Spiral is an album to experience as a whole, to be swallowed in and transported by.

Yes, Romanticism isn’t quite as nuanced and colourful as the work of Vu’s younger self – it’s more physical, more withered and broken. But in that, it’s also an honest and genuine reflection of growing up, as in: facing trauma, grief, frustration and self-hatred.

It’s when Claud pushes past these stylistic tropes that their potential shines.

Throughout Showtunes, Wagner demonstrates that theatricality and showmanship can manifest in many different and sometimes subtle forms. He may not draw in many new fans from this one-act performance, but it’s still one of the band’s most intriguing and well-executed productions nonetheless.

The Dream doesn’t feel like a failed attempt at reaching new heights of popularity. It feels like a lot at once, but in a way that makes one want to give it another shot.

Songs like “Smile” and “Let You Back In” might offer encouragement to her original fans, but as the softer edges of softCORE they very clearly represent the past. In the four years since The Voice, Fousheé has a new one and her breakout is complete.

It's an intermittently engaging set of ephemeral longevity, ultimately a little too nonspecific and slipshod to be considered alongside the rest of his full-length catalogue.

There are so many acts both past and present who sound exactly like this; there are moments scattered throughout Somewhere that feel a little derivative of some 90s alternative acts. So, while Somewhere is a good start, there’s a lot more to accomplish for Gum Country before they can really set themselves apart from The Courtneys – or other bands.

Despite its minor detours, Crash is one of Charli’s better albums even if it will likely garner a polarizing reaction. She’s fully dedicated though, and it’s a testament to her commitment to crafting the big ‘sellout’ pop album, which she mostly nails.

They’re churning away in a place that sounds comfortable to them, and not outdoing themselves or any expectations of them at this point in their career. In other words, no big changes – but you would never expect that of them.

It’s at a crossroads between being many things: a moving resurrection; an impressive display of a talent we didn’t think we’d hear again; a slightly shambolic jam sesh; and more. Its coconspirator too often wears her sincere giddy passion for Mitchell on her sleeve (she may as well say “it came true” at some point), but it’s surely at least in good faith.

It may not be enough to convert those already opposed to Ashworth's minimalist sound, but for the uninitiated, A Shut-In's Prayer should provide a suitable introduction to one of the more interesting songwriters of our time.

Philadelphia brings grace and elegance to an era removed from spiritual insight. In that, it is deeply philosophical and absolutely necessary.

Tilt is the music they are dragging you onto the dancefloor for, and with most of these songs playing over the speakers, you’ll happily join them.

The recycling of sounds from past eras of music has become a huge trend over the past few years, but when those sounds are successfully appropriated in new ways, like they are here, the result proves to be very worthwhile.

Like Earth as a whole, "The Children" doesn't make for the most pleasant of listening experiences, but it does represent another evolution in Richter's artistic progression.

The duo retain a stripped down approach and it helps make each production choice and songwriting turn feel pondered and noteworthy, each track carving out its own identity and mood within a larger thematically consistent body.

The production by Hollow Comet is bright and clean, and the instrumentation is tasteful — almost too tasteful, sometimes verging on a lighters-in-the-air radio pop sensibility. ... Regardless, Shamir has delivered arguably his finest album yet, by engaging with his pain and his curiosities about life, and giving us the privilege of bearing witness to it.

While B FLAT A is unflinching in depicting stark realism, it also proves to be decisively light-hearted and generous in its unburdening from the absolute strife it inspired. What a thrilling, refreshing band.

The first TMBG first album still ranks among the best of their 20+ studio albums to date, but this latest one is up there somewhere too.

With the triumvirate of googly-eyed rhythms, sinfully catchy melodies and a breeziness that seems only fitting, they’ve served up one of the most auspicious debuts of the year.

Tricolore is enjoyable, but it’s a sum of two different parts; together it comes off as strangely disjointed, like shifting from speaking German to speaking Japanese.

