The cocksure quality of My Love Is Cool represents some majority of its charm.

A record that has surpassed all of the greatness her previous efforts entailed. Exceeding the status of a collection of songs, instead star-crossed takes us on a journey from beginning to end with bound-to-be hits like “Justified” and “Cherry Blossom” along for the ride whilst perfectly conveying a story that yet has to find its ending.

Defying the years and possibly expectations, Time’s Arrow sees a band revitalised, creating music with those rare qualities of nuance and complexity, flowing in a dreamlike state where, just maybe, darkness loses the battle against light. Or, if you prefer, it’s simply a collection of damn fine synth-pop.

With Scream from New York, Been Stellar have announced their presence with a gem that’s sure to fire them into wider consciousness.

There’s no doubt that it’s a more sober affair than their previous work, but as a snapshot of a country in turmoil, it’s a weighty, sometimes euphoric and completely compelling encapsulation of time and place.

Remy’s new tracks are more slickly produced, built around retro and upbeat sounds.

It’s a skew-wiff funk record you can’t dance to, something to get lost in while not immediate, stuffed with arrangements that have so much going on but you hardly notice once they’re set.

His playing may offer fewer surprises than you might expect, but his spirit as a leader is present and the handful of sonic oddities he throws in are a joy to behold.

This is twenty seven minutes of searing punk rock, blistering guitars, brilliant singing, incredible drumming and there’s never a dull moment or weak point.

You might call Forever 2024’s ear worm central.

Though much is often said about Sunflower Bean’s sounds of the past, Twenty Two In Blue is an impressive reflection of their formative years and a place to start talking about their future.

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 collection instead represents more of an expansion on their current sound and scope, and finds a band still willing to take risks 40 years into an exalted career--still not caring what we think of it, but daring us to follow them where they lead before the Wire factory goes quiet once again.

All of This Will End is an album to listen to while driving fast into the sunset, windows down, trying to make sense of the world.

In Criminal, Luis Vasquez has constructed an album dark and bleak in nature, an exploration that sees him turn his attention to creating hard hitting industrial rock in order to deal with all he's lived through. It's a record of which he can be proud.

There’s moments where creeping doubt, and a little bit of self-awareness, begin to set in--mainly on Franz’s part--but those aside, this is going to challenge Ezra Furman’s Perpetual Motion People for the title of the year’s finest pop oddball.

Mura Masa isn’t perfect, with his production sometimes losing its identity to his guest stars, but it’s a solid and most importantly fun debut for a real rising star.

Concrete Desert is not intended to fade away and become background music or some meaningless soundscape. Rather, it's a captivating effort that leaves the listener exhausted, but ready to spiral again.

Alvvays’ record is a hard-hitting, multi-faceted anthology of awesome, and sits pretty as one of 2014’s brightest debuts.

There is far more variety on Hit Reset than you suspect the casual ear is going to give it credit for. The biggest talking point on Hit Reset, though, is that it finds Hanna on the lyrical form of her life--and that’s saying something.

This is a near-faultless EP, and one that’s so incredibly moreish.

This album was a joy to listen to, without a doubt.

Strange Friend is a cosmic krautrock gem, like TV On The Radio raised in the Highlands, bustling with excitement and teaming with a million different ideas, eager to spill them all onto the canvas regardless of the mess it will make. But what a gloriously colourful mess to behold.

No tracks on the record could really be said to be ‘stand out’ but they create, on the whole, something that experiments with psych’s current face, paying homage to the ‘far out’ creators who originated it.

Despite strong results in the past, this time these elements have ultimately combined to make a sort of erratic psychedelic porridge; boring in more than a few places, and a bit much for anyone other than the genre's keenest fans.

Another Billy Childish record--freewheelin', unhinged, intellectual, intense, mustachioed. It was ever thus.

Boxed In is an album that's hard to pin down, but it hits hard enough in places to get the party started and holds just enough back to make you want to return to it again and again.

It makes for a beguiling, snuggling sort of a record, easy to float away to at times, wild and cinematic at others, but always with a warm and unconstructed feel.