Tracer certainly makes a good attempt at being a strong electronic album, and there is still plenty of content here for big fans of both EDM and IDM music to enjoy. Unfortunately, Teengirl Fantasy still needs to learn how to incorporate more of themselves into their music.

Grace and Lies is at its best when opposing ideas collide into each other.

Fragrant World is by no means a bad album - it may start slowly, and end rather mutedly, but there's a fairly satisfying core to it - it's only really a disappointment as Yeasayer themselves have already raised the bar incredibly high.

Just when Devotion looks like it could be losing its way, the most incongruous track of the eleven pulls it out of the bag.

Some the hooks are among the best the band has ever written... [Yet] the 10 songs never feel like an Album so much as it does a collection of songs, more like productive jams from a group of middle-aged friends unwinding or celebrating than actually adding any kind of blues to their songwriting chops.

The music shines brighter than most of his pop contemporaries. In fact, the album is so successful on this level that I could choose any given song and laud it as one of the best tracks on the album.

Despite its faults, Channel ORANGE still marks Frank Ocean out as an intriguing and exciting artist. It's a contradiction in many ways: a far-from-perfect album that suggests a long and prosperous career; an artist without an exceptional voice who looks like he will instead become an exceptional voice.

It's difficult to say that there are some great songs on this album, but it's true; unfortunately Lewis fails to take advantage of this fact by lagging behind the innovation and originality of the preceding 80's revivalist movement.

Raw Money Raps plays out like an exhaustive thesis work on how to expertly handle the art of hip-hop sampling. It's really a treat that an artist like Jae is wise enough to spend most of his energy figuring out how to manipulate different sounds instead of writing himself up as the next cool, swaggering martyr.

This album is a carbon copy of Vampire Weekend, but you know how when Gus Van Sant remade Psycho shot for shot and it was rubbish? It's like that.

The songwriting is versatile but cohesive; every song clearly has its own place on Shrines, and each one has a strong hook, at least one beat or lyric you'll find yourself thinking over for a little bit.

What really makes this album the disappointment that it is is not the songs that wallow in the background. It's relistening to his earlier work that puts it into perspective.

This is the main strength of Fang Island's songwriting, their ear for power-pop catchiness. But they've also implicitly revealed their fatal flaw: they don't give you enough of a sense of suspense and release which makes those climaxes your favourite parts.

It's [their] mastery of one's musical landscape, both sonically and psychologically, that makes Beak>'s take on krautrock so poignantly effective, with >> possessing the ability to lure in both fans and newcomers to the genre into its paranoia-fraught world of distress.

It doesn't feel forced in any way and actually can seem a little lacklustre at times due to this.

The good does far outweigh the bad, and had this album been a bit more condensed, it would have been one of my favorites this year.

Next to the realized space of OM's previous albums, which has always contributed greatly to the spiritual and meditative focus they convey, Advaitic Songs sounds flat, a detriment to the album which might otherwise be, next to their grandest, OM's most accomplished.

It's a handsome work, but it really could have done with a bit of judicious editing.

These songs are all, for the most part, perfectly adequate, but we've heard better and stronger songs from Sadier before. It's not so much a sucker punch as a blunt disappointment from an artist who we know can do so much better.

Wonky is a very structured album, and although quality control may lapse slightly toward the end, it deserves to be considered a triumphant return.

Most of Hypnotic Nights already sounds worn out.

The album is a melting pot of so many brilliant musical perspectives, which could only be channelled by a band with a gleeful, wide-eyed fascination with the possibilities of their music. And they succeed in their knowing but expertly-delivered goal: to sound like no other band out there.

Unsound is, in many ways, their best work since Vs.

When Friends get down to it, the energy that brought them together dictates the making of half-profound statements in retro R&B funk jams; and frankly, the result is brilliant.... Yet, when they explore other avenues, the band seem unable to hide their influence and consequently come off as half-hearted.

With a confectionery of similarly colored assortments, The Idler Wheel... retrenches most of her past output, whether its wistful balladeering or sultry jazz, as a means of expelling a truly uncharacteristic voice.

Truly electrifying.

If albums could have Nutrition Facts, Quarantine would lack the vitamins and minerals we normally associate with Laurel Halo's production, but it's hard to dislike the album entirely because, after all, she's still quite skillful at making her Metal Gear Solid-esque ambiences seize and enrapture us with their swirling, bubbling drones.