Three Mile Ditch is living proof that lightning does indeed strike the same place twice — and sometimes with a vengeance. Rumours of their death have been highly exaggerated, as The Wytches have never felt so alive.

It helps make clear that Endless Arcade is a quiet record that helps reaffirm Teenage Fanclub’s enduring appeal: their songs can help dull the pain. And pain there is.

Yeah, that’s a decent album. Flags towards the end, sure. Some rippers on there, though. Glad I stuck with it.

Her work is pure naturality with all its contrasts and quirks, but also all of its beauty and intimacy. Her melodies, even at her most unusual, are inviting and engaging, making for a body of work with a disproportionally low entry barrier for how much it rewards attentive listening.

Joy’All feels so light that, despite some of its heavier themes and perfectly-enjoyable atmosphere, it sounds like it’s a couple seconds from simply evaporating, effervescent, like the bubbles from your Jack & Coke.

Though the nature of Covers makes it slightly scattershot, and nothing quite hits the heights of some of her past covers, it is decidedly more engaging and diverse than her last album, the lowkey-to-the-point-of-disappearing Wanderer.

The album, true to its title, seems like a long and tortured joke with plenty of narrative that only the teller can fully grasp – at times the delivery is bravura and spellbinding, but too often it falls flat and loses momentum. There’s undeniably a great work of art in here among the clutter of scraps that McMahon has collected over the last few years.

There is plenty of fun and escapism of the sort that gave Jepsen her well-earned reputation in the popsphere, but in terms of her progression as an artist, its most striking tracks prove to be the ones that are more self-focused.

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 album shows Danilova making a conscious and admirable effort to try take another step in the right direction and for the most part it's hard to fault her.

The lack of "slower" numbers doesn't really feel like a valid criticism, though, especially when the band really are at their best when they're riding a burst energy.

In Our Heads is, at the end of the day, a signal that Hot Chip's masterpiece is still forthcoming.

Nepenthe isn’t The Magic Place, but it certainly sounds like she’s found another special site of inspiration. Thankfully for us it’s just as prodigious and marvellous as anything else Barwick has put out before.

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.

The album dissolves as it progresses, transitioning from upbeat fare to a visceral dream sequence of disoriented meditation set atop a versatile soundtrack.

There’s nothing on this third round that shocks or surprises, it’s all standard formula Barnett except for her witticisms being down-played slightly, and maybe her watered-down mope-rock influences are a little brighter on her sleeve.

While A Foul Form honors the history of hardcore, it also occurs as smartly topical, the band’s turbid rage and anti-aesthetic stance conjuring a post-capitalistic malaise and the decay of global culture. And though this set marks a pivot from previous work, spotlighting the band as they navigate a fresh battery of sonics, it’s unmistakably them.

The Marriage of True Minds is something of a record built for everyone, a fusion of sounds and ideas built from the thoughts and minds of lots of different people; there will be different moments that deter and attract different people, but there are more than enough of the better ones to keep you hooked for the album’s runtime.

It’s a shame there are a couple of tracks here that don’t quite meet the quality of the rest. ... Where The Loneliest Time works best is in its ability to provide sheer, plain honest fun.

Though he can be likened to a number of classic singers, some of the all-time greats might I add, his work is his own and ultimately original in its identity.

Her second album is an unpretentious thrill, the nature of its creation inextricably linked to its lyrical outlook, made by a woman who’s been through the wringer but has emerged from a period of turmoil daringly and undoubtedly herself.

Rarely Do I Dream points more to the intersection of pop and mysticism. There’s less immediate hook appeal but more depth. These tracks brim with heartfelt sophistication and aesthetic refinement. The album is a resonant and crucial next step in Powers’ pop odyssey.

Different Rooms is more evidence of the duo’s quality, and its main downside is that it doesn’t reach the magical highs of their debut album. Still, in different places, different results will be yielded; Different Rooms may have familiar qualities, but it makes for a different excursion.

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

Lesser songwriters might stop there, and accept lyrical maturation as the only necessary step toward a sophomore effort, but Crutchfield also uses Cerulean Salt as a way to expand her sonic palette beyond the crackling acoustic guitar ballads that marked her previous work.

