Even after one listen it's apparent that 'Untouchables' is a monster of a record.

What "Happy New Year" really represents is Oneida's finest, most complete record to date, and as such it's the perfect starting point for anyone who's as yet unfamiliar with their rather daunting back catalog.

She might not quite have made it through the wilderness just yet, but she's chosen the most glittering road to resurrection she could find, and it's one she walks with no small smattering of style.

They no longer rely on dense production and atmospherics, because they don’t need to: ‘Antics’ is bare-boned and beautiful.

They've created a world of tender reflection encompassing engaging melodic cycles, pastoral textures, glitchy interjections, acoustic decoration, melancholic strings, loose, jazz tinged drums, lonely horns, yearning guitar laments and delicate vocals: All melded into ebbs and flows that form a coherent universe through songs which all have their own defining characteristics.

What's beyond doubt is the magical blend of the surreal and the fantastical that made 'The Unseen' so memorable is once again in the fullest effect on this showcase of fearlessly skewed production, dense organic vibes and hemp & helium-fuelled raps that make up this smoked-out saunter through the back streets of the cosmo-according-to-Lord Quas.

Anyone expecting any of the more experimental tangential qualities of the German group will be disappointed, as will anyone expecting intense lyrical workouts from Smith. Instead we have an extremely convincing whistlestop tour round current electronic music with a partially deranged, completely eccentric lexicographer raving brilliantly over the top.

Rabid Dinosaur Jr fans will find plenty here to enjoy.

This may not quite live up to 'Ocean Songs', but it still stands up on its own.

The sonic palette here is just so relentlessly perfect that, for me, it becomes constricting and cloying.

The ghosts of prog exorcised fully at last, Gorky's have once more put in a serious challenge to the Super Furries as Wales' most inventive band, and they've produced an album that, both in terms of its astounding quantum leap and its ambitious orchestration, swings excitingly near to the Delgados' genius breakthrough opus 'The Great Eastern'.

As good as 'Tio Bitar' is, it's actually a weaker album than 'Ta Det Lungt' in some respects.

The pop album of the year.

More than anything else, 'Cripple Crow' is an album that it sounds like it was born amidst a fun, exuberant creative process.

Her voice is still like clear honey dripped on freshly baked bread, and almost sounds nourishing.

Stripped of the Pumpkins' pomp angst and invested with a new pop-rock sensibility by fellow cohorts David Pajo and Matt Sweeney, in Zwan Corgan has simply formed the perfect band.

Fiercely intelligent, heavy as fuck, powerful and utterly concise, it's a perfect reminder of the potency of great guitar music and a kick up the jacksy of rock bands everywhere. Yup, it's that damn good.

Unlike 2002's 'Geogaddi', it's a wholly gripping journey throughout.

'See You Next Tuesday' is so good it should be the soundtrack to a smash hit Broadway musical.

There's a kind of timeless haze that drifts through 'Yellow House' and makes it a pleasingly elusive listen.

This is woeful, otherworldly - and wonderful.

Here is an album with all-new complexity, unforseen depth and many delightful hidden layers.

In truth, there's no good reason to only confine yourself to just one of these albums when both have charms to spare.

This is music that relies entirely on feeling, and while not for everyone it is music at its most impulsively, spontaneously creative.

If 'Fever To Tell' was a scratchy post punk effort, then this is their gothic record.

'The Warning' is a splendid combination of braindance and footdance.

This has little future funk, but lots of Swizz beats-styled Casio Rap and contemporary chart dancehall. Which is lame.

It's not all pleasant.... However, there are some total gems, as you'd expect.

This is an album on which EVERYTHING ace you can think of in indie happens.

Unassuming, unpretentious and totally listenable too, this is thirteen songs and fifty minutes that might just make her famous.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, here is an album that is going to be deservedly huge.

Easily one of the most essential sessions albums ever released, this, and probably one of the year’s most essential, full stop.