The trio's assembly of sharp percussion and atmospheric melody as logically configured and essential to the make-up as words are to a properly written or formed sentence.

Because it's tediously unassuming, people will listen to it in the background once or twice while skimreading blogs and forget about it within a year.

There's something about how these tracks activate complicated astrophysical sequences dense with mathematical run-off that makes them have hi-speed, cyber-virtual effervescence.

It's good, but it's not essential.

Locked Down is the result of a synergy between musicians of different generations – both have something to bring to the party, and the combination is compelling. It is an album of rare energy, heat, sweat and motion, and a salutary lesson to all that age need not diminish one's mojo.

For all the missteps along the way, El-P arrives somewhere quite poignant, and although he may not have paved his own way there, his route is quite impressive, and there is no wasted beat and no unseen seriousness and intensity.

The contemporary beats and intermitted uses of techno make this album youthful. For instance, Stupid has a stoic loop that runs through Womack's raspy cries and a sophisticated piano melody. It's a really beautiful blend of new and old.

There are no real standout tracks, it is a four song EP after all and electronica has a slight tendency to blend into one long reverby track. But as a piece, it moves so softly, so deep and so colourful.

The phenomenal performances from Cherry and Gustafsson simply blast away any genre preconceptions – by sheer virtue of the musical confidence of this collaboration, they've created something magnificent.

There is a laudably uncompromising quality to the album which I admire. But by the time I get to album finale Brunswick Sludge I find myself getting a little bored with it all. There's only so much wacky noise experimentation I can take in one go.

While Corgan feels reinvigorated, utterly convinced that's he's finally nailed it this time, the final product doesn't hold up as an entirely ingenious one.

Magic Hour's never exactly bad. It's worse than that. It's boring.

An LP with a long gestation period but a short attention span that revels in 1960s pop music and is as fun as it is jangling.

Freak Puke is at its very core a Melvins album: strange and abrasive, muck-borne and jagged.

[Banga] may be the songstress's most ambitious statement yet.

You have never heard these songs like they are presented here, and there's a chance you have never heard them better, either.

They're taking everything they have at their disposal and mixing it all together, creating something undeniably unique and fantastic.

It boasts some of the band's most emotionally charged material, but just like all their efforts, it requires bearing some stiff, docile guitar melodies to discover some of its finer points.

Go! Pop! Bang! is a fun album, even when it's suffering from the too many cooks syndrome. I just hope Rye Rye asserts more control over her next release.

It's a good album, revelatory in that Liars can carry their sound into different realms of possibility, a translation carried out by different instruments.

Newcombe has constructed his most level-headed and consistently engaging record since ...And This Is Our Music back in 2003.

It could do with one or two songs being trimmed, but there's enough variety to keep things engaging, if at times it lacks incisiveness. Still, my criticisms are largely comparing the band to their past work, which happens to be exceptional.

When it comes to developing and honing the craft of songwriting to present a signature sound with a variety of ideas, The Temper Trap fall short.

Heaven may be one of the Walkmen's more detached efforts thus far. For a band that's been exercising their rollicking sway with a deft ear, it's a shame that there's only space for one real heart tugger, like in No One Ever Sleeps

A most personal and intimate collection of demos and early takes from George's personal archive of recordings which he left behind

For all the interesting noises that the band have come up with in the studio, the production really doesn't do them any favours, cramming them into a fairly narrow space and stripping them almost entirely of any sense of atmosphere.

Celebration Rock's high-tempo riff rock concerns itself with energy and embraces our serendipitous run-ins with those good times worth remembering.

Valtari, their long-awaited joint band effort, revolves to realign their focus instead of undergoing any drastic transformation.

When it gets it right, it gets it absolutely spot on, but a little more variation wouldn't go amiss. However, the album's highlights – and there are many – are just so fantastic that you can forgive it an awful lot.

On Make-Believe, a sloppy more-of-the-same same approach has crippled what this album could have been, ultimately leaving us with some vaguely interesting notions rather than well-explored concepts.

What's most important is that the album marks her out as a talent to watch, more than able of holding her own against such forebears and, in turning in work as simple yet creepily perfect as Homeopathic or Twin Song, proves that she's more than worthy of our love in her own right.

