Six years in the making, Mew's sixth album is opulence in excelsis, the Danish dream-weavers gathering all the synths and power chords at their disposal to conjure a feast for the ears.

The result is a maelstrom of noise, both ominous and ecstatic, doomy minor chords and cloud-parting major riffs.

Cherry Bomb might be the tightest, leanest Tyler album yet.

This is an album to file alongside Aphex Twin’s ‘Syro’: one-of-a-kind electronic artist returns reinvigorated and still way ahead of the game.

Their musical range may not yet be as expansive as her vocal one, but any group who are able to segue from the psychotropic ’70s soul of ‘Guess Who’ to the proto-punk sturm und drang of ‘The Greatest’ are clearly no one-trick ponies.

It's a tough record to get a handle on, all fidgety switches of tempo and style, but the slippery acid of 'Industry City' and woozy electronica of 'Closer 2 U' reveal the breadth of Woodhead's vision.

This is a reunited band making music to rival their very best. There’s airmiles aplenty in these Essex Dogs yet.

Only ‘The English Summer’ and ‘Pink Lemonade’ bear much resemblance to the antsy, fidgety post-punk The Wombats made their name with, and both end up falling somewhat flat. In its place are the sleek, synth-laden likes of ‘Be Your Shadow’ and ‘Headspace’ --precision-engineered for mass appeal, but no less effective for it.

After this increasing headway, Ivy Tripp is slicker than its predecessors, but Crutchfield’s emotional rawness hasn’t been glossed over.

The harmonies are still present, but where once they aimed for a weirdy Wicker Man feel, now they combine forces in stirring new ways.

The Very Best still know how to party.

The rattling drums and broad, ambient synths on closer ‘Beams’ represent a rare foray into a fuller sound, but, for the most part, Dark Red plays out like the soundtrack to a creepy sci-fi-horror flick.

If White Men really recalls anything, it’s those early TV On The Radio records made before Dave Sitek had figured out what he was doing--and you can take that as a sincere compliment.

Rather than settling on a unified feel, second album Culture Of Volume also delights in genre-hopping, but it’s less abstract and more coherent than its predecessor.

Their vision remains a bleak one--but it makes resistance sound holy, and love sound like a revolutionary act.

Its high points are so charming you're willing to forgive the occasional low one.

The little dude is a poet. Still, at a relatively lean 30 minutes, it’s hard to argue this is a heavyweight album.

This isn’t so much a progression as a rebirth.

Lyrically and musically, Gallows are a very different band from the one who made ‘Grey Britain’, and the fact that you can’t imagine them making this album (or its predecessor) with Carter will remain a deal-breaker for some.

The assembled talent takes This Is The Kit’s traditional folk to the edge of the avant-garde.

In August 2014, Los Angeles trio Wand released debut ‘Ganglion Reef’, a psychedelic record inspired by a make-believe island. They’ve maintained that imaginative approach for follow-up Golem, which is full of brain-bending riffs, effects and abstract lyrics.

The Great Pretenders is an emotional, emboldened triumph.

One of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest.

Unquestionably, every song has been written to add firepower to the band’s live show, but it’s nonetheless the strongest and most confident Prodigy album since ‘The Fat Of The Land’.

A more diverse and calculated album than a usual Hey Colossus offering, and all the better for it.

Tracks like 'Mortar Remembers You' convey the bleakness of the situation ("I had to build a room to contain all the panic"), but Campbell's voice and the persistent whirling synths infuse the desolation with compelling energy.

An album that, lacking the neatly redemptive arc of 'good kid, mAAd city', is also grand and slightly unwieldy.

Thirteen-minute finale ‘Through The Knowledge Of Those Who Observe Us’ is the crowning glory of their career best album.