This is so good it makes us want to do one of those superlative deploying pull quote things that journalists often stick at the end of their reviews: this fantastic piece of work is already a strong contender for album of the year.

Gleeful, glorious, and utterly unique.

Polly Harvey’s contradictory sure, but the complexities of her character and where she is right now are expressed with an honesty and intensity few artists can ever even begin to think about mustering.

Minimal and huge at the same time, desperately sad in places, thought-provoking and ethereal in others, this is an incredible milestone of a record.

I usually find Shins albums grow on me slowly but surely yet after a good dozen plays I feel my faith isn't being repaid this time, and as a fan that's frustrating.

Their most contemporarily relevant and best album since 'Fox Base Alpha.'

'One Bedroom' is an infinitely pleasurable listen, and one that (very gently) blows away any post-rock preconceptions.

Despite occasional thrills, for all The Twilight Sad's epic ambition and admittedly accomplished sound, this is a hollow record that struggles to fully transcend its influences.

This is a dog of an album, by anyone's standards, but if you play it next to 'If You're Feeling Sinister', which we did, then it is the sort of dog that shits all over the kitchen and has constant mange.

Of course, if you've never particularly liked rickety, no frills, folk albums complete with twanging country guitar solos, banjos, the odd duff note and gloriously lo-fi percussion, then 'Where The Humans Eat' really isn't the record for you.

There are several duff tracks, certainly. And, sure, as a whole 'American Idiot' can easily be criticised for its simplistic, occasionally naïve sixth form lyrics, all round pomposity and general adherence to the group's tried and tested formula of punchy three-chord pogo-pop. But it's still a wonderfully entertaining, polemical punk rock record.

Underpinning this wry melancholy are the winsome languor of Stephin Merritt's voice and the generous stash of tunes.

'Walking With Thee' is a smoothed-over cacophony where the surreal meets the jovial and declares it an octagonal fish - deadly seriousness with a hint of smirk.

It is that love, devotion, and unfaltering belief that makes 'Permission To Land' such an essential listen, and such a joy to behold. It is the sound of triumph.

The overall mood (so spot-on is the title that the whole thing feels like a big chilled-out dance doughnut with stardust for sugar, heh heh) saves it, along with the occasional staggering moment of beauty.

This is a record stuffed with fun and joy and magic for all the family.

There is much to get teeth-grindingly irritated about with this album.

Daring, inventive and groundbreaking.

'...Broken Seas', though understated and pretty, tingles with furtive sexual chemistry.

'Want Two' is simply in a league of its own.

Quite simply, 'Bows + Arrows' is a Great American Record, taking the qualities most admired in the last 35 years of US rock and barbecuing them together.

Where Ladytron's first two albums might have felt to some to be alienating and monochrome, like a shallow bender on champers and very nice drugs, but a shallow bender nonetheless; 'The Witching Hour' is blessed with a far greater palette of sound and sensation, and is as fine a spell as you'll succumb to all year.

There's definitely something horrid, hairy and horrendously hippyish hobbling these lovely boys.

This is a densely structured journey through intense pummelling and dervishes of electronic noise.

It's not just the vocals that captivate. The sheer busyness of the whole production and all the sounds are to be marvelled at, and though it would be easy to over-egg, they never allow any of the tracks to be cluttered or overblown.

So yeah, he's moved on a little but no, he hasn't gone soft on our perilously-leaping arses, and his personal holy trinity still seems to be the deeply unfashionable but unironically ace Van Halen, Meat Loaf and Billy Idol.

Well as befits such a completely uncompromising visionary/awkward pain in the arse (delete one if you can be bothered) it veers between the preposterously awful 'Genuine Lullabelle' with its bewildering spoken word passages and the awesome wire taut assault of 'Be Prepared'.

Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.

A gloriously accomplished and very rewarding listen.

Too often tracks drag us down below the high standard an artist like Beck Hanson has set himself. Red Hot Chili Peppers outtakes with some harmonica and vocoder balanced incongruously on top are frankly not good enough.

