It feels churlish to criticise Everything Everything for trying different things, but all too often their efforts feel like lightweight flirtations with a style rather than committed explorations.

Anyone expecting some sort of lost treasure in this collection will be let down.

Fade is a sign of perseverance for the group, as the album perfectly details just what is so essential and appealing about the group, and why there will always be a place for these guys in the world of indie rock.

Lennon and Saunier interact with kindred sensibility.

These songs just lack that certain oomph to separate Free Energy from the thousands of groups who have sang about girls before.

He has come up with a gem of a record, heartfelt and true, that hopefully will get him some of the attention he richly deserves.

The Haunted Man is so effortlessly emotive that it seems to demand that we demand even more from it. Or at least, it would, if it weren't so easy to get lost in the many layers of these melodies and start thinking about the ghosts that Bat For Lashes is trying to chase away.

Sushi's main strength is the way it draws from so many strands of contemporary electronic music, but sounds like something else in its own right.

Bish Bosch is a wilder, more scattered (and scatty, in the case of Epizootics!, ten minutes of sax-driven jazz which could almost be seen as accessible, if it wasn't so dark and threatening) work than its immediate predecessors.

There is just too little here to distinguish Wild Nothing from the vast sea of mediocre 80s revivalists, all getting a kick on overhyped nostalgia.

Regardless of what the future holds for Led Zeppelin, the record shows that this single concert in the O2 Arena certainly was a celebration day for all.

Elverum has created an album that demands your time and attention, not to mention any memories you may be willing to part with.

Too often the way of the beat ends up a distraction rather than a fully incorporated addition to good songwriting.

Grace/Confusion is an aptly confounding record, its six tracks very much dissimilar to each other yet held together with a sense of grand gesturing and tireless virtuosity.

Where before, sounds could often exist along similar planes, he's now added a multi-dimensional aspect, with Exoskeleton in particular.

The Odds is excellent, because the odds are never against him.

Kendrick Lamar may not have saved hip-hop, but he's certainly provided us with one of 2012's best records.

While it's hard to say whether or not Our House on the Hill is truly a great album, it's clear that with this record, The Babies have defiantly surpassed the less-than-lukewarm expectations geared towards them to create a pop record ripe with personality and flavor.

It's a brilliant, mainstream indie rock album from a band who have for too long operated on the margins of, for want of a better word, the 'scene.'

When this album hits, it hits hard, but for the first time in their career, the barrage is intermittent instead of constant.

All in all, Instrumental Tourist offers more proof that these two are undisputed masters in their field, regardless of how necessary a collaborative effort like this really is anyway.

While all of the songs on the Ghost are good, the EP's identity crises will keep pulling listeners out of the experience.

This EP is not a singles-ready collection, nor should it be. Instead, the atmospheric songs do their part to transport the listener to another mood or mindset.

Rarely is an electronic album like sparked with such radical confidence.

It's all powerful stuff and it can only be GY!BE.

Smalhans won't be the most memorable record of the year, but that's partly because its great strength is its subtlety, which makes it constantly refreshing.

Its intensity has style, whatever Zeros lacks in substance or license, and an enjoyably infectious pulse that's consistent up until the final bits of backwards sound rotates during ƨbnƎ ƚI.

There's much to recommend Just To Feel Anything and while, as with all retro-leaning instrumental rock, the question of its exact purpose is perhaps a little hard to answer when the details come together, as in Adrenochrome's shifting bass-line, or in how the title track gradually blossoms into life, such concerns are ultimately rendered entirely, wonderfully, redundant.

This album is incredibly intriguing and was executed beautifully.

Many of the tracks on Dos! are merely soulless specters of previous work from Green Day's "golden-age."

For a collection of songs that are supposed to be carrying the weight of an imminent apocalypse on their shoulders, there are very few moments to be found on Top 10 Hits that seem to be affected by this burden.

It's short but manages to feel long. It's interesting but manages to feel dull.

Much of Cobra Juicy finds itself operating more on the sensitive side of their distinct weirdness, with the album sporting some of the bands gentlest, breeziest, and most romantic sounding tracks yet.

A lot of the time, this album doesn't do enough to sound much more than merely pleasant.

The Hood Internet couldn't decide whether to make a party record or a moody record. They tried to do both and succeeded at neither.

You can imagine, and probably relate, to the monotony and helpless angst that attacks us when we're a certain age, going through certain ritualistic processes of life. So imagine this record as the soundtrack to those feelings, and how liberating, not only that would have felt then, but does feel now.

