Yet far from heralding a more obviously commercial taint, major label backing finds them ever more extreme. This album may not be quite as bleak as The Bairns, and the sound is more sophisticated, but they still sound like nobody else.

This album proves that when Earle reconnects to the sheer joy of making music the results can be powerful.

Mason's latest solo guise is endearingly odd. Who else, after all, would dream of welding Tubeway Army to lubricious RB and house and pull it off?

A welcome return for this premier Leicestershire combo, who specialise is substance over style.

The result is an album that, unquestionably, marks him out as one of the UK's most promising new producers.

Beware is one of the more playful entries in the Bonnie "Prince" Billy canon. It's also one of his fullest sounding records.

Khan is a fantastic package and a good, if not as maverick as some believe, songwriter. In a year when no one wants to sing about making a cup of tea, she's just the ticket.

As with the conceptual aspect, knowing the peculiar provenance of the noises on The Rose Has Teeth is actually supplemental to one's enjoyment of this suite... which stands alone as an enthralling aural experience.

Our Love to Admire fleshes out the dark edges of Interpol's sound to create a polished, muscular-sounding record that teems with life and bristling potency.

If hippie leanings and a penchant for image-dense, nature-inspired poesy make Oberst a kindred spirit to Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, he can also be hard-nosed.

By virtue of its sheer irreverence, Guns Don't Kill... seems to encapsulate everything you always loved about reggae, and perhaps thought had disappeared.

In a musical climate awash with just-above-average singer-songwriters, Elton is still among the brightest exponents of what can be done when you combine piano, voice, melody and heart.

Probably the most exquisitely integrated single listening experience the Chemical Brothers have yet come up with.

It's Elvis (or Mr Diana Krall as he's also known) in fine, lovelorn country form.

It's more jaunty nouveau Traveling Wilburys than folk rock summit as Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and M Ward join forces.

So here they are, doing again what they've done before: mostly slow and sombre songs, sometimes delivered with a wary hesitancy that can be endearing but is occasionally frustrating.

This might just be their best record in a decade.

Join With Us's classic radio pop unveils a band so accomplished, so guilelessly in love with the joy of a good melody, that they now sound like no one but themselves.

The music's Pharrell Williams-assisted dancefloor pop; the words entirely Shakira's. Preposterously brilliant.

Eschewing the Incredible String Band nostalgia of Espers et al for a more complex hybrid somewhere between the Kinks at their most relaxed and the Band at their most committed, Vetiver have made a record that's as summery as a field full of butterflies.

Inevitably, Vieux Farka Toure is not in the same league as his father. But he has still managed to make a very impressive and enjoyable debut album.

So here's what's brilliant about this band: the 11 songs here offer no solution, no way out and very little hope, making We'll Live and Die in These Towns as bleak in its own way as the Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible. The songs are brilliant, too.

While Britain and the US are succumbing to a very retro take on the US's R&B heritage, the original queen of neo-soul has taken a giant leap forward.

Her voice, dark, nuanced and full of mystery, shows what a class act the singer has become.

The tumescent, endlessly inventive songs are seldom less than exquisitely performed.

The songs are deeper and richer than on 2006's "12 Songs," but still naked and raw.

A weary, beautifully realised work.

Never has a pit of despair sounded so inviting.