In ‘Real Gone’s fearsome complexity of rhythm, lyric and device, Tom Waits appropriates like a shoplifter without much time, and creates something entirely his own. A new music.

They're simply repainting comfortable territories with even subtler strokes than ever.

Lamb's most rounded and complete collection yet.... Even if they've lost something special in the process.

The results are almost painfully fashionable, f'sure, but utterly essential nonetheless.

It’s good fun, it’s a scream, and it stands up well to the likes of '...Do Dallas'.

'Earthquake Glue' once again posits Pollard as purveyor of stupidly breezy tunes.

'Hypnotise' is full on, paranoid, insane, intense, terrifying, and it's telling the truth too... dangerous stuff in other words.

He has humour and cerebral sharpness in spades.

'Playing the Angel' is hardly the most essential Depeche Mode album ever, but it is Depeche Mode doing what they do best.

What's great about this album is they've managed to wield the same monolithic power riffs but make them count, with melodies and ideas way more consistent than before.

'Cassadaga' is much less of a draining emotional journey for both chief player and listener alike than Bright Eyes previous work.

They've got better stuff in them, we believe, but, meanwhile, 'The Power Out''s strictly a forty watt affair.

What once felt like maverick defiance on the part of the 'Shop now leaves them looking directionless, with Tjinder sounding increasingly like an unattractive combination of smugness and bitterness.

There simply aren't enough superlatives to describe the genius of his music.

Few albums are this evocative, and 'Leaders of the Free World' is a thing of rare beauty indeed.

Great pop from a great band.

Essentially, 'Employment' is a very British record; an entirely Britpop creation spawned ten years after the event.

It's Emiliana Torrini, Cat Power and Nick Drake all rolled into one, and it's soothing enough to curl up and die for.

It's an obvious comparison given the company they keep, but, this time around, Aereogramme really are Mogwai and The Delgados on the same record.

Although pretty catchy, this album is a tad too monotonous.

Up there with the best debut albums of this, or any decade.

This could be Modest Mouse's finest hour were it not a little long - the nuances are occasionally rather swamped by the effort of listening to the hour-long record through.

He doesn't plunder, he interweaves - stuff gets thoroughly snake-charmed into his densely-packed music.

There are moments of brilliance here, sure... but there are a few too many weak skits and a few too many weak tracks here to make this anything other than a mildly cool summer thang, and summer is, like totally over now.

This is a standout record even by his high standards.

It’s like this: ‘Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers’ sounds like every record ever made, somewhere along the line.

They seem to have recaptured a lot of the elegance and urgency that characterised the increasingly seminal 'Rings Around The World'... and the songwriting, even if it is roaming mostly uncharted territory, is back towards prime potency.

Yes, it's a shamelessly arch and overarching achievement, and, make no mistake, some of you out there will hate this record and want to have at it with badly corroded screwdrivers.

Even Paul McCartney himself hasn't made an album this McCartneyish for some twenty-odd years now.

FC Kahuna have aimed scandalously high with this record, and they've not been found wanting.

It's a move on from 'Here Be Monsters', musically if not lyrically, and, for all his world-weary posturing, he's still only 25 for God's sake, though obviously in love with the idea of being a great singer songwriter.

It’s improbably refreshing to hear musicians that were clearly weaned on Frank Zappa, Supertramp and ELO messing things up and having a laugh.

With clever lyrics, batshit crazy instrumentation, and several songs you'll soon be whistling on your way to juvey, Sons and Daughters should have you leering scarily from the school bus for a good long time.

Gris Gris' practice of bleeding their songs together in dissonance creates a roller coaster that renders 'For The Season' over before you've really realised it's begun.

Cex played with Mogwai last year, and the experience seems to have had a profound effect on him. The best moments of the late nineties Scottish post-rock explosion seem apparent here, and there are even hints at prime Arab Strap, which is of course quite brilliant.