Mostly everything is contrived and cliché, lifted from a stock collection of guitar rock and electro rock of the past ten years.

These songs feel more accessible and much less significant. There are a few tracks here that reanimate that sense of excitement which permeated his previous record but they are few and far between.

At times, the songs feel a tad underdeveloped, with sumptuous hooks shining bright over slipshod, kraut-inspired synths and metallic percussion lines... [Yet] Banks can still write a killer song like Summertime is Coming, which greatly overshadows most of the others.

Long Slow Dance might be a strong garage pop album with some incredibly catchy songs, but it could definitely be grounded from its chick flick sensibilities.

Trash Talk are still far from a pop group, and the album features some highly destructive moments in its 22-minute span – but unfortunately, 119 features too many weak spots of lukewarm punk that suggest the group is beginning to slip away from the fully realized and perfectly balanced sound the group was just starting to master.

By removing much of their signature distant-sounding vocal filters, grand historical speeches, spacey drones, and tightly knit arrangements, Titus Andronicus has successfully eliminated any sonic barriers that once stood in between the band and their listeners.

For many reasons it is confused, self-absorbed, remarkably gauche. It is so often an intentionally uncomfortable thing to listen to... [yet] intriguing.

Compared to Rock and Roll Night Club, 2 is a more polished and refined take on his brand of minimalist rock, structured around his keen songwriting.

Barring a few notable tracks, this debut from Snaith under the Daphni name, fails to coalesce into anything resembling the creative designs of his previous records.

Tall Ships are still navigating in search of their ideal destination, and their second voyage may prove to be an even more enriching one.

While Lekman certainly knows how to use a sample, it is his songwriting talent, his storytelling ability, and above all his remarkable emotional honesty that make I Know What Love Isn't the finest achievement of his career.

Twins proves to be an excellent collection of over-driven garage pop scorchers that fully exhibit Ty's personality and passion for rock and roll glory.

It's like a Jason Statham film, leave your brain at the door, don't think, enjoy it for what it is.

It doesn't really work for either audience it aspires to please, and I'm left feeling a bit bored.

This album displays the band at an absolute low-point in their career.

[The album is] really nothing but fun, and it sounds for the most part like it was put together that way, if we can allow that Lynne's idea of fun is carving out a perfect piece of pop production for each delectable morsel he offers up.

One of the most spectacular and intense albums the group has released yet.

In all, ERAAS, though fully invested in the possibilities of their vacuum and their vocal prowess, are at their best when the instruments can breathe.

Strapped's thirty-something minutes of southern California rock doesn't turn the page on anything new, but is still a worthy listen. The album holds true to the band's striped-down signature sound from their last two albums, with a sprinkling of a few stand out tracks.

Though [the songs on Transcendental Youth] may not reach the highs of past songs like Damn These Vampires from last year's All Eternals Deck or Family Happiness from The Coroner's Gambit, there is still plenty here for fans of The Mountain Goats to sink their teeth into.

Perhaps the best way to approach Theatre Is Evil is not even as an album, but rather a collection of songs--all fairly similar but often good, sometimes very much so.

The 2nd Law is a love-it-or-hate-it record. It contains some of the best songs Muse has done in recent memory, but also the worst

Dum Dum Girls have graduated from a class of reverb junkies to becoming potentially one of the most potent and distinct pop bands of our time. End of Daze is on a separate level of artistic creativity and economy.

[The album] is disappointing, but not because it's unmusical or masturbatory or boring, although it is sure to be dismissed as all these things. On paper I love the idea of the musical direction of the record – there are just some insurmountable problems with the execution of it.

With strong, fully realized statements such as Mauve, Ringo Deathstarr are making a strong case for being one of the most vital bands in shoegaze today.

Sun Airway conducts Soft Fall with a unique command, never straying from its drifting atmosphere even as it continually delivers a batch of catchy, highly replayable songs.

After all these years they can still write a catchy tune.

Sun is undoubtedly Marshall's boldest and most diverse effort to date, and it is all the better for it.

I'll admit, the songs on Babel wouldn't be so painful if it weren't for the god-awful "deep" lyricism of Marcus Mumford.

Algiers is immense, genuine, and, at times, heartbreakingly beautiful.

While Woods may falter here and there, Bend Beyond stills manages to hold its own and then some. The Brooklyn-based band may have cleaned up their sound since Songs of Shame, but their signature spontaneity and amplitude come through better than ever.

