Katy B shows she's a vital voice to the smaller UK bass scene and her pop imbued form of garage has enough substance and personality to back her play for something bigger.

Mark Lanegan has accomplished something truly magnificent with Blues Funeral.

In the end, Sun And Shade proves far more complex than the label of psych-folk would indicate, to the point that its small flaws are easily forgivable.

We Stay Together is Andy Stott's second LP of 2011 and it's easily the heavier, more defined, and arguably better of the two.

It is the soundtrack to rousay’s year of insularity, isolation, and adaptation, and harmonises beautifully with anyone who’s undergone similar feelings of repression and growth during this period.

Much closer to Z than Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket proves that a leap back can sometimes be a step in the right direction, even if we end up "right back in the same place that we started out."

It's an album that continues to unpack itself after half a dozen listens--as beautiful as it is detailed.

With Scratch It, it’s hard to image a finer U.S. Girls album.

Gas Lit is an important record from an important band. It doesn’t attempt to make things palatable for you, and nor should it. The record is a provocation to a difficult conversation, one that in all honesty shouldn’t really still have to take place in 2021.

It's a lovely, weightless set of songs from an artist whom we can now reasonably assume is capable of producing consistently great music.

It’s a tender, chaotic, and messy experience that feels all the more natural because of Open Mike Eagle’s transparency with his audience. This is Eagle at his most directionless, and for the time being that’s exactly what we needed to hear from him, because that’s how many of us are feeling too.

With Forever Blue, she has created an album for those who like to close their curtains when the sun is out; it’s a debut of richness, depth and genuinely shattering emotional engagement – pure melancholic majesty to lose yourself in.

All Of Us, Together isn't an attempt to disown his early work and roots. Jamison just made the record he felt like making, and that's why it so easily matches his best material.

On Reflection, we truly see the breadth of her resourcefulness as an artist: both as translator and purveyor of gut feeling. The elemental building blocks are all you need to shape something completely new.

The band have taken their influences with their own abilities and made an album that is as accessible as it is excitable, and seems set to capture the hearts and imaginations of young lovers everywhere.

Crystal Stilts find a way to make you care, though, and that goes along way with music this raw and rapturous.

Neighborhood Gods is a potent, enticing, and, yes, elusive project.

awE naturalE is at least a great, deep listen, and all that THEESatisfaction has done to challenge the listener warrants serious admiration.

Musically, the deft fusion of the delicate and the hearty reflects Harvey’s thematic explorations; the production is full of strange quirks, whether found sounds or unusual effects that are sometimes inserted and not repeated. The effect is that the music feels both hazy and alive, evoking the Orlam world in its strange splendour.

There’s an irresistible eclecticism on display, with each and every track serving as a unique adventure into some different corner.

It takes a certain degree of self-containment in order to encapsulate a place as well as Hundred Waters does, and it's clear that the band has it.

Thematically, Born This Way dances between fantasy and fiction and plays out like an autobiography; every track and moment weaved from the DNA and life of Gaga.

Yes, it's clearly obvious what Yuck's main influences are; they're placed very firmly on the band's sleeve. But with sounds that tie the band to modern indie as much as alt-rock, Yuck have crafted something incredibly refreshing, and more importantly, good.

This is the kind of album you just throw on to have fun. If anything, it proves My Chemical Romance don't need to be eccentric or theatrical to put out an enjoyable record.

With Quarter Turns Over A Living Line Raime fleshes out the promise of earlier work and delivers one 2012′s most compelling and listenable experimental records.

If they stick to the melodic folk at the core of their best songs, that fateful open-mic night could be the beginning of something really great.

Somewhat of a companion piece to The Cure’s Songs of a Lost World, Antidepressants will not only be a new favourite of Suede fans, but also open a new audience up to them.

With Nymph, Shygirl brings another original voice in the mix; good luck hearing a record that portrays sex in similarly tactile, authentic and effortlessly cool fashion.

New Brigade is over in about 23 minutes, and each second feels well worth your time. Though the band can get sloppy at points, perhaps even a bit repetitive, Iceage have crafted some very memorable tracks here; and more than anything, New Brigade shows that this band has much more to offer in the future.

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

All of This Will End can be regarded as a riveting bildungsroman, the 25-year-old De Souza reflecting on archetypal initiations and processing essential insights, all the while reveling in diverse instrumentation and a seemingly endless supply of hooks.

It is Depeche Mode’s most self-aware album in a long time – and their most memorable. At 50 minutes and 12 songs, the album is lean and humble, paying respect to the band’s past while also returning to the tension that made their best material so enjoyable.

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.

It’s not a perfect album – “Blue” feels slightly underdeveloped and I question whether the Robyn Hitchcock cover is completely necessary – but it doesn’t have to be. It’s mysterious, slightly messy at times, and filled with a gentle wonder that settles onto our skin like early morning sunlight. It’s a privilege to be in his company once again, even if it is just for 40 or so minutes.

As a product of Yorke’s mind, AMOK represents a measurable progression over The Eraser. It’s more experimental, varied, nuanced, and likeable.