Comparing it to where they once were, somewhere middling between post-rock and meandering industrial ambient, the sound of Factory Floor is of a band that is now confident in their own original and entirely dominant sound.

As his name implies, Ghostpoet can be vague, mystifying, and a little bit of a downer--but ultimately the best art is the kind that makes you think and broadens your perspective, which this record does in spades.

The album remains enjoyable throughout, but too much of it feels a bit too been-there-done-that. Luckily, there are three tracks with guests, and this is where the album truly shines.

Mount Wittenberg Orca is uniquely and charmingly straightforward.

Like a bottle of aforementioned white wine, it needs to develop within the container of people’s memory before it can fully blossom into the role of moody summer album that it aspires to be. The nuances are definitely already there.

The songs on Jump Rope Gazers aren’t as immediately addictive as what came before, but The Beths’ natural intuition for emotive and melodic writing is still intact.

It's dark but inspirational, catchy but never kitschy. Most of all though, it's honest.

Instrumentally, every song here is impressive, but the singing is pushed to the fore on the majority in an attempt to instigate a hook, which is only occasionally successful.

At the very least instead of sounding like he was curling up into a melancholic hibernating state as on Exercises, here he sounds like he once again wants to fight the boredom and start actively engaging the listener on all levels.

With Hen’s Teeth, again, Sam Beam brings us more well-aged Iron & Wine.

Aghori Mhori Mei is Billy Corgan’s return to his true passion, a fully formed and cohesive work that sounds like an actual Smashing Pumpkins album without resorting to self-references.

It's all very well-done, but it's not something that you'll feel much incentive to revisit over and over; an experience worth taking, but not necessarily one worth repeating.

Take Care is a record unsure of itself, certainly more focused and interesting than its predecessor, but still far from the classic Drake had hinted at.

Given their status, it wouldn't have been a surprise if Wasting Light had been a by-numbers affair for Foo Fighters.

Taken as a whole, it’s the sound of a band reinvented, shrouded in autumnal atmosphere and containing depths that reveal themselves on repeat listens – whatever the truth may be, on their long-awaited fourth album, I LIKE TRAINS remain true to themselves.

We have heard many albums about the pandemic and life within it, but this is more about about life after it; how to pick up the pieces of the lives we had before it and transform them into this new life that just relentlessly goes on. Vile’s music is attuned to the unrelenting progression of life.

It's All True still has the most in common with its predecessor: the clean production, the attention to detail, the instrumental experimentation (those Eastern flourishes on the first two tracks are strangely easy to miss like the live instruments on Begone) and careful arrangements are all traits that have been carried forward, but many of those (if not all) are core ingredients in what makes up the music of Junior Boys, and they'll likely feature on their future releases for many years to come.

By accepting the chaotic elements coexisting alongside our stark self-made structures – be it tangible, psychological or virtual – Karma & Desire might be the most honest form of pop music one can make at this moment.

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

The songs are expensive in their depth of emotion but comforting in their intimacy and alluring appeal.

Hardcourage is an exceedingly worthwhile release from a producer that’s constantly pushing himself toward new things.

These are stories we've already heard told better, and in the same voices.

As it stands, it’s a solid and often a fun listen, with some real highlights and crystalline production, but for such a lofty eponymous allusion, the album winds up shortchanging itself a bit, rarely languishing long enough in its own ideas to land the dizzying punch Santigold has revealed herself to be capable of time and again.

As a pure entertainment piece, Twelve Reasons To Die appeals directly to the brain’s pleasure center.

Thirty tracks and seventy-five minutes, Fabric 69 is a work of incredibly sturdy sonic architecture; it’s hardly inert or monotonous, yet at the same time it takes techno’s notion of repetition to what might be considered a logical extreme.

Though Moore's lyrics are a bit more obtuse, this could just as easily soundtrack a breakup as Sea Change could.

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.

