Each on this list is simply offered with the briefest of notes, and listed according to alphabetti spaghetti rules.

Each in their own ways has brought a sparkle to my year at some point(s) this last year.

Each have reminded me of the wonder that is music and the seemingly endless ability to create new and brilliant things from the same few notes.

Broken Social Scene – Hug Of Thunder. Back from a hiatus, the perennially wonderful BSS provide shards of their brilliance

Alice Coltrane – World Spirituality Classics Vol 1. Transcendent music to take you to a higher place

Fleet Foxes – Crack Up. Familiar sublime songs and harmonies with new added challenge and purposefulness

Perfume Genius – No Shape. Lush and gorgeous and sadly uplifting

Giulio Fagiolini – Dietro a un Vetro. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest but most rewarding

Good Weather for an Airstrike – Little Steps. Better with each release, ambient shakes its ass

Grizzly Bear – Painted Ruins. When your favourite band delivers against the odds

Gunn-Truscinski Duo – Bay Head. A revelation of music without compromise

Hogni – Two Trains. The shock of the new and the delight that it brings

Tom McRae – Ah! The World Oh! The World. The man who speaks the despair and frustration we feel and yet you still want to hug him (typically, the only official clip I can find is a ‘secret’ one from the latest album …)

Memory Drawings – The Nearest Exit. Mesmeric and enveloping

The National – Sleep Well Beast. I worried they were lost to stadium shows and a proven formula but they voice the madness of the current times

Lucas Oswald – Whet. An album that’s like a warm hug from a new friend

Erki Parnoja – Effterglow. An Estonian delight that came from nowhere

Public Service Broadcasting – Every Valley. Welsh mining history shouldn’t make a great album but with PSB it does

Slowdive – Slowdive. You know how Slowdive used to make you feel? Well its like that only better