Peaking Lights have succeeded in crafting a blissfully cohesive album, teeming with sounds that only bubble to the surface on subsequent listens.
The album is such an entirely immersive experience from the beginning to the end that it seems somehow inappropriate to assert the superiority of one track over another.
I'm not ashamed to say that listening to this album gave me goose bumps
... it is a soothing and ethereal listen with songs that would do well in the charts as well as songs meant for private and reflective listening.
With Celebration Rock, King and Prowse have constructed an album that's near impossible to dislike.
It is an album full of passion, beauty, talent and fantastic songs.
The Seer is a superlative album which ranks amongst the very best work released under Swans name.
It's this evocative approach to songwriting, rather than anything happening sonically, that suggests the infinite promise of DIIV's future.
Blondes is an impressive journey, one that you may wish to take numerous times
Cancer 4 Cure grounds hip hop, taking it back to when it was seen as the new punk rock.
It's so rare that an artist can coherently and completely address themes so inherently personal and immensely relatable as those Deacon has tackled on America.
From start to finish there isn't a bad moment on this album really and I can easily say so far it is the best thing I have heard in a long time.
The Money Store thrusts countless adjectives towards the listener. It's eccentric, confrontational, disorientating. Crucially, however, it's fresh.
Only two albums into their careers as Tame Impala, they've birthed a record on the precipice of their personal perfection.
Channel Orange is a superbly forward-thinking piece of work that places Ocean lightyears ahead of his peers.
The outcome is a record which is self-contained; cohesive despite its eclecticism, and wonderfully arresting as a result.
It would be hard to see this album not making any end-of-year lists, partly down to the fact that this is one of the most beautiful albums to come out of 2012 so far, and also partly down to the fact that this is Efterklang's landmark album.
Naysayers who thought that Lamar's shift from independent to major label would risk the grit found on Overly Dedicated and Section.80 have been proven wrong.
Ellison struck out into uncharted territories, taking the basic elements that have shaped his landmark works and applying them to this new, dreamy and subdued affair.