Revelations very much sets the benchmark by which their subsequent work will be judged.

Farmer's Corner is a slow burner whose finer points emerge on repeat listens, but put it on while you do some chores, or during your daily commute, and it's bound to sneak up on you.

Whether by accident or design, Wooden Head is a charming record. It oozes gentle optimism--evoking, in its quiet euphoria, some halcyon aural safe place of lush hazy sunshine.

It's not all bad, and sometimes the reverse is true, with the strings the best thing about the track; the opening figure from 'A+E' is very pretty and the violin rising up in 'Cologne' is melodious and elegant, but they both give way to more of the electro-flotsam.

This album, for all of its sharp musicianship and the ever-brilliant play-off between vocalists Greg Barnett and Tom May, just doesn't capture the gravity of its predecessor.

As the album comes to a close with reflective ballad 'A Long Time Ago', it becomes apparent that Stay Gold isn't much of a departure from their previous outings. It is however, more consistent and ambitious--both thematically and sonically--than The Lion's Roar, allowing First Aid Kit to gather a well-deserved period of buoyant momentum, flourishing beyond an element of pastiche.

Led Zeppelin III is where the band's dynamic and musical range really comes together and, for this writer at least, the most satisfying of the three.

This is an incredibly sexy album and the grooves contained within it are deep and wide.... The companion disc in this package offers an intriguing insight in the creation of Led Zeppelin II and one that highlights both the production skills of Jimmy Page and the musical contributions of his cohorts.

Despite its lyrical limitations, Led Zeppelin remains an astonishing calling card.

Herd Runners is another excellent record by a disastrously underrated songwriter who doesn't believe in love, but doesn't get enough of it either. There's only so long he can wait.

Musically, it's painfully simple; sonically, it's painfully complex.

Unrepentant Geraldines has an irresistible lightness of touch about it: its charms initially seem modest next to the towers of ambition Amos has previously created, but the generosity of melody and sheer prettiness of the sound wins through in the end.

It's quite fair to say that whatever is lost here in interesting experimental moments is made up for by enveloping production details which, when combined with his often unconventional musical choices, propel the record into an accomplishment that stands on its own.

For a fairly short 50-minute album it's definitely something you can digest in one sitting without feeling overwhelmed. Nevertheless, In Conflict improves with each listen, new pieces of the puzzle falling into place, details making the picture clearer and more fascinating with each spin.

[Government Plates] is bursting with kinetic energy and texture, and never focuses on one particular sound for overlong over its economical 36 minute run time. It's that sense of ever shifting energy and momentum that characterizes Death Grips best work and it's a relief to see it returned to.

It is not boring. It is not that good. It is simply meh. The epitomeh of meh.

It is not pretentious and it is not pompous--here is an ingenuous album made by a couple of odd cherubs who just happen to be, inescapably, two of the Beautiful People.

The album requires the exact right mood and setting and even then it fails to become much more than pleasant background music.

Discernible throughout Are We There is the sense that she is operating with more levity and confidence than ever before, and a song that ends with a joke, a studio outtake and the sound of laughter is the perfect way to see it out.

What was perfection has become even more perfect.

The guys at the centre of Dirtmusic have produced a lot of excellent tracks when making this album, and very successfully fused their own music with Malian styles, and truly collaborated rather than merely sampled or copied from native Malian traditions--but there's still the nagging feeling that it might have been even better had they left themselves out of the equation entirely.

Meteorites is still, on initial blush, like all those other albums from Evergreen onward, "the new album from," a reliable entry but not a jawdropper.

By the end, Upside Down Mountain sounds like a rejuvenation. In Wilson, Oberst has found an editor who will reward future collaborations.

A quiet brilliance beams throughout Wild Crush, its manifest qualities on display for all to see, if they would only look.

Tiersen is a master of the evocative, music you can see, and here he has succeeded in bringing to the fore the landscapes he sought out in the making of the album.

