Images Du Futur is exciting in a way that few albums manage to be, dangerous and compelling like a first cigarette or fumbled sexual encounter, and nothing here quite seems real.

Despite the mad proliferation of comparable contemporaries, The Deer Tracks have balanced out, and in so doing added context to their oeuvre whilst avoiding sounding derivative.

For a debut, the album has a spacious sound, and that can also be accounted for by Milosh and Hannibal’s music history which predates Rhye by nearly a decade.

The Next Day is very, very good. Purposefully good--the work of someone who seemingly knew that if he was going to come back at all, it had to be with something blessed with brilliance.

A superb debut.

Though it’s clearly crafted with a visual accompaniment in mind, it does just about work as its own album; albeit one of their strangest, and most inventive.

The quality of the tracks are enough to keep the most hardened of critics occupied and the depth of the album, both musically and lyrically, should hold your attention, whatever month it is.

Somewhere Else makes for an invaluable addition to any self-respecting pop-loving household.

Although this is at times a frustratingly inconsistent demonstration of his talents, Autre Ne Veut is still one of the more accomplished acts to have emerged from the bedroom R’n'B/future pop/whatever niche.

Derivative 180 might be, but it’s also rammed full with jangly, addictive melodies that burst into life and disappear almost as quickly.

Amok might not be easy--why should it be?--but it’s never anything less than interesting, an accolade that can rarely be applied to artists this far into their career.

This is a hugely charismatic debut that, above everything else, is just very good fun.

Thumbtacks and Glue is no less nuanced or nourishing, and every song is satisfying. Undulating orchestration, the lift and swell, matches Mark Andrew Hamilton’s eccentric lyrical slant and seraphic singing to produce immaculate and endearing music.

Ed Harcourt too seems to be dealing with a few demons of his own on Back Into The Woods, but this collection of world-weary songs also beats with a poetic heart of longing.

With just a mere 26 minutes forming its contents, you’re left wanting to know more. On the other hand, it’s the short, creative simplicity of The Bunkhouse Vol. I: Anchor Black Tattoo that makes it so special.

There’s a tightness and economy to the sound that makes the album sound excitingly different.

A couple of less than diverting songs aside, this is an album that won’t be forgotten in a hurry whichever way you look at it.

Moody. Loveless. One-paced. Monotonous. Dull.

While it manifests in a way that’s less playful than on her debut, it’s replaced by a gravitas that befits a sophomore record.

It can be powerfully sweet, but it’s never twee. It’s often busy, but never cluttered. Flowers is, put simply, a beautiful album.

Country Sleep is a convincing opening from a songwriter worth paying attention to.

[A] frustratingly muted but nevertheless enthralling follow-up.

When it’s not a really scary record, it’s a really fun one, and most of the time, it’s both.

The Concrete Knives will be a nice addition to the Bella Union family as they fit right in by not fitting in, instead, carving their own path while instructing us to do the same: Be Your Own King.

This joyful little geode of an album--a 38-minute pocket of melodies that cluster, sparkle, and spike--has a powerfully anti-cynical energy to it,

The result is an intelligent and thrilling collection of existential punk-rock that has so much more to offer than those two paltry words, “punk” or “rock” could ever suggest.

Though it tails off, it starts wonderfully, and how much you enjoy No World’s second half will entirely depend on whether you thought the successes of its first were so great that they were worth repeating within the following 20 minutes.

A warm-hearted lover of an album that is hard to pin down but acquiesces to exploration and will, in a fairly filthy way, leave the listener sated, satisfied and inspired.

Experimental yet built on superb songwriting, fresh and surprising but still somehow recognisably a Bad Seeds record, the amount of innovation and inspiration found on Push The Sky Away proves that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds must still care an awful lot about this rock ‘n’ roll stuff.

He’s woven a stunning debut which is as scattershot as it is coherent, and his homeland is certainly right to be heralding him as the next big thing.

The sounds are pure alchemy and result is pure magic. The only complaint is the length--too short at just under a half hour.

Picking standout moments is as difficult as finding instances where the record’s charm wears off--there’s not a stage where the latter ever happens, but such is Beach Fossils’ way of doing things there are never really any huge lifts in quality either.

Homosapien is a good album with great moments.

Reason to Believe serves as an ideal introduction to its subject’s works for newcomers, whilst sending converts back to revisit the timeless originals.

Fade is vintage Yo La Tengo, but somehow gorgeously grown-up, with moments which your head will tell you sound normal, as if you have heard them before, but which make the rest of you feel contemplative and still.

This is a great record. Talk Normal are clearly indebted to the foundations of post-punk and no wave, but crucially they never feel like a throwback.

Its gentle musical cacophony is tipped over into truly scary territory by the lyrics of sole constant member David Thomas--all delivered in murderous mumbles and frustrated, elongated moans--transforming Lady From Shanghai from a run of the mill quirky rock album into a thrillingly worrying piece of art.

