 | Our Love to Admire by Interpol
Buy new: £10.48 / Used from: £4.93 No band juxtaposes desire, both sexual and romantic, with the chill of a darkly urban existence like this lot. Best track of the year "No I In Threesome", best guitar solo "Scale", best album.
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 | In Rainbows by Radiohead
Buy new: £7.98 / Used from: £7.29 on a par with #1. Excellence delivered again by Radiohead. Ethereal, esoteric, eerie and implicitly romantic.
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 | Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? by Of Montreal
Buy new: £14.19 / Used from: £9.69 An evocative collection of musical styles. There are Sgt Pepper references, synthy, seductive 80's Roxy experimentation, Wilson-esque melodic weirdness and the cold antiseptic tones of Joy Division.
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 | Era Vulgaris by Queens Of The Stone Age
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £3.50 Wanton lust in music form. Layers of overdriven guitars that have been dragged through the dust and grit of the desert and the city. Unrelenting surges of animalism and sonic aphrodisia.
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 | Because of the Times by Kings Of Leon
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £4.29 A new expansive sound that relies less on the hypnotic melodies of previous albums. BOTT is as aurally vast as Americana gets. The end product is a more focused and richly rewarding album.
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 | White Chalk by PJ Harvey
Buy new: £6.39 / Used from: £5.00 Refreshingly bare and free of guitars. Reminiscent of In Rainbows with romance at its core. The attachment to Kate Bush is still there, the album shrouded in a fog of eccentricity and desire.
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 | Release the Stars by Rufus Wainwright
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £3.04 With the flamboyance cut back we are now presented with an elegiac and semi-confessional Wainwright. Without so much of the masquerade, it is now Wainwright's sincerity that is so engaging.
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 | We Can Create by Maps
Buy new: £6.98 / Used from: £5.70 In a age now dominated with guitars, Maps went against the grain and created an album of resplendent and richly-textured sonic landscapes. Melodic, accessible and beautiful electronica.
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 | The Flying Club Cup by Beirut
Buy new: £7.98 / Used from: £10.06 Definitely odd, definitely beguiling. It's as if the lead singer from Muse, armed with an accordian, took a vacation in eastern Europe and met up with an orchestral band of gypsies. Wonderful.
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 | The Shepherd's Dog by Iron and Wine
Buy new: £9.78 A bewitching album with lullabies of love and mystery to unravel. Brimful with subtle harmony, delicate acoustic guitar and dulcet lapsteel tones.
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