It isn't quite as lovely as 2012's Hotel Shampoo and it isn't as otherworldly as his 2005 solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, but it does manage to push his freewheeling spirit to the fore throughout and there truly is a sense that journeys long and important are being taken within and alongside the music

With their fifth album, Artificial Sweeteners, Fujiya & Miyagi once again mine opposite ends of the lyrical spectrum whilst delivering their most musically satisfying collection to date.

It's tempting to assume that the box--call it psychedelic rock, acid punk or what you may--is their base of operations, but it's really not that simple. Bo Ningen will take your labels and whirl their chaotic vortex right through it, leaving splinters and eviscerated expectations in their wake.

Chills On Glass has been sequenced, so that there are gaps between the songs big enough to drive a huge tour bus through, but each nugget is such an alien blast that you need a break to re-evaluate what just lubed past your lobes

Rather than concentrating on a single, memorable event, it takes the best bits to offer an idealised representation of the Howlin Rain live experience that's very much the aural equivalent of a Cameron Crowe movie.

At 11 tracks, Turn Blue doesn't quite fall prey to the late-album bloat of Brothers, but it is still one song too long.

SD Laika compresses space to the point that That's Harakiri becomes constricted by its own sheer density; appropriately, the album is suggestive of inner space, one that is seemingly fraught with anxiety. As a result it's difficult to sustain such energy and tracks seem to be rapidly exhausted, most are less than three minutes. But such are the ideas and impact of them that they linger a lot longer.

Their tracks rarely exceed the three-and-a-half minute mark and each indulgent no-wave-y/early Sonic Youth noise section is over before you can even begin to get bored by it, making way for the next freshly thrilling fragment of din.

Those who had their hearts set on another batch of coy, cloudy electro-pop from the Swedish singer/songwriter might consider the song [Gunshot!] a bummer, but for the rest of us, it and the other eight tracks that comprise I Never Learn make for a stirring, pristinely rendered expression of heartache.

For all their three-pronged power and musical fluidity, Unwound didn't, perhaps, quite make music which transcended the genres, styles and subcultures it was associated with.... If nothing else, this two-hour compendium of righteous, often superlative noise demonstrates that they could also cater to dancin' feet, and ears looking to be bled like radiators.

Despite clearly being intricately crafted down to the tiniest gestures--musical feats at this level of intensity and control don't emerge from half-arsed noodling--To Be Kind's songs also feel more fluid and open-ended than before, expressive and rich in possibility.

What really makes Sheezus so frustrating, though, is that among the dross there are some genuinely interesting tracks here.

The songs on Dare's debut album, Whelm ache with a sort of moody emotion that young and old can have in common--wide-eyed, reflective and besotted with the way the world makes us feel.

Luminous is a great record, but it's an awkward bugger at times, and I suspect that in the long run the album will prove all the more rewarding for just that reason.

Chain & The Gang are a band riven with appetites and desires--and, boy, do they let you know that--but on this record they vaunt a particular kind of self-discipline, and choices made with great care. Austerity can be hot.

As great and intriguing and perplexing as Krai is, the lack of a real performer-audience connection may keep fans from regarding it as a true classic.

For all its conceptual flaws, Asiatisch is both a pleasurable and an intelligent take on sinogrime--proof that its initial wave of productions was brief not for lack of potential.

Divide And Exit is a record that demands you sit up and pay attention, unable to do anything else while it's on, a ticker-tape of frustration and smart tension blocking out peripheral vision.

Whilst the band's previous two releases, 2009's Sensible Shoes and 2011's Bring Your Own, both showed progression in this direction and were wonderful in their own right, TPIYN outdoes them both and pretty much everyone else currently making this kind of music.

If there's one problem with this pop/rap hybrid it is the skittish way she sometimes departs from the beat, losing her flow in EDM choruses or radio friendly R&B pop hooks. Iggy is strongest when she welds her words to a minimal yet delectable bass boom, spelling out her name with mischievous exaggeration.

