Dan Bean...

Album of the Year: St Vincent, St Vincent (Loma Vista/Caroline International): Despite a cover that looks like a Lady Gaga knock-off, this was a refreshing, gritty and hugely enjoyable album. All guitars and synth, and all over the place with high and low moods, this was an early leader for favourite that wasn’t beaten all year.

Musical legend playing at pop star... of the year: Johnny Marr, Playland (Warners). Yes, it’s more Hard Fi than The Smiths, but it’s a cracking album filled with catchy riffs and tunes.

The “how old?!” reissue albums... Of The Year: Oasis, Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story?) Morning Glory (Big Brother Recordings): Still great albums, fantastic treasures in these reissue packages.

Stunt pairing that shouldn’t work but does... of the year: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga, Cheek To Cheek (Polydor). ‘Nuff said.

Dreary covers collection... of the year: BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge Sony/Universal/Warner). Maroon 5 missing the point of Pharell Williams’ Happy and turning it into a miserable dirge was a low point. The highlight? Labrinth covering a Taylor Swift song. Go figure.

 

Julian Cole...

Album of the year: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Give The People What They Want (Daptone) THE queen of retro-soul bounced back from cancer with her best album yet. Opener Retreat! delivers a scornful blast at a presumptuous male. You’ll Be Lonely rattles along a funky groove, while People Don’t Get What They Deserve is a soul protest song of the sort Curtis Mayfield used to sing, propelled by indignant lyrics, shoving horns and a great guitar line.

Who needs a plug? Richard Thompson for Acoustic Classics (Proper): Thompson brilliantly reworks 12 of his best-known songs in this unplugged collection.

Taking a lonelier road: Ben Howard, I Forget Where We Were (Island). The follow-up to Every Kingdom is more diffuse and difficult, but only in a good way.

For really nailing it: The Hold Stead, Teeth Dreams (Washington Square). Ten songs that suggest a new maturity, without losing that sour tang of nostalgia.

Have you heard him yet?: John Fullbright, Songs (Blue Dirt Records): After an assured debut, Fullbright cements the high hopes with a stripped-back, simple collection of songs including the lovely She Knows and the wistful The One That Lives Too Far.

 

Matt Clark...

Album of the year: Wild Beasts, Present Tense (Domino): The hallmark of a great album is you still reach for it months later. Well this February release is yet to leave the glovebox and is reached for at least once a week, because it’s a rare thing of great beauty. Indeed opener Wanderlust, if heard by a wider audience, would challenge Pharrell Williams’ Happy for most popular song of 2014. It offers a sublime way to spend five minutes of your life. But even without Wanderlust, the tracks Mecca, A Simple Beautiful Truth and the haunting Daughter would still make Present Tense an essential purchase. There is something indefinable about Wild Beasts that puts them in a different league. Perhaps that’s down to the enigmatic falsetto and baritone vocals. More likely it’s the somewhat sinister tinge to all this grandeur that makes both the band and this album utterly compelling.

Thank god it was worth the wait of the year: Pink Floyd, The Endless River (Parlophone).

Feelgood album of the year: Los De Abajo, Mariachi Beat (Wrasse).

Family album of the year: Martin & Eliza Carthy, The Moral of the Elephant (Topic).

Didn’t see that coming of the year: Stephen Malkmus: Wig Out at Jagbags (Domino).

 

Paul Rhodes...

Album of the Year: The War On Drugs, Lost In The Dream (Secretly Canadian): An album in the true sense of the word; one that has been crafted as a collection of songs, not downloads. As with so much great art, it was borne in a heap of emotional misery, but the way in which Adam Granduciel transforms that angst into a widescreen, life-affirming experience smacks of genius. It even has human failings; a peculiar fondness for 1980s drum machines and the desire to float away on long, languid stretches. For some the icing on the cake is that the guitar and piano led tunes hark back to the classic rock of Springsteen and Petty, but the appeal is really the timeless sound of a band playing for each other, outside of fashion and truly connecting.

Headphone only! Best attention to detail: The Antlers, Familiars (Transgressive Records)

Sparkling newcomer of 2014: Sarah Jarosz, Build Me Up From The Bones (Sugar Hill Records)

Hosanna for cherubs lifetime achievement award: Morten Harket, Brother (Wrasse Records)

The chain-smoking corpse award for singular devotion to misery: Eels, Performs The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett (E Works Records)

 

Mark Stead...

Album of the year: Kevin Drew – Darlings (City Slang): A rare example of a artist using a break from their band as an excuse for more focus and less experimentation, the Broken Social Scene king-pin’s second album was a triumph of classy songwriting that fell just the right side of unconventional.

