The turgid ‘Robots From Hell’ aside, they carry it off.

‘The Balcony’ is informed both by their struggle and their noughties indie elders. All this adds up to a dated sound.

The fragile piano melody of 'Just Like You' stands out, but this 90-minute piece is best digested whole, as another accomplished Reznor film score.

After 64 minutes of the same, it all starts to feel like a bit of a grind.

The good--no, the astonishing--news is that this constantly engrossing record repays a decade and a half's faith and patience. D'Angelo has scuttled down the digital chimney with an early Christmas gift with long-lasting rewards: not just one of the best records of 2014, but one that will stay with you throughout next year, too.

A sublime farewell from the millennium's finest synth act.

Recorded in sessions at a French convent and a San Francisco studio and featuring analogue electronics alongside strings, brass and woodwind, Geocidal is monolithic.

They’re too wilfully mad to emulate Tame Impala’s success, but if you’re after a freaking out, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s outrageous noise deserves attention.

‘Stay Awhile’ and renditions of The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody’ and the Burt Bacharach and Hal David-penned ‘This Girl’s In Love With You’ are stunning in isolation. A whole album of Deschanel’s wholesome, entertaining-the-troops voice and M Ward’s tasteful instrumentation is cloying.

What's most intriguing about Content Nausea is listening for possible signposts as to where the next 'proper' Parquet Courts record might be headed.

As a reminder of Eminem’s vocal showboating, ShadyXV is impressive. The problem--and it’s a persistent one--is that where once his anger was energetic, now it simply betrays lethargy.

Blige’s enthusiasm is most powerful on Follow.

They might be reaching into the past for inspiration, but Savages are pushing restlessly forward.

Power's handful of great tunes make it worth the wait, but its more affected moments make it difficult to love.

He’s crafted a tender and often forlorn eco-treatise.

Although this self-titled debut contains shades of their previous bands, it's noticeably more direct, and rockets onwards, simple and straightforward.

Listen speckles similar crackers (‘Goodbye Friend’, ‘Hey Mama’) between gushes of sizzle sewage, as if all of Ibiza’s been trying to get high on glittery laxatives.

A Better Tomorrow isn’t all good (most noticeably, it’s lacking killer verses from Raekwon and Ghostface Killah), but it’s a bold, clever album that’s thankfully positioned away from the hip-hop zeitgeist.

An hour of intuitive improvised excellence.

Monuments To An Elegy is essentially a Corgan solo record which shows flashes of his old power, while also straying into some seriously dodgy attempts to update the Pumpkins sound for 2014.

The pair attack a chunky selection of bluesy Wilko originals with gusto.

Austra’s music has always felt like it comes from the same place, too--a dark dancefloor mania of hot-blooded movement and dark sentiment – and new EP Habitat is no different.

Constant jangle blurs the songs, and a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Revolution Blues’ only emphasises Ranaldo’s newfound likeness to the Canadian in one of his dirgier moods.

AC/DC’s first album without their founding member is a crisp Brendan O’Brien-produced musical wrecking ball.

pite. ‘Sanctuary’ sums up Final Days best, a nine-minute odyssey of guttural vocals, noise and melody.

The fidelity is satisfyingly chunky, though, and while you’ll find better takes on, say, 1988’s ‘Fugazi’ EP, the previously unreleased ‘Turn Off Your Guns’ perfectly encapsulates their blend of wiry funk and firecracker dynamics.

Mission Desire, a token shard of folk gloom, does little to undercut the finely honed futurist gleam elsewhere.

Too few tracks leave as forceful an impression however, and for all its added bells and whistles, Palme comes off more mildly quirky than exhilarating.