For all [the album's] obvious flaws, none of it seems to matter. When you hear that guitar soar, those rhythms pulse, and that voice cry out, you want to keep listening, for all 47 minutes. And when they're over, you want to do it again.

It's not much different to a Sleater-Kinney record in second gear, which still means there are flashes of brilliance.

Battle Born, doesn't quite reach those heights [of their debut, Hot Fuss], but it comes close.

This compilation isn't for everyone and does contain a few duds. But there are more than enough gems in here to deserve a purchase from any Elbow fan or fanatic.

Overall, it's a successful return, and a record that demonstrates the success of their debut wasn't a fluke and that The xx truly are masters of musical alchemy.

Shields is undeniably tuneful, and you could even say that it's the perfect record to build that swelling momentum, but it's also detached and emotionally destitute.

It's an album wrought with nostalgia, fuzzy-tape hiss, and unbelievable musicianship that any fan of Koster will surely eat right up.

They're much fuzzier than Deerhunter, more jam-inclined than The Horrors, far lighter than Slowdive – and if it's true that they're introducing the kids to krautrock and psychedelia I'm all for it. Perhaps more of an homage than an invention, then, but still, an absorbing debut.

On Tempest, Dylan easily puts to rest those detractors who claim that he's merely standing on the shoulders of greater artists.

It's exactly what everyone expected this much hyped album to be like. We all guessed the Jay-Z appearance and a Wu-Tang member outshining the other acts on show. We all expected insane feats of arrogance... But don't get me wrong, it's a good album.

An exceptional piece of psychedelic garage rock that never stays in the same place yet manages to still feel consistent as a whole, making this album a true standout amongst Thee Oh Sees' vast discography.

The two have crafted an album worthy of their names, stylistically bold and also a whole lot of fun.

What's astonishing about Breakup Song is how it maintains an intuitive notion of coherence, even with its handling of contradictions. All the while making it look easy.

Without him [Machinedrum], it's a well assembled but dull record. With him, it's sublime.

Chasny reveals himself to be a guitarist capable of an admirable level of intensity, if not pure technical virtuosity.

Mould's most mature album, and for that reason, it is definitely his best solo album, too. The Silver Age is not the best record of the year, but it is certainly one of the most unpretentious and easily liked records of the year.

America takes you on a long journey across busy city streets and somber countryside and while this expedition may be absolutely overwhelming at times, it's ultimately much worth the trip.

The album suffers some of the worst adjectives any musician can hear: boring, forgettable, and embarrassing.

Into The Diamond Sun is somewhat equivalent to being pelted with macaroons; at first sweet, delicate, even impressively constructed, but soon proving not just boring, but intensely samey, sickly and unsatisfying.

The Seer is 30 years' worth of effort, a unique and exciting height earned after decades of creation, experimentation and unconventional musical disassembly.

They manage to satisfy the listening needs of die-hard Fleet Foxes fans, but fail to truly carve out their own unique musical identity. This isn't to say Poor Moon doesn't offer up some great moments-they really do-just not ones that stick with you long after the record is over.

With just a bit more of a push, Centipede Hz could have been something truly special, but as it stands, it's a portrait of growing up that is wonderfully vivid but a tad unfulfilling, a collection of tracks boasting some remarkable tunes and a complex theme, and an album that is bound to satisfy both hardcore and casual fans.

Mature Themes celebrates many of his favourite artists, but it is not an homage to anyone or anything. That is its great achievement.

The strength in Held lies in how it takes electronic modulation to a more challenging path, fully conscious over the fact that the genre itself benefits when it's more about the songs instead of serving as foreground listening.

Every song on the tracklist is fluid, fresh, and endued with a sense of fun.

At present, their light out-of-the-box exploits feel more like comfort food, but there's no denying that once they develop their experimental ways they'll move out of stagnancy.

Enterprising Sidewalks may not be the best album released on the label this year, or even Lorelei's best album for that matter, but if the band can continue this kind of determined progression, it leaves me with hope that both the band and the label will grow with each new release.

It's a testament to their ingenious crafting of familiar sounds that we hear the musical reference points in each of these songs without feeling cheated by the fact that we can pinpoint precisely who they sound like at any given moment.

He's given us a lot to unpick, even if the record isn't as cohesive as it ought to be.

TEEN still manage to come out strong and fully formed on their debut, with In Limbo proving to be the working man's take on dream pop.

Despite the obvious logistical convenience that made possible the merge of Boeckner and Daniel, A Thing Called Divine Fits makes a strong case for established musicians who randomly feel an urge to start a band.