For the follow-up ... the band have expanded their sound, swaddling typically despondent lyrics in gorgeous electronic textures (Rolled Together, Tiptoe) and Portisheadesque beats, as on the glistening Parenthesis.
Computers and Blues is inimitable, flawed, and perhaps a suitable way to bow out.
If Watch the Throne's musical direction seems like West's work, it's worth noting that Jay-Z has the better lyrics.
This, perhaps, has always been the thrilling paradox of Lady Gaga – that she can be the most exciting, confounding and mind-bogglingly creative artist on planet pop while still sounding like an early-90s Tampax advert.
50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having.
Listening to it, you're reminded that Radiohead are the only band of their size and status that seem driven by an impulse to twist their music into different shapes.
There are worse crimes than being too subtle: there's something impressively soft and unspun about Feist's quirkiness. And besides, more often Metals just sounds fantastic.
Drake is insipid as a singer ... As a rapper, he is inert to the point of catatonia and his foregrounded voice becomes swiftly intolerable.
Heralded as the future of music, Björk's album/app is a whirl of innovation – and the music's beautiful.
Music buffs might still want to play spot the influence with Skying ... but that would undersell this marvellous record, which should be every bit as exciting to a listener who knows none of those reference points.
Smother isn't conventional chart material, but will make their burgeoning cult impossible to ignore.
Whereas the musical and lyrical boldness of her 2009 debut, Bird-Brains, was a little muted by her homespun recording techniques, here every fragmenting note and confrontational idea is exhilaratingly crisp.
Whether exploring supple R&B in Minnesota, WI, joyful country in Towers, or swollen soft-rock in Beth/Rest, Bon Iver remains rooted in the emotional sincerity that made Vernon's debut so mesmerising.