This is the return that so many of us have been waiting for, and his ability to come through on nearly all levels establishes Bolted as one of the very best albums of this year, electronic or otherwise.

At times, Malone’s “magic eye” seems elusive. Other times, it comes gloriously into focus, shimmering like an elegant mirage.

Excavation is vivid and physical, each moment meticulously and purposefully crafted.

While her method of intermingling a vibrant array of synthesized sounds remains from previous records, there is more musical complexity, which yields a pure joyousness that comes bouncing out. She has energised her productions with greater depth, more interplay across the stereo field.

Thundercat has a giant heart, and It Is What It Is is the best display of his enormous empathy yet, even if it does have a few unnecessary goofs along the way.

If there’s anything Mr. West finds completely alien to his person, it’s restraint, and Yeezus is the perfect, chaotic, and ultimately uncompromising dive into this world.

What’s Your Pleasure? is Ware’s welcome return to her roots. At her best, she executes the album’s electrifying, lavish take on dance-pop better than many of her modern peers, but she isn’t able to maintain uniform excellence across all 12 tracks. Still, Ware displays her affection for disco, funk, and dance music with the utmost reverence.

Prelude To Ecstasy, for all intents and purposes, is a really enjoyable pop record, but they are not burning down the mansion with this collection of songs anytime soon.

On MCII, it’s a dual-edged sword that he brandishes skillfully into a scintillating sophomore record, one stacked with some of the year’s best pop-rock tunes.

The love is undeniably deep – overflowing, perhaps – and moisturizer is a proud and expressive declaration of both a newfound queer identity and queer endearment. That it sometimes misses the mark due to its rose-tinted vision is hard to be too miffed at.

Equal parts sumptuous and subdued, it’s an album that flows seamlessly and possesses an elegant poise at its very essence.

Across the eight tracks of the album, she shifts between intimate personal reflections and extensive ambient meditations with the elegance of tides swelling and settling.

All the arrangements feel organic and overflow from track to track. Rossen’s crafted a purposeful exploitation of his emotions as always, but this time it’s fully under his control.

Its fragmented nature is tied to its accessibility; each track stands alone on its own merits, albeit at the expense of the record as a whole. The more oblique lyricism allows for the possibility of wider interpretations here, where previously they have felt out of reach.

This is a delicately sincere and softly stark album, and arguably Fretwell’s best. It’s certainly his most intimate, but after all that time away, he’s no doubt figured out exactly how he wanted to say what he wants to.

Like anyone daring to take a glimpse into the future, Hutchings is met with confusion, astonishment and alienation. Fortunately, he assimilates the tools, knowledge and creative bandwidth to acutely document them, and more importantly, navigate them in a useful, inherently joyous way.

Limbs is an arresting portrait of that mental state, one which is equal parts hopeful and harrowing. While each element has been particularly, even painfully, placed to present a certain image and mindset, there’s plenty of space left on the canvas to project one’s own thoughts and feelings, which is exactly the kind of engagement that an artist like Forsyth hopes to garner.

It’s music to laugh about our former selves at, just as much as it’s perfect to get drunk and eat ice cream to – and in that, it could define a whole new generation. But for now, it will totally define this summer.

Low prove once again they are the sweet antithesis of that: a band who have had decades to hone their work within their own slow and deliberate pace and environment, making their most vital, forward-thinking music at an age where it can be utmost nurtured.

Where Wiki’s last album Oofie jumped around in styles with different beatmakers, Half God feels like one complete vision. With the marriage of a producer on a hot streak and a rapper who sounds revitalized, it’s a welcome addition to both artists’ catalogs.

In the end, SABLE, fABLE may not be the boundary-pushing album many have come to expect with each new Bon Iver release, but it feels like the one Vernon needed to make for himself – a kind of self-prescribed therapy.

Vince Staples is certainly not an easy album to tap into, nor a particularly fun one, but for those interested in a piece of art in which the barrier between the creator and onlooker is veritably nonexistent, to the point of shared claustrophobia, look no further. ... Staples’ scars have never been more visible: he’s practically put them on display for the world at large. If that’s not bravery, I don’t know what is.