Going-nowhere-in-particular album of the year: Elbow – The Take Off And Landing Of Everything (Polydor)

How-to-manage-without-your-mates album of the year: Jimi Goodwin – Odludek (Heavenly)

Making-music-in-berlin-does-actually-work-sometimes album of the year: Breton – War Room Stories (Cut Tooth/Believe)

There’s-no-point-having-a-private-life-if-you-can’t-sing-about-it album of the year: Ed Sheeran – X (Asylum Records)

 

Tony Kelly...

Album of the year: Luke Sital-Singh, The Fire Inside (Parlophone): Proof that male singer-songwriters are not all self-indulgent wimps as most of the Ezra, Odell, Murs, Mars, Sheeran, Smith etc pack sadly are. Sital-Singh has a voice touched by seraphim and cherubim – soaring, dipping, rising and falling like a vocal tidal wave. A dozen songs that sear like fire and burn into you blessed with more hooks than to be found stocked in the most crammed anglers’ emporium. There’s dark and light but overall it’s a burst of sonic joy. Distinctively conceived and crafted, this is truly uplifting soul music which, if there’s any justice, will herald Sital-Singh’s Great British Take-Off.

Great British flake-off for being quirkily innovative: Metronomy, Love Letters (Because Music)

Great British slake-Ooff for being pulsating power-pop: Courteeners, Concrete Love (PIAS).

Great British Shake-Off for dispelling lethargy: Echo and The Bunnymen (429 Records).

Great American Brakes-Off for being loud and proud: The Pixies, Indie Cindy (PIAS).

 

Ron Burnett’s five of the best tasty delights from 2014 (recipes included)...

Album of the year: Nils Landgren, Redhorn Collection (Act Records 2CD): No double entendre intended, the REDHORN is the Swede2s red trombone, with a 20-year, 26-track round-up of immaculately-brewed funk and jazz ballads.

Further tasty jazz recipes from 2014...

• Four days recording, three years of gigging, 12 years of tea and gin, a dash of Portishead and Massive Attack, plus honks, squeaks and found traffic noises to create the invigorating Bristol Cream of Get The Blessing, Lope and Antelope (Naim Jazz)

• Trademark cinematic moments, elements of Miles Davis-style funk, gleeful piano vamps, Shakespearian theatre, the creativity of six Michelin-starred musicians and stand by to ignite Blue Touch Paper, Drawing Breath (Provocateur Records)

• An unexpectedly nourishing dish forged out of genocidal slaughter, the tragedy of brutal pitched battle, 215 years aged in the barrel and the inspiration of a 78-year-old tenor saxophonist: The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and Bobby Wellins, Cullodon Moor Suite (Spartacus Records)

• Graveyard dirt, gunpowder, church-bell grease, mind-altering stimulants and New Orleans gumbo to concoct a bandy-legged Voodoo Hustler:Dr John, Ske-Dat-De-Dat, The Spirit of Satch (Proper Records)

 

Ian Sime...

Album of the Year... with a word of warning: Toni Braxton & Babyface, Love, Marriage & Divorce (Motown): Motown boss Kenny Babyface Edmonds is the producer of several of the biggest-selling albums of 2014, by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand and the posthumous Michael Jackson set. But this little known collection of ecstasy, joy, loathing, anger and regret is the jewel in the crown.

After 42 Studio Albums, the Best Selling record of her career, but wasn’t she magnificent at Glastonbury Album of the Year: Dolly Parton, Blue Smoke (Dolly Records)

Diva of the Year... what a magnificent voice: Jennifer Hudson, JHUD (RCA)

Best Homage to the Girl Groups..... Retro never sounded so Divine Album of the Year: Bette Midler, It’s the Girls (Warner)

The Album of the Year most likely to make one Happeeeeeeeeey... or slightly mad: Pharrel Williams, Girl (Columbia).

 

Steve Carroll’s pick...

Album of the year: Coldplay, Ghost Stories (Parlophone): Coldplay’s best effort since A Rush Of Blood To The Head sees Chris Martin pining for Gwyneth Paltrow. His pain, encapsulated in a stripped bare sound stripped of his usual pretentiousness, was our pleasure. The four-piece’s ‘Rumours’ record soars in Midnight, with its distorted electronic vocal and funereal melody - very reminiscent of a Gregorian chant. Introspective and mournful, it was uncharted territory for a band renowned for their anthemic choruses. But, whether Martin’s ‘unconscious uncoupling’ with Paltrow was the reason or not, what resulted was a magnificent record.

Best excuse to make more money: Cast, All Change, (Parlophone).

This sound never gets old: Paul Weller, More Modern Classics, (Virgin).

It doesn’t do what it says on the tin: Britpop At the BBC (Rhino).

Let’s have more of this, please: The Saturday Sessions from the Dermot O’Leary Show, (Sony Music).