Wild Pink’s third full length sees them at their most fluent, achieving a compositional and performative apex.

He remains an original, talented musician with his influences worn firmly on his sleeves; a contemporary proving that the past is still very much relevant.

Lone doesn't reinvent himself on Galaxy Garden like he did with Emerald Fantasy Tracks, but the jump from one record to the next is made even more revelatory by the English producer's refinement and assuredness.

They're not reinventing the wheel, hell they're barely even reinventing themselves, but that's a good thing on this occasion, as they've created an album that will appeal to fans both new and old.

The results are fun as hell, yet it's hard not to feel like LV have accomplished something with some legs on it.

1991 is, in this final form, equal to the early EP material of Slowdive in its nocturnal, hazy glory, with Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley exchanging lead roles. It is confident in its psychedelic, abstract explorations, aided by the immense, groovy rhythm section of Chris Roof and Steve Zimmerman.

With Phasor, Lange navigates an important rite of passage, testifying to life’s glories and anticlimaxes. He’s become an unflinching realist without sacrificing his curiosity, his capacity for wonder.

If anything, Apollo Kids is the biggest reason to get excited about Ghost in years; putting out a seemingly rushed disc, he's outdone much of his recent work.

The trio delight in taking risks in a way that few rock bands on a major label do, and A Celebration of Endings is a wide-ranging record – even when they’re operating within an accessible framework.

Mount Wittenberg Orca is uniquely and charmingly straightforward.

Every song on this record is carefully crafted, and the way they’ve perfectly balanced the intimate bedroom atmosphere with the crystalline sheen of modern mainstream has created a set of unmissable pop pearls.

This kind of high-emotion, omni-genre electronic music is becoming the measure of artists working without geographical or scene ties and Held is one of the best examples

There is much one could say about how this EP compares to Rossen's past projects since that's all he's delivered to us, but he deserves more than that after accomplishing a great EP by himself.

Rainforest is an EP and it does leave the listener wanting. It works as a sort of mini album, finding enough variable direction to point toward a future template for Clams Casino with a myriad of aural directions when he does decide to craft a full-length.

Despite being almost twice the length, It’s Almost Dry very much adheres to the wisdom of its predecessor: there isn’t an ounce of fat on the lean, mean machine that is the album, with every second aimed with a precise, sinister purpose.

Such is the elegance and detail of Knox’s songwriting and voice – not to mention the exquisite instrumentation – that one can’t help but get swept up in it and extrapolate from it. In that regard, Won’t You Take Me With You is an unmitigated triumph from an artist who continues to dazzle and enthrall with each release.

Make Believe takes the listener from the same point A to point B as Santogold, but has no qualms about taking a completely different route, which is both more scenic and more difficult, but ultimately feels more fulfilling.

MUNA is the best soundtrack one can find for the next few months. Seemingly destined to join the canon of pop’s great cult-classics (Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, Robyn’s Body Talk, among them), it’s an album whose legacy should last much longer.

Gloss Drop may be a less solid and coherent album than Mirrored, but it is still a remarkably promising follow-up. As always, the music is cerebral, engaging, technically stupefying, and utterly original.

The Plot finds the group building on their palate, zeroing in on the details more than ever before, meaning the straight up fidgety punk ("Sheena Is A T-Shirt Salesman"), keyboard-led silliness ("A Guide To Men") and the obligatory epic closer ("Notes On Achieving Orbit") are all better realised than their cousins on previous albums.

Iradelphic is the sound of an artist who already had a trademark sound coming into his own while still breaking out of his crackly IDM shell.

The album's relative indie rock minimalism stands out in stark contrast to many other bands who feel that this kind of straightforward approach is either too uninteresting or too tied to certain years in music.

The album is his most consistent and complete, finding room for singer-songwriter-type country, alt. country, harder rock and soul within a single record, while retaining a sense of direction and cohesiveness, as well as heart, soul and a satisfying emotional connection between artist and audience .

They deserve every bit of success this album brings them, simply because A Different Kind of Fix is one of the most accomplished albums of the year.

This is an achingly human journey into the vast mischievous subconscious, never trying to manipulate how you should feel.

This, their most fully formed and digestible album to date, might well mark their breaking point to larger audiences and wider acclaim.

Pompeii truly feels like a gesamtkunst rather than a collection of separate songs. The album reaffirms what makes Le Bon’s music such a useful prism to process thoughts and feelings that feel too immense to articulate within traditional means.

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.

To say that the band still have a bite to their sound might be a little unkind to a group of men who may not have most of their own teeth these days, but Rack is testament to the need to grow old disgracefully.

It's a more than suitable followup to two solid collections of songs, and is the first truly solid coherent work in a career that will hopefully be marked by many many more.

Infinite Granite feels less like an abandonment, and more like a new era – a rebirth that fans can either jump on or off for.

Hum may very well have just released the most pertinent post-lockdown record: it has claustrophobia embedded in its DNA and hysteria woven throughout. It’s weighty and suffocating, pressing down on our shoulders and restricting our airways with nothing more than brittle bones and exhausted lungs to keep it all from collapsing – then it releases us, just in time.