It’s a bold and fearless descent into deliciously chaotic party that is simultaneously heartfelt and hammed up. The project is eager to satisfy fans from all eras without necessarily resting on the laurels of those.

For as many as will be impressed by it, there will be plenty for whom it’s just a headache. If you’re willing to stick with it though, you’ll be rewarded with many sonic gems – and some thought-provoking ideas thematically.

Everything here sounds tighter than before, with an emphasis on riffs and melody, allowing the experimental tendencies of Liars to take a step back for a moment. As a result, The Apple Drop will likely be labeled their ‘pop’ album, and that’ll be a justified assessment.

God’s Country is a truly wonderful, twisted record. About halfway through you start thinking it’s maybe the best debut album of the year, and by the end of the first play you start thinking it’s possibly the album of the year. It’s intimate, expansive, political and deeply personal, unsettling, upsetting and life affirming.

Though her debut album told us there’s virtue to having some miles on the soul, PRE PLEASURE kind of does the inverse: a more seasoned, matured artist letting the kid in herself win and giving herself permission to swing away at life.

For six albums now the twosome have been tugging along their listeners, perhaps even trolling them in some degree, and Everyone’s Crushed may be their strongest box of tricks to date.

In short, it’s an album so attuned to the dualities of life, that it ultimately says something profound and essential about how we exist and move through this world.

This music is fast and hard, but there are fewer risks than it might at first seem. Those hoping for the band to push themselves in a new direction are going to be slightly disappointed, while those who have vibed with this collective since day one will likely appreciate ULTRAPOP for what it is – another album by The Armed.

Sling may not offer many universal rallying cries or rousing choruses from artists that break through in similar fashion as Clairo. But it does compel you to lean in and listen a bit more closely to what Claire Cottrill has orbiting around her inquisitive mind. Sling is an intimate, tender heart-to-heart where muted confessions finally have their day.

It’s weathered, but in a beautiful way. An experience that only improves the more you nestle within its inviting, open corridors, it’s as memorable and kind-hearted as anything in Oldham’s catalogue.

Sour Cherry Bell is an album that has these clear influences, yet morphs itself into aural palettes that transcend such comparisons. A rich body of work, the lush layers of sound presented make for a rewarding experience again and again.

For a bunch of old tracks, then, Frank sits together quite nicely.

The Great Bailout is as much a historical commentary as a work of art, a detailed chronicle of the way in which a flawed system was flawlessly crafted.

This resilience against the facts of life wavers from song to song, giving us a divine spectrum of her fragile existence at the time of their creation. ... It’s in the final three tracks of songs where the membrane between songwriter and broken-hearted woman is at its thinnest, where Lenker renders her deep, soulful ache in the most poignant of ways.

Modern Vampires of the City finds the band in both familiar and unfamiliar territory, and it’s pure pleasure hearing them navigate these waters.

It’s a gallery walk through of her feelings with fans and listeners. The mind, like a bedroom, can be messy. While completely set up with decor and personalized trinkets, the chair in the corner with all your clothes and the trinkets poking out from under the bed are quite obvious. Grande proves again that she is not embarrassed to let it all be seen.

The King is full of voices, both his own and those of the ones he sings about and for, and that communion is one of the album’s biggest strengths. It does maintain some habits that threaten to curdle the gravity of his songs into preciousness or melodrama, like his quivering vibrato and theatrical mannerisms (at times, the songs almost sound like folky musical theatre numbers). But, overall, these nitpicked conflicts don’t negate the sheer power of what Anjimile has constructed here.

As easy as it is to get hung up on how similar El Camino sounds compared to Brothers and even parts of Attack & Release, there are instances which set this effort apart from their past work.

Pinch & Shackleton stands as both artist's most accessible and perhaps best work.

Dream River is as evocative a record as he’s ever made and that’s saying quite a lot.

Possibly, other songs and a different order might have made Double Infinity more cohesive, or logical. But then this would have removed its strange, slightly alien aura of zero gravity geometry.

Even when her words are sometimes obscured by the way she stretches and contorts them, she elicits a visceral reaction purely through her voice’s unsuspecting force and precise shapes.

With bops and tearjerkers aplenty, Rina’s sincerity in how she confronts her past demons cannot help but warm even the iciest heart.

