings out people’s most eccentric traits? Then love this.

Tides is ambient in the same way as a water feature in a garden: soothing at a glance, but ultimately boring.

Truths rarely come as beautiful as this.

It all ends not with a bang, but a shrug.

Gratuitous filth, basically. It’s funny, but also a pity, because Yeezus is so tight, so bold, that with a few tweaks Kanye could’ve made his rock for the ages. As it is, he’ll have to settle for one of the best records of the year.

Yet another ’90s micro-genre gets the hipster revival treatment on Montreal duo Solar Year’s snazzy debut.

Right from the silly, scary opener ‘RRRR’, it’s daft, hypnotic, erotic, evil and unhinged all at once.

It’s not Flight Of The Conchords quality but, hey, at least it’s not The Midnight Beast.