#1 Andrew Morgan – Please Kid, Remember. A staggeringly beautiful album – whispered vocals, hazy melodies and sweeping strings. Frosty Autumn mornings distilled into 39 minutes of glorious pop music.

#2 Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest. A rare thing: an album so keenly anticipated that lived up to all hopes and expectations. Veckatimest will probably fall into the ‘classic’ category in years to come.

#3 Andrew Bird – Noble Beast. Everything about this album is intricate and perfect. Multi-instrumentalist Bird pairs delicate string arrangements with off-kilter loops. Articulate and intelligent, it’s his best yet.

#4 The Leisure Society – The Sleeper. Delicately crafted folk-pop with moments of breathtaking beauty. An Ivor Novello nomination for The Last Of The Melting Snow was richly deserved.

#5 Luxury Pond – Luxury Pond. Dan Goldman’s simple tunes with a wash of strings provided by sometime Arcade Fire member Owen Pallot, and backing vocals from the crystal voice of Daniela Gesundheit. Amazingly, this album was recorded in a single day.

#6 Hildur Gudnadottir – Without Sinking. Brooding, intense debut album from the Icelandic cellist. Minimalist use of droning strings with sparing use of cello on top. This is exactly how modern classical music should sound.

#7 My Robot Friend – Soft-Core. An eclectic mix of bleeps, beats and folky guitars. This album is all over the place, but in a good way. There’s a host of collaborators too, including Dean Wareham, Alison Moyet and Zombie Nation. As I said – eclectic and all over the place.

#8 Fanfarlo – Reservoir. Those who like their folk infused pop to sound a little more muscular would do better to investigate Fanfarlo’s  excellent debut instead of the gruesome bloke-folk of Mumford and Sons.

#9 Here We Go Magic – Here We Go Magic. Mesmerising dream pop that will have your head in a spin. From the dizzying, skittering pop of Fangela to the ghostly rattling drone of Babyohbaby – Ijustcantstanditanymore this is an outstanding debut.

#10 Sufjan Stevens – The B.Q.E. Absurdly adventurous attempt to recreate the Brooklyn Queensway Express in music. God knows if this resembles the road in question but somehow it works as a modern sympohony. Stevens is to be applauded.