Everyday Robots signals a sea change in Albarn's oeuvre because it is, ostensibly at least, a work that tackles its creator's origins with something close to sincerity. I say close to, because there are plenty of moments here when the familiar orientalism returns to produce slightly nauseating results.

Behind The Sun could easily lose a couple of tracks and increase its impact, but Motorpsycho conspicuously always want to provide a fully immersive, all-or-nothing headtrip to the listener--and in this day and age, for that we should be very grateful indeed.

Where 2012's Pansophical Cataract was a bit of a meditative blur, Ryonen is more like an adrenaline hit, pumped with rushing rhythms that get the heart hammering against the ribcage.

Chances are that after the initial thrill has gone, you'll be reaching for Indie Cindy less frequently than Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, more than Trompe Le Monde and about the same as Bossanova and that's not a bad return to the fray by any measure.

Granular Tales is not without its flaws, but perfection isn't necessarily what makes a good album.

If nothing else it's a fascinating document: a snapshot of a band slowly breaking out of the prison of their own aesthetic and bravely denying the tragedies that have marked their progress to define them any further.

Smoke Fairies is full of great songs and shimmers with little details--a bit of spooky guitar here, an unexpected vocal swoon there.

If you're a fan of Peer Amid, this might not quite be the album you were expecting, but on its own terms, they'll be few better channellings this year of rock as a primordial force, promising liberation through obliteration.

Sadly Arabia Mountain's residual nastiness and speed is pretty much gone, replaced by slow tempos and weird deviations. It's experiments with synths and disco beats that cause some of the record's truly worst moments.

In boxing up their inner fire, The Souljazz Orchestra have starved it of oxygen, so only the embers remain.

Old Fears is, then, a notably moodier, less accessible work than Field Music's last album Plumb.

While Here And Nowhere Else is a noisy onslaught that rattles along at a cracking pace, there's a real sense of fun and catchy melodies that Billie Joe Armstrong would be proud of.

The purely aural aspects of his intimacy remain completely intact, another perfected headphone aesthetic, but when it comes to the rather more difficult task of conveying human content, Carey has rolled his trouser legs up and waded out to knee-height. Label it wimpy escapism at your peril: he knows exactly what he's doing.

There are countless high points, memorable moments and addictive grooves on these two discs, and Haiti Direct is most certainly already a candidate for compilation of the year.

While the record as a whole rewards revisit, the excitement concerning its many idiosyncrasies inevitably levels off. And yet, that initial pang of shock never fully subsides.

At times things get messy and sound a lot like Ferreria and her various producers totally forgot what was going on ('Omanko' & 'Kristine') but these moments do a great job of hammering home the fact that the record clearly wasn't signed off by someone with a seasoned commercial agenda.

With this album, Ministry Of Wolves have done both Anne Sexton and the Brothers Grimm proud; bringing their own gothic legacy to bear, and returning their work to the dark forests where they belong.

Two sounds like Owls really ought to in 2014--as melancholic and complex as they've always been whilst expanding their sound as a second album should.

Slightly less frenzied, slightly more polished sonic fuckfest, still drenched in sweat and reverb, with the occasional, slightly more soulful pillow talk between the more sensitive members of the orgy. No matter. The erotic ethos remains.

Much of Glow is tasteful to the point of bland inoffensiveness, the sort of thing that'd suit a branch of All Bar One at half nine on a Friday night.

It rewards multiple studious listens in order to piece together Vainio's deceptively rich vocabulary, but could equally serve as the soundtrack to an expressionist horror film. As such, it's a hard album to pin down, but trying to do so is an experience in and of itself.

There are worse barbs to chuck at an album than that it would make a beautiful accompaniment to some breathtaking scenery.

This is the beauty of My Krazy Life, which manages to break the homogenous mould of the majors by retaining an unshakeable sense of local identity.

[A] wonderful record.

The detail is wonderful, ghostly and rich, but the whole would have benefited from a clearer, less meandering navigator.