It’s a wild and hugely ambitious concept that could fail spectacularly in less talented hands. Miraculously it works, thanks in no small part to the outsized force of personality of Thompson’s alter ego CMAT.

It’s this open-heartedness that shines through Any Shape You Take. There may be death, depression, heartbreak, sex, screams and swearing throughout, but they are momentary – what remains is De Souza’s tenderness and truthfulness.

The Collective is thoroughly, classic Kim, but many of the odder choices – such as a truly annoying autotune appearance – seem to stem from deep collaborative dialogue.

Ghosts, Monolake's eighth record, is one of his most approachable and organic outings to date.

Transfiguration Highway is their first for a label (Brooklyn’s Solitaire Recordings), and features a more filled-out lineup and higher production values, which allow his imagination to really shine. Long-time fans of Little Kid won’t be disappointed either, as the songs on Transfiguration Highway still have that intimate, homespun charm – they’re just a little more sturdy, is all.

By the end, you’ll hopefully find that skins n slime is a perfect title for a record this overwhelmingly layered and engrossing.

The band subvert the expectation by leaning heavier into their complexities to make Endure a triumph. It’s not so much a left turn as it is an evolution in sound, one that manages to cover more territory than their last album – and deliver their message in a way that is both more urgent and more approachable.

This is a batch of super simple songs, with super simple melodies, and super simple lyricism. At this point in their career it seems like there isn’t much else to expect from them.

Strays becomes a more consistently enjoyable experience as the album progresses. If there’s a sense in the album’s first four tracks that Price felt pressure to write an obvious radio hit, on the remainder of the album she tunes out outside pressures and luxuriates in the space she has carved out for herself; subverting sonic expectations, rewarding listener patience, and penning affecting character studies and vignettes.

Villagers may not hit the feels like All My Friends Are Funeral Singers did, but it’s nonetheless a prime example of an impeccable songwriter still operating at a consistent high.

A solidly realized full-length record, Radio Red is a welcome addition to an already outstanding catalog.

TYLA is an excellently made debut album. With its brief 38 minutes, the album presents Tyla as versatile yet having a recognizable style, as suitable for both R&B and amapiano, and as soft and powerful. The end product is a solid record with no real skips whose main aftertaste is that of the potential in display.

Real Deal, suggesting an attempt to impress in the face of doubt, is the sound of a band recognising and overcoming their own shortcomings, while maintaining what made them great in the first place.

It’s the soundtrack of a summer; the music playing during first intimacies and turning 18. Anyone that isn’t old and cynical can embrace this sentiment, and maybe find a piece of themselves in this.

The album takes a while to get going and figure out what it wants to do, but diving into Thee Oh Sees' world reveals one of their better efforts yet.

It’s hard to say if it is necessarily ‘better’ than its predecessor, but Endlessness is yet another incredible, standout record from arguably the most gifted jazz musician her generation has seen so far.

So while the year 2020 mourns the loss of good live music, Ohmme swoop in with a refined and immersive dose of chaotic pop rock, and it’s very satisfying.

This is a record which feels familiar and safely experimental, while Williams reveals more of herself than ever before. Just exactly who that is isn’t yet certain, and where she’ll go from here is anyone’s guess, but it’s sure to be interesting.

Slaughterhouse is one of the most vital and animal rock records in a recent memory.

Though it may be a bit brief or spare for some, Roxanne’s hand on her sound is tighter than ever. While it’s on, Because of a Flower gives us a glimpse into a very specific world of sound — aquatic, earthen, and airborne, all at once — and it is a treat to get lost in.

Anthemic, emotional, powerful – The Tipping Point is a very good record.

Nothing here quite reaches the fizzy highs of something like “Come Together” or “Hey Jane”, and he can’t quite recapture the slow, sad, and syrupy balladry of past tracks like “Broken Heart”. But he can still kick up quite a storm when he wants to, and though perhaps a bit too streamlined for some fans, this is another fine album in Pierce’s and Spiritualized’s repertoire.

Headlights solidifies Alex G’s gift for tapping into the familiarity across our individual experiences. His melodies are oftentimes warm and inviting while also imbued with quirky flourishes that evoke a potent nostalgia. His lyrics bring to life scenes that are specific, relatable, and very often painful.

