I suspect myself of having a five year cycle with Glaswegian music. I got heavily into Primal Scream in the early nineties, at the end of that decade I discovered it's deep house scene and a few years ago Franz Ferdinand took me by storm. That must have been five years ago, because Glasvegas have produced a stunner. Their music is rough, raw and epic, it is a stunning wall of sound that strains the rich rockabilly and doo-wop of the 50s through the soundscapes of 80s shoegazer bands to create something timeless. The dynamics span from the artery-pumping surge of guitar perfectly conjuring the adrenaline rush of an imminent childhood kicking on "Go, Square Go" to unsettling monolog over Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on "I'm Gonna Get Stabbed". This is without doubt my favorite album this year.

Hip-hop isn't as good as it used to be, or maybe I'm just too old to still listen to rap music? I find it challenging to discover excellent hip-hop albums, and I've never been heavily into Atmosphere's earlier albums. Lemons feels tangibly less-irritated than he used to, a mood-shift that’s left him comfortably exploring new ideas.
Too much of today's hip-hop is "jeep music", Atmosphere's new work feels more like headphone music. The rhymes are honest, hopeful, rich with mesmerizing oratory, often delivered with a Obama-esque cadence, and sure to keep you hanging on every line. Combined with the best production I've heard from the hip-hop camp this year and Atmosphere has created a masterpiece.

A few years back, The Drive-by Truckers’ break out double-disc “Southern Rock Opera” single-handedly saved the Southern rock genre from the trash heap of cultural irrelevance. Since then the band has been carrying the torch passed down from greats like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their recent albums haven't live up to my expectations, so I was delighted when I heard this album January. It is a long player with a whopping 19 songs. If they'd left out the tracks that don't stand out, this could easily have been my "album of the year. You'll get all the things that make a great country rock album; masterful tales of the down and out and the blazing guitar work all served up with a dark sense of humor and a helping side of Southern menace.

On the cover of "The Way I See It", Raphael Saadiq induces nostalgia. Calling to mind memories of old soul greats, holding a skinny microphone and sporting a retro look, Saadiq seems well suited for a trip back in time. He taps into his early influences to create a breezy medley of soul music that is a unique alternative contemporary soul. While the new direction is sturdy and refreshing, there is something comfortably familiar about it. The vintage style fits Raphael Saadiq.

There is a delicate balance between greatness and cheesiness and Thomas Anderson Wij walks that line with great skill. His calm pop songs about everyday life in Sweden reminds me of a less humoristic Morrisey. From the desperation on "Jag har simmat för långt ut i från land" to the heart-shattering tale of a family feud on "So Long", the wall to wall carpet of strings, horns and woodwinds underscore the greatness of Thomas' lyrics. This is rare, because such instrumentation is easily fended off as too pompous.

Erykah Badu's fourth studio album is as ambitious as its title implies: part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's brain. She sketches her messages in startling lyrics that veer from oblique poetry to direct, full-force observational commentary, and transmits them in spectacular soul jams. Badu is serene and strong, picking a steady path through the turbulence as if guiding her people. These tales are about a new Amerykha.

Leucocytes are the white blood cells that fight infections. This album lives up to its name, it fights all the things that are dull with piano trios. E.S.T. have always been different from the jazz-standard form, and his time they go all out. The pieces float into one another, with muscular grooves, discomforting zones of danger, and, sounds strange to say, a nearly otherworldly beauty! This is heavy metal jazz and a worthy finale for the band whose leader tragically died in an accident this summer.

The track lengths are the first thing you notice about this album, they are long. This is epic stuff, and Lindstrøm pays respect to his electronic music ancestry with an album reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching's classic "E2-E4" and Mike Oldfield's seminal "Tubular Bells". Lindstrøm isn't just a copycat, he blends the formats of these classics with his distinct and immensely complex layers of sound. Close to greatness.

As much as there is to miss about the mid-late 1990s, the time for any trip-hop revival is far into the future, and picking up right where they left off in 1997 would make Portishead some kind of sad cipher coasting on the fumes of an exhausted trend - something they've always been above. Third is a radical "redebut" and it is surprisingly natural. As the most recognizable component, Beth Gibbon's voice has an aching timbre that expresses anxious vulnerability better than nearly any other singer. Her voice is the only thing that reminds me of the "old" Portishead, everything else was a pleasant surprise.

In a pop culture so dominated by the english language that even France's Eurovision entry sang in the tongue of the roast beefs, the triennial or so efflorescence of a Sigur Rós record comes as an welcome distraction. Previously their music has been about as sunny as an arctic winter – vast tundras of sound, dark with melancholy and loneliness. This time its different; the brisk opener, "Gobbledigook" sets the tone with a uplifting, goosebump-raising feeling that persists throughout the album. Unexpected and inspiring.