Singles [is] the first of their albums that really forces the repeat button; as good as In Evening Air and On The Water are, they're so emotionally draining that you don't exactly find yourself in a hurry to play them again right away.

Light Divide is difficult to find one's way into--it's not welcoming, and it's not unwelcoming enough to announce itself with a metal or noise record's sense of authority.

It is enlightening, wry and devastating, but most of all, it's life-affirming.

Here they've painted another masterpiece in post-midnight malevolence. Only this time, it's more hypnotic, with a new-and-Neu-found intransigence.

As much as Mess is a drive further across electronic borders Liars explored in 2012 with WIXIW, it is simultaneously a consolidation of all that has come before.

The Classic is a flawed piece of work, no doubt; overly cluttered and in sore need of reining in at times, it suffers for the hubris of its title. But when Wasser hits the sweet spot, as she does on 'Ask Me', 'Get Direct' and its ebullient centrepiece, she hits it with conviction.

This is a rare Morrissey record in which the music matters as much as the words. Mercifully, this reissue does what no Moz re-package has yet managed, and respects the integrity of the original.

It's a boldly contemporary record whose wily 70s spirit isn't lost amid the fuzz.

At under forty minutes, an album of groove-based music in a foreign language doesn't have much time to make an impact, but it certainly does leave you wanting more.

With Lost In The Dream and his band The War On Drugs, Adam Granduciel has made an incredibly strong case that his heroes should now be considered his peers.

Mind Trap is a triumph of feelings over ideas, of making sounds bigger and more mobile than the spaces (or heads) that contain them.

In rock, rehashing the past more often than not results in music that sounds anachronistic, but Unfidelity is proof that in electronic music, a disregard for technological progression can still result in a forward-looking album.

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything is the sound of a band prising an encouraging aesthetic edge from the sheer enjoyment of ageing. It bodes well for the future.

Like a vivid dream melting away in the first few minutes of morning, Love Letters has an uncanny beauty, but one that remains firmly out of reach.

Boy confirms that Bozulich is at least as good as Cave or Waits at contemporising the blues, at crafting bold, gritty, assertive art that is enchantingly oddball yet still accessible, not to mention infinitely rewarding.

The menace and late-night melancholy is subbed for outright tragedy and romance here, and this is certainly their best realised set released in the decade since Black Earth's high watermark, bringing together all that makes this music both beautiful and ugly, while tentatively exploring new sonic territory.

While the Tinariwen formula may be familiar, Emmaar sees their sound refined without losing any of the group's rebel edge and defiant spirit.

Its confident shape-shifting compositional power and instrumental thunder make for one of 2014's most immediate and satisfying releases.

Tomorrow's Hits is an easy album to admire--this is The Men stretching out and aiming for new targets--but a difficult one to fall in love with.

A record that may occasionally get on one's nerves, yet undoubtedly overflows with vitality.

Ultimately, nothing hangs together long enough to enable a consistent or enjoyable listening experience.

Not all of Spectre is quite equal to 'The Whistleblowers'. There's the occasional functional interlude--standard-issue industrial synth propulsion. But, compositionally and sonically, Spectre is intriguingly accessible.

Hood and Mike Cooley, the only original members left, handle all of the songwriting for the first time since the band's 1998 debut, and it makes for a unity of vision that prevents the grief from sounding gratuitous, that makes the uncertainties resonate with our own.

At her brightest and her best.

Blank Project represents one of those rarefied moments in which an established artist meets the expectations set by her previous career, and then exceeds them in the most exciting, tangential of ways, resulting in something thrillingly different, hella moody, and deeply exciting.

I was hoping for a leap forward, but Morning Phase just feels like a very pretty place to sit and wait for one.

It's a piece of surrealism and absolutely beautiful to listen to.

Padding the album with ambient interstitials would be a forgivable peccadillo were the other songs seriously weighty--after all, even Kid A had 'Treefingers'--but the remaining seven tracks can themselves come off as a little half-baked.