Everything Everything have their cake and they’re eating it too--Arc proves that they can keep their zany shade of indie and still be taken very seriously.

What’s left is a truly beautiful, if slightly dishevelled, gothic menagerie, amongst the last of an intact Broadcast’s recorded works, and a great inducement to see this movie so apparently rich in sound, terror, and beauty.

For the most part Lysandre is a masterful exhibition of how to execute and relay truth and emotion.

The music on Big Inner is so wondrous that it seems entirely obvious that we’ll always find that peace, joy and contentment in music rather than anywhere else.

There’s a balanced mix of wistful folk, and rockier, more radio-friendly offerings which lure in the casual listener, ensuring an enduring record that warms the cockles in these frosty fledgling weeks of 2013.

The Skrillex moment aside, there are really no glaring missteps here.

Their first full-length doesn’t feature too many surprises, and a lot of the cuts have already been released in one way or another, but start-to-finish, it’s an honest conflagration of scuzz that will leave jaws agape, eyes moist and hearts full.

Sadly, so much of Somewhere Else exists in such a haze that it’s difficult to really find anything to sink one’s teeth in to.

Drenched in minimal, slow and moody arrangements, Badwater, like Speck Mountain’s previous efforts, gives no apology for its intentional pace. In fact it revels in it.

This second album is less of a record than an experience. You truly get a sense of cosmic alignment here.

It’s probably fair to say that if you’re not a fan of drone or ambient music then Centralia is unlikely to change your perception of the genres. However as a document of the music of Mountains, it’s their finest work to date.

Let It All In is another strong album in I Am Kloot’s canon, and one which should hopefully see their status as songwriting legends confirmed.

This is a marked improvement on the density of their first effort, and sounds like a band who have grown very sure of themselves in the best way possible.

A master of mesmeric laments, Roberts can conjure dusky cemetery air in a twitching of his fingers or sombre exhalation, yet A Wonder Working Stone offers high spirits in the gloaming as well as low.

Oak Island is an exciting ride with uplifts, lulls and a sporadic note of menace--but the all-round brilliance of Slave Ambient ensures that Nightlands is just a quality aside for now.

What happened to Jason Chung’s mind and body in the last three years to prompt such a hesitant album is unclear, but despite its flaws, Home feels like the perfect encapsulation of weakness turning into strength.

In places Toro Y Moi succeeds effortlessly in adapting the mainstream for his own alternative means, but frustratingly, at times is only as meaningful as few comedy jabs of the ’90s dance demo button.

True North is another solid addition to a formidable canon.

Just as it really gets going and starts shining, it splutters and finishes, leaving a sort of empty feeling.

If you’re willing to spend some time in Widowspeak’s headspace, chances are you’ll find yourself wanting to roam Almanac’s enchantingly surreal landscapes a little longer each time you visit.

He has not made a classic here, but he may have made an album which allows him to do so again in the future.

Wrapped in ’60s nostalgia and emphasising the complexities of emotions, the record really has a little of everything, except true love.

For the most part, then, The Flower Lane is a glowing ember of a record that shares much of the spark of Mondanile’s “day job” band, but also a little of their occasional tendency toward stylistic appropriation over dedication to content and originality.

While the album is pleasant enough listening, and certainly doesn’t make you want to block up your ears, it is just too plastic-sounding to yield any lasting substance.

On Wonderful, Glorious, Mark Everett not only has the songs but also a band capable of delivering the sort of breadth and depth of response he needs to keep the Eels vehicle moving onwards and upwards.

At 40 minutes, this is an easily digestible, at times highly enjoyable and always playfully inventive listen.

Pedestrian Verse sees Frightened Rabbit make a triumphant return to the magnificent songwriting present on their lauded second album, The Midnight Organ Fight.

It’s the witty and indirect way Thao and her band approaches the subjects in these songs that makes We The Common a minor delight.

Regions of Light and Sound of God is as succinct as he’s ever been on record, and while it doesn’t exactly live up to its grandiose title, it’s a fascinating musical backroad to find yourself stranded in.

The results can be more chilly than chilled this time, not always making for an easy listen, but there’s certainly a process at play here.

There’s still plenty to bewitch the listener, particularly if your shelves are stacked with the likes of, say, The Darling Buds, Kirsty MacColl or Allo Darlin’, but it’s a more refined approach, shall we say.

There are parts that gel, and others that are just plain strange: flippant tone shifts, gritty electronica jarring with the twinkling guitars and Deez’s hearty warbling.

It triumphs not as a continuation of a musical conversation that Isn’t Anything and Loveless began, but by forging its own distinct modern dialogue, one that at once sounds rooted in its own imaginative time and place, perhaps even dimension, with any telling outside influences dissipating as soon as the songs truly take their pleasurable hold.