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.