They’re not magnificently written, with unspeakably beautiful melodies, and virtuoso instrumental performances, but they have an intangible spook. The XX know when to tense, when to relax.
Whether or not it is as defining a release as OK Cowboy even feels somewhat incidental in the end, as Flashmob is easily the most enjoyable, addictive, air-keyboard-inducing electronic record that the year is likely to produce.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have crafted an impeccable debut way beyond their years, and any misconceptions about them being mere revivalists of a scene only their elders could recall at first hand will surely be diminished instantaneously upon hearing this most accomplished of long players.
For anyone interested in music that works both as art and an intensely new exciting experience - this is easily the best album that has come out this year.
As unconventional musical ensembles go, Girls must surely register at the top of the pile when it comes to spontaneous muddled creations that confound any kind of pre-conceived expectations. Much loved by both the New York art-rock fraternity and UK underground indie scenes alike, this San Francisco duo and their assorted helping hands have somehow managed to conjure up an Album that doesn't just hop between genres at random like an overexcited rabbit, but actually creates its own guessing game in the process, enticing the listener into a rabid frenzy of self-doubt. "What will come next?" indeed.
Logos is a gorgeous, hallucinatory and somewhat sickly outing.
Outspoken and even prone to some fairly loony conspiracy theorising, The Ecstatic thankfully does not become such a platform, and is a refined selection of strong tracks, which skilfully tread the balance between tight beats and forthright exclamations.
The practical, prosaic, documentarian's way to open a review of the new Sunset Rubdown album would be to note that it’s largely recorded live, and eschews the multiple overdubs of its predecessors, Shut Up, I Am Dreaming and Random Spirit Lover, all the better to reflect the stamping-flailing, wuh-huh-hooing bacchanal of the live-shows (and damn is there a lot of wuh-huh-hooing, when it comes to Sunset Rubdown.)
Travels... is a 33 minute monster without a slither of excess fat, and the best thing Andy Falkous has ever put his name to.
It’s the often perfect synthesis between lyrical content and production on OB4CLII that makes the album simply sublime.
It's a direct result of the frightening array of genres explored here, and one that renders Checkmate Savage – however frustrating it might be along the way – a journey emphatically worth taking.
O how you vex me, Dayve Hawke. You vex me because I know you are just one person, yet two of your three alter egos have names in the plural. When talking about you I know I should be all "Memory Tapes is..." but see, that upsets my pedantic semantic circuits so much that if I didn't like you as much as I do I wouldn't like you very much at all.
Bitte Orca isn't a record that'll reduce many to tears, except perhaps of awe. But when something's so astonishing in every other respect, we can allow for that.
PJ Harvey can be exhilarating, thrilling, or offer up a disturbingly hysterical variant on black humour, but she ain't fun. A Woman A Man Walked By is kinda, sorta fun.
The surprise appearance of The Horrors' new single, 'Sea Within a Sea', has come as quite a shock to the vast majority who dismissed the band during their initial hype-fuelled rise. Where screaming excess and over the top clobber once held sway, the single’s video reveals a group of sombre aesthetes brooding over their instruments as they coolly erect an epic, eight minute wall of sound that slaps a motorik pulse onto the early 4AD catalogue, before slowly immersing it into a bubbling pool of kosmiche noise.
Humbug is a pretty good album that’s pleasingly incongruous amongst the pre-fab boredom of much modern Brit indie. It’s eminently not astounding but it is inventive, and likeably so.
Lyrically, brand new eyes sees the band on starkly confessional form. This may seem unsurprising; after all, sleeve-hearted angst is the bread and butter that keeps the filling of pop-punk-emo together in Paramore's own particular brand of sarnie (although for them it's probably more of a sub.)
Thematically, and for the quality of songwriting, Fever Ray fully deserves to be considered a follow-up to Silent Shout; nonetheless, it’s also a line-in-the-sand for The Knife-as-pop-entity.
Two Dancers ... doesn't so much follow up their debut as announce Wild Beasts as one of our genuinely special bands, one that can compete - in terms of both musical and lyrical ingenuity as well as sheer pop nous - with any US act you've seen talked up in the music press this year.
Is Merriweather Post Pavilion the flawless album that it's been willed to be? Taken as a whole I'd say it's pretty damn close.
By cutting themselves off from a hurry-everywhere-and-everything society, Grizzly Bear have successfully realised their most rewarding record yet, and the first to truly feature the four in perfect harmony.
Tarot Sport doesn’t pause to bang or whimper. Tarot Sport accelerates.
Overall, Journal For Plague Lovers is a strident comeback that would have been a worthy direct successor to The Holy Bible had circumstances been different.
For all the darkness of Actor's concerns ... it remains an exceptionally pleasurable album to listen to.
Whilst Wolfgang Amadeus... is clunker-free, with high points from start to finish, allow me to abandon my critical faculties and gush about 'Love Like a Sunset Part 1', as this instrumental is by far the most incredible moment of the album and also quite possibly the best thing they've ever done.