At only 42 minutes, its greatest quality comes in the desire to put the album on constant repeat.

This record definitely ranks up there with Offend Maggie and The Runners Four in regards to its emotional immediacy.

Even if this is her most ‘focused’ release yet, the lingering thought after the snappy 24 minutes of Lily We Need To Talk Now is the abundance of upside she still has left to explore. Though, to her credit, Lily Konigsberg has been doing that every time.

It’s music for mending the soul and opening the eyes of skeptics to what music – what really good music – can do for us. No matter what walks of life we come from, there’s legitimate emotion attached to Mdou Moctar’s music, and it should shake any living, breathing being right to their core.

The end result is a quieted, more suppressed record that steps delicately from one note to the next and shines even more of a spotlight on the twin vocal sentiments of longing and crumbled romance.

There’s a lot going on here, and Benefits have refused to stand still in the face of increasing media attention. Whether this works in their favour with their core audience remains to be seen, but there’s a boldness – and contrarian flippancy – that should be applauded. .... When Constant Noise triumphs, it absolutely soars.

Some songs are easier entryways into the band’s world than others, but the album leaves the greatest impression when listened to from start to finish. With all that time to develop over the years, Another Sky have finally found their voice with a debut album that’s fully realised and utterly engrossing.

Arabia Mountain is energetic, fun, loose, and immediate. Everything the Black Lips should be.

Even rapping alongside a ghost, Hav’s chemistry with P hasn’t lost a step and they feel as natural a pair as they ever did. Prodigy’s verses don’t feel awkwardly sandwiched in, instead naturally befitting each track, with each beat carefully curated to match his flow and tone.

Gigi’s Recovery manages to portray a soul longing for healing, resisting its thanatonic urges, grappling with the reality of being born into a cold, loveless void, and somehow trying to accept being loveable. And it has the brevity to show us that, at the end of its 12 song cycle, the battle can be won, even if the war will never end.

Most of this review has been spent trying to use genre to back the record into a corner, but there is still so much ineffable that can’t be captured in words. Menneskekollektivet is impossible to pin down. That’s the thrill.

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.

The True Story of Bananagun is as exciting and addictive as debut albums come, appropriately soundtracking a much-needed hope in the future of the genre while brightening up early summer in the northern hemisphere.

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.

Moffat’s storytelling is utterly masterful throughout, tragic case studies abounding.

Another excellent sort-of-post-dubstep EP from a relative unknown making use of thickly nocturnal synths with distant and obscured vocal samples.

Though it may not be treated as an important album in the broader scope of music, it is an important album for Man Man, and one that is likely to age gracefully, just as Man Man appear to be doing.

While the warm emotionality and elegant melodicism of BREACH should earn her legions of fans, it’s the little snippets of hard-to-admit truth that are going to come to mean the most to people. It’s these moments that set her apart, and are as sure a sign as any that Fenne Lily is going to grow into an even more exciting and important artist in the years to come.

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.

Despite examining so many thorny questions pertaining to coming of age and the human condition, Big Ugly doesn’t sound half as heavy as one might expect. The fuzzy, twangy guitars and buoyant drumming provide a cushion for harsh truths, and Dowdy renders his characters in warm, light tones – even when their environment is anything but.

The band has only strengthened their propensity for catchy, melodic pop hooks, and they come one after the other like a best-of Lite-FM programming block.

This is him using collective dialogue – with a large cast of varied characters – to have fun. And it’s infectious.

They’ve expanded their scope: synths creep in, melodies swell, and the hooks land so big they feel like catharsis stumbled into, punchy like the loud headers on a brochure for a new treatment center — you know, the one that’ll finally do the trick this time.

While these influences [Nick Drake and Ella Fitzgerald] are certainly present, A Common Turn is undeniably and entirely Savage’s own; these are her trials and confessions, and it’s a stroke of great bravery and generosity for her to have released them in this enrapturing manner.

Dadub have crafted an LP with depth and subtle yet grand-scale dimension, adding another excellent release to the Stroboscopic Artefacts canon.

Call Me If You Get Lost finds Tyler freer than he was on IGOR. He’s managed to combine talents in front of and behind the mic, while amalgamating the serious personalities he used prior with the humor that trademarked his early work. He’s displaying lessons learned here.

It’s a seamless and natural progression from when the band released squeaky-clean interpretations of their beloved 2020 album Brave Faces Everyone, just last year on Brave Faces Etc. But they’ve buckled down, tightened things up, and now observe sheen and a bit of grit with an impressive balance.

World’s Gone Wrong extends Williams’ fertile run, infused with the aesthetic adventurousness and undiluted honesty that have characterized her work for over four decades.

The new directions that they have managed to find on No Color are certainly interesting to explore for listeners.

Rarely does music feel this much like a celebration, and though it might not get to you emotionally, that doesn't mean you can't sing along.

[It offers] up some of the most melodramatic songs Los Campesinos! have recorded to date.