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.