I Predict A Graceful Expulsion maintains a grounded, brooding focus that is designed more as a calling card to exhibit the next proper artist to warm the top of dusty stereo players of plenty middle-aged households.

Although this may not be a masterpiece in the repertoire, I can't say that it lacks anything in particular, in fact, the opposite is true. It gives too much. There just became a point where I needed to avert my attention away from the heart-ache.

All in all, it delivers the chuckles and a few guffaws, even if they are hitting up against the law of diminishing returns.

A real record of substance. Yes, it has the undeniable single; but boy, the nine tracks either side of that are really something.

The Money Store might be the very definition of acquired taste, and will most likely alienate the vast majority who attempt to give it a spin, but it's undeniably an extraordinary record.

It'd be a stretch to tag them as soul revivalists, but there's no denying these combustible pop tunes are still 26 of the most promising minutes you'll hear all year.

The songwriting [on Bloom] is rarely stronger [than on previous albums], never different, and more hit-and-miss than I thought Beach House were capable of. It's not their worst record, but it's already their most tired, and that should never, ever happen on a fourth LP. But at least it's pretty.

Each song is tediously nonspecific, the sort of doggerel any other prominent indie-rocker would cringe at the idea of singing out loud.

Put simply, it's lovely.

OFF! is packed with fun little references that make its place out of time all the more fun, and when the band can write head-thrashing, body-moshing rockers with gut-wrenching images, it's all the more reason to take a quarter hour out of your day to vent.

This is a record to really fall in love with.

Europe often finds itself lacking in ideas and sticking to de rigueur jangle and well-trodden indiepop tropes.

Death Deams almost faultlessly conveys the volatility and incomprehensibility of their particular genius. There isn't even one clunker in here, which is a lot to say in a year that's already seen another rock renaissance.

Quite frankly, it's f**king boring.

Purposefully ridiculous but brilliant.

A damn fine album.

What is required to create a record which is grown from the compost of the past and still remain original is something close; perhaps not quite; not entirely; but nearly, genius.

Light Asylum works best if approached as a work of fantastic campness; after all, this would explain the whip-cracking sound effects on IPC.

Of all releases, their latest is the most cohesive, lucid, and interpretable.

Clock Opera have delivered a debut which, just about, delivers.

The cheeky nature of Rock and Roll Night Club inadvertently elevates its reputation--falling somewhere between classic pop and performance art, DeMarco's talent for writing hooks should spurn any attempt to call it novelty.

It's quite good. It just feels like it should be-and wants to be-better.

Pierce cloaks these songs in white with a sort of pious ecstasy.

It is clever and witty like the band is want to be, but when listening to Rant I stopped caring about the lack of instruments and simply enjoyed myself.

Awful.

Much of A Wasteland Companion suffers from the unimaginative fluff that plagued 2009's Hold Time.

Noctourniquet, while not completely successful, finds The Mars Volta at their most pop and their most reasonable.

The problem is that Ishibashi isn't idiosyncratic enough to make this a memorable record... That said, he gets it so right on Manchester it's unbelievable.

[The music] is not exactly bad, but has about as much creativity and passion behind it as a spreadsheet.

A recipe for disaster which tries to please everybody and ends up being enjoyed by nobody.

Perhaps ... the best way to describe Boys & Girls: unwilling to innovate or add anything new to its genre, preferring to remind us of the roots of rock instead of showing us what made the pioneers so great, a reminder of a past love instead of a new love for us to discover.

Keeping it abrasive and sincerely metal in execution is its strength.

It is eccentric and pulsating to the extreme and you exist within its boundless immortality drawing tirelessly from its muse.

Into the Waves is an invitation to float. The mature lyrics and vocal performances in conjunction with the flow of disco-like melodies makes you feel like you're walking the fine line between fantasy and reality. It's a lovely indulgence.

A favorite for punk album of the year.

Only a couple of the tracks really resonate, even with repeated spins.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you, coming all the way from left field, the best album of 2012 so far.

It's endlessly fascinating... [However] the album occasionally com[es] across as wilfully obtuse.

Through headphones, Ssss lacks proper punctum. Through speakers, it fails to infect.

An exceptionally fierce indie pop record.