This debut’s musical landscape happens to cover an emotional vastness that far surpasses simply anger. There’s heartbreak, melancholy, humor, hopefulness, and even victory—so much more than rage. No matter the emotion, Androgynous Mary finds the band united on the same front, firing on all cylinders through its straightforward punk agenda and nuanced sentimentality.

With Passage, Exitmusic has turned in one of the more ambition, evocative, and engaging efforts of 2012.

Thursday continues a linear narrative that House of Balloons started and its far from an afterthought or epilogue.

All through No Sign of Weakness, Burna Boy strikes a balance between catchy tunes and in-your-face lyrics, showing he’s not backing down and is as strong as ever, no matter what challenges come his way.

Total Nite comes less than a year on from Children of Desire and feels like a natural continuation of their sound.

The 12 tracks on Play Me unfurl as abstract sketches of real-time angst, collages wrapped in thorny roils and gritty yet entrancing textures. Play Me also includes some of Gordon’s most pop-leaning work.

A Western Circular is likely to remain a curiosity – but it deserves much more than that. Here we have a gleaming, respiring and perspiring ode to the joy and pain of life, the looming shadow of death – and the importance that it gives to our daily struggles. All of these ideas are packaged up in lovingly arranged and sung art-pop songs, which sound as breezy and warm as an evening sitting out on the seafront with some close friends.

This is a life-affirming album which is not held back by the restrictions of linguistics and the limitations that words bring, and it may be just what you need to lift you out of yourself in these troubled times.

This newest effort is more interested in exploration than invention. Like following the development of a Miyazaki, there’s a sense of wonder to a fantastical realm, which harmonises in a dreamlike logic. Emotional archeology, for beginners and experts alike, it resides among the group’s five best efforts.

Goodbye Bread may not change the face of music, cause, y'know, it's only rock 'n roll. But it's damn hard not to like it.

ILYSM captures its maker’s emotional state urgently and obtusely. Though sonically more subdued than other recent Wild Pink material (like the celestial alt-country stunner “Florida”), the transitions between the songs are often brisk and quite abrasive. They manifest like cracks formed inside a glass sculpture right before collapse.

Each track posseses different sounds, colours, styles and textures, but they combine to make an odd but strangely appealing whole.

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

It’s somehow arguably her most wide-ranging album (stylistically and topically) while also feeling remarkably of a piece; succinct even.

Veering from their signature alt-folk ditties chronicling the immediacy of transference and love, The Errant Charm presents a dense rendering of that blissful numbness promised by a life of aloof detachment.

Dry Cleaning seem a working-class band, but they are not a political band in that same sense. This concept is mimicked across many post-punk bands past and present, but instead of trying to stay firmly between those politically-charged guardrails they have stepped outside of them and created their own scenic route.

In contrast to the self-aware grandeur and show of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Quik's done much the same thing he did in '91: put out a great rap record, plain and simple.

It is an exciting and emotional listening experience that feels both carefully masterful and sincerely unfiltered.

Handsome almost in spite of itself, The Idler Wheel is poignant, nuanced and quietly unforgettable.

With these influences placed front and center in their tunes, Weekend runs the risk of being written off as a derivative clone; as a band more interested in replicating their heroes than building off the foundation they laid. Fortunately, Weekend has enough personality to ward off this unfair label.

What rides at the top and takes your attention pretty much all the time is Taylor herself. Her words are honest and palpable, but also unflinchingly direct.

Head of Roses, also Wasner’s Sub Pop debut, is her most direct record yet, full of what is definitely her clearest, most emotionally stirring work to date.

The diversity of styles on CAPRISONGS would likely end up a disjointed mess in any other hands, but with twigs (and her stacked team) on hand, it all sews together brilliantly. It bounces back and forth from outwardly confident to more stately anthems of self-love, and even songs that might seem throwaway in isolation are key in sequence.

Heavy, lyrically well-tread and packing a mean proto-motorik groove, from start to finish it has an automotive heartbeat with both eyes on the horizon. It is the sound of Wooden Shjips finally bringing it on home.

As moving as those songs are, The Smile are more intriguing when they shift slightly further away from Yorke and Greenwood’s established palette.

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.

Ultimately, this is sound of two dons recognising their rightful place at the top of the summit, surveying their kingdom and proceeding to piss all over it. And it sounds fucking glorious.

Food for Worms‘ greatest strength is to chronicle how incredible it can feel to be in the presence of this band, at this moment. It feels as if you could almost reach out and touch them, rip open their shirts and feel their sweat.