Each track on Nothing To Declare feels like a condensed, expertly-aimed Hadoken of fun, furious energy.

Each track very much lives and breathes in a world of its own, all while coming together to present a cohesive feeling.

Origin of the Alimonies is an astonishing piece of work that leaves the listener breathless and euphoric. It is haunting, stunning in its ambition and scope, and a rapturous piece of art. It is beautiful, brutal and bruising. It is challenging, pretentious and uncompromisingly complex. It’s ace.

Ekstasis is a challenging listen, but a rewarding one.

Celebration Rock is in perpetual motion, driven by a visceral sense of urgency that most modern guitar music is so sorely lacking.

Beginning with another Strokesian riff, Geese build momentum for a catastrophic finale and deliver the goods in an almost Deerhunter via Monomania-like fashion, before abruptly pulling the plug, and ultimately leaving us wanting more.

His continuous work positions him as the Bob Dylan of the alternative rock era, and By The Fire sums up every aspect of his artistry.

Furling is a surprisingly dense record, its sonic pallet feeling deep and widescreen, even in its sparsest moments.

The two divergent halves of the album never intermingle and propose two very opposite visions for what Underworld aim to achieve, yet there’s not really a single bad track here. Still, the tension remains, and can never quite dissolve.

These nine songs will still speak to those willing to listen, speak of the arrogance of those claiming superiority, of the delusion of lovers and anger of those left by the wayside; of the loneliness of the mortally confused, and of the jealousy of those left behind.

Songs For Other People’s Weddings is a hefty undertaking like any full concept record of this sort should be, but it’s also equally charming and delightful all the way through.

TNGHT may clock in at under 16 minutes, but it's the most satisfying quarter-hour blast you'll hear this year.

The Bible is undoubtably one of Lambchop’s most mature records, but it is also one of their most honest, most unguarded in its emotional and historical perspectives.

King Woman perfects the approaches outlined on Suffering here, constructing soundscapes that are gossamer and pummeling, sparse and layered, heavenly and apocalyptic.

Lament is not the harsh noise monster that might be expected from this team up. In fact, it’s turned out to be the band’s most accessible album yet.

Undeniably their most vulnerable and exposed album to date, Tomorrow We Escape sees Ho99o9 infuse an ethereal, melancholy softness into a sound they’d already established and mastered.

At heart, it’s all too modest, too fatigued, too lacking in ambition and attitude.

Here he has never sounded more confident and purposeful, building layered and incredibly rich compositions out of his blissful loops that more than justify the length they inhabit.

Ugly is so rich, so dense, so full that you forget there's just three of them.

It’s all put together under one roof in a neat, unassuming way, made refreshing and palatable by his persona.

A Color of the Sky is now a beautiful summer record, perfect for consumption during long-awaited family reunions and Saturday brunches.

On Lifetime, de Casier not only manages to create a truly hypnagogic aura, but captured this elusive quality of oneiric purity and grace. It’s the sound of an existence beyond our own, prismatic and startlingly beautiful.

It’s impossible not to come away beaten and bruised by the undulating savagery that emits from a Show Me The Body record. However, from the same wringer, hope miraculously springs eternal. On Trouble The Water, the New York band burn more intensely than ever.

While at this stage of his career a new Dylan release may only be heard by longtime listeners, it must be judged against all music. Even by such lofty standards, Tempest succeeds enormously, placing it not only in the upper half of Dylan's catalog, but also with the better submissions of 2012.

She’s basically incapable of making a song that isn’t at least pretty, but this album shows that some songs are simply meant to have more meat on the bone, and others are meant to be left out of the conversation altogether.

Blunderbuss is a quiet album that that doesn't yearn, instead unfolding slowly, from an artist known for his stark music and desperately longing lyrics.

No one's asking bigger questions of himself or more from himself in music than Flying Lotus is. These records are the only appropriate answers and Until The Quiet Comes is his most accomplished yet.

Nothing here is overtly thrilling but ultimately the record is a real joy to listen to.

Pilgrimage of the Soul feels like a statement of intent from a band now entering their third decade of existence, and this is a fine record that both acknowledges past victories and shows desire to develop and progress to new ground.

Open Your Heart is incredibly intricate and technically masterful.