Sympathy for Life‘s strongest moments come in the songs that sound least like the Parquet Courts we’ve known before.

It's not that Beams is a lighter listen than Black City, but it's certainly more honest.

After three albums about the same thing, Hinds haven’t shown any real progression by shedding their lo-fi trappings; instead they’ve just unearthed their shortcomings.

Here she sounds more polished and pop-friendly than ever, largely thanks to some new additions and some smart subtractions.

Toward the Low Sun staggers to get that momentum, though it does achieve atonement through progression.

It manages to feel both too specific and not quite specific enough; while it sounds like her own personal sound world and collection of memories, the album lacks that relatable hook to draw the listener in.

There is a feeling of contrivance in some of the songs here, but genuine joy and abandonment elsewhere.

What works for Lambchop in the case of TRIP is the level of consistency in their sound that they were able to achieve through years of playing music together. However, it does not exactly bring the album together, because the tracks are thematically very different, and the band’s decision to apply the same approach to them contributes to the plainness of TRIP.

TYRON is a move away from the raw production style, too, as the beats and other instrumentals here are much more refined and polished. Lyrically, he turns away from the harsh political themes and statements of his debut to topics of much more personal significance to Ty, while not forgetting the part of him that is ‘the contemporary rapper’. Even with this more personal approach, slowthai truly embodies the idea that punk is not dead.

Junior Boys’ track record shows that change is good, but here it feels like the tiptoe before a more significant step.

Her well of inspiration has always been deep, with songs about environmentalism, family troubles and small town gossip, but it seems now, when pressed too hard on the idea of maturity, Musgraves appears all too shallow, and no longer the three-dimensional character we loved and craved so much.

Brun has such control of her craft, and that is made brightly plain across these two albums [After The Great Storm & How Beauty Holds The Hand Of Sorrow]. Which one you prefer will likely depend on which genre or style you have deeper inclination for, but taken together, they’re both excellent representations of an artist honing her tested and true style while also venturing out into new waters, easily proving just how capable she is along the way.

It won’t draw new fans in likely, but anyone who’s been following No Age this far are bound to find something worthwhile here, and that’s precisely who the band made this record for.

Wrecking Ball is an album that will reinforce most everyone's preexisting opinion of The Boss, whether they be good or bad.

On her sophomore effort, Monsters, Kennedy doubles down on the eclectic nature of her music, offering up a lengthy set of songs that range from experimental electronica to a capella ballads.

You may be wondering why you’d ever want to listen to an album that is so overrun with desperation, which is a somewhat valid concern. But there is an alchemy to what Spirit of the Beehive do in their unique sonic approach that makes their depressive messages not feel self-pitying, but genuinely human.

Tilt is the music they are dragging you onto the dancefloor for, and with most of these songs playing over the speakers, you’ll happily join them.

Berninger’s vocal delivery is largely muted; the mercurial and even passive-aggressive eruptions of the 00s are all but gone; rather, there’s a downcast directness here, which at times is compelling in the way that self-revelation and truth-telling can be; at other times, such singularity seems glaringly reductive, a listener wishing for the metaphors, tortuous narratives, and volatile phrasing of earlier work.

This album finds them going all-out in swashbuckling revelry for the most part, and it suits them better than anyone might have expected.

Despite its flaws, Sun is not a complete failure and does deserve to be mentioned alongside the rest of her work, if only for the comparison of how she once tried something different--a flawed but worthwhile attempt.

Hackney Diamonds is a really great late Stones album, albeit just a pretty good rock album in the canon of history. That’s a compliment.

Double and triple albums naturally sprawl, yet there’s an unexpected compactness to PARANOÏA.

This collection of radiant jangle pop songs, burdened by nostalgic love and depressive yearning for something real, ultimately loses its luster. Everything else blends into one garbled, hazy murmur that ensues without much variance.

Take the strong songwriting, add the excellent production by David Barbe, and the tight and first rate playing, and you've got an album that truly showcases just how skilled and versatile the band is.