Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke ocean spray or wind. In one case, a wordless vocal edges towards articulating recognisable syllables.

Yeti Lane’s second album The Echo Show was released in March 2012. The Paris-based duo’s LP was stunning: holding together overall, as well as on a track-by-track basis. There were obvious influences: Kraftwerk, late-period Spacemen 3, motorik, My Bloody Valentine. But it didn’t sound like anyone else. Charlie Boyer and Ben Pleng had created a wonder.

Travel back in time to the mid 2000s and you would be hard pressed to escape "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand on the air waves. On the radio, music channels, in discos and clubs, what felt like overnight, the track catapulted frontman Alex Kapranos, guitarist Nick McCarthy, bassist Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thomson into a household UK name with its tension building first section, and iconic riff.

Does absolutely everything have to get more difficult with each passing year? Apparently so. The amount of time I’ve spent deciding which of the many truly excellent albums I’ve reviewed this year should get the ‘top prize’ has, frankly, been ridiculous. I’m not an indecisive person. And, for God knows that reason, I feel personally loyal to the artists upon whom it would have been easier to bestow this huge honour (Nadine Shah, Elbow, Joan as Policewoman, see below). I am choosing the road less travelled. Sort of.

Travis arrived onstage with the theme tune from classic sitcom Cheers as an accompaniment. The cavernous OVO Hydro might not be a place where everyone knows your name, but a Glasgow homecoming by local lads made good certainly tapped into a festive vibe of friends and familiarity, with singer Fran Healy making ample reference to the group’s roots during their set.

Born Horses remains as inscrutable as it was when it was issued in the summer. While it is about the search for enlightenment through journeying into inner space, much of what’s described – the album’s words are largely spoken – is allegorical, coming across as beatnik-style reportage documenting a form of psychedelic experience.

I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The Burning Hell), it’s my most-played album of 2024, containing my most-played songs, the title track and the poignant, “The Rich Stuff”, the latter a call to revolution themed around The Goonies.

One big problem. I just discovered Never Work came out in 2020. Was it a vinyl reissue? Who knows!

Death of Music was created in Estonia. Despite the English lyrics, directness is absent. Take the title track. “Drop the music” exhorts Mart Avi over its pulsing five minutes. “Fight the music” he declares. The word “execution” crops up. There is reference to a “rope ladder.” The specific meaning of this torrent of imagery is unclear. Nonetheless, it is certain the untrammelled outpouring confirms Avi’s total surrender to the music.

When Vampire Weekend arrived onstage they numbered only three and were bunched together at the front with a large curtain draped behind them, obscuring their backdrop. By the time this marathon set ended two and a half hours later, they’d more than doubled in number and had made full use of their surroundings, a shift which summed up a constantly changing, often contradictory show.

There’s a lot of anger at algorithm-driven music discovery around – a lot of it justified, as the big platforms push the already-big acts and lowest common demoninator slop is aided in rising to the top. But we can’t talk about the topic without also acknowledging that it has provided some surprising opportunities for unorthodox music.