Charm lives up to its title – not with slick, rehearsed pickup lines – but a joyous, unguarded ‘Oh god, I can’t believe I just caught myself thinking this’-type of sincerity.

The album sometimes feels as if Charli committed fully to her concept, but didn’t allow herself to branch out even further, reach higher, express – or even abandon – more. It is a symphony, but not quite an opus. Yet as it stands, this might actually be her most successful album.

Cousin carries just about the same level of uniqueness as any other Wilco release. Icy and poised, with support from Cate Le Bon on production, it’s their most emotional yet composed record in some time.

The music, in all its messy beauty, hits like a sack of bricks to the head.

She knows exactly what she’s doing here – instead of simply incorporating other musical elements within country, Musgraves is inverting the process – she’s incorporating country music elements within other musical forms, often searching the best balance between the two.

Her ability to speak about truly complex and philosophical facets of love and the self in a lyrically simplified way, but with sonically expansive and cohesive instrumentation, is admirable and incredibly progressive in the world of genres and storytelling.

Now on the other side of forty, this is QOTSA as weary of mortality as they’ve ever been. They also sound as vital, forceful and rough around the edges as they have in over a decade. Welcome back, gentlemen.

Immediately striking on Sepalcure is the grace and fluidity with which these songs are constructed. The album's fifty-one minutes fly the hell by at a breakneck downhill pace and while these songs are infinitely busy they never find themselves reaching or crowded.

Sigur Rós have already proven themselves across their lengthy career, and now, they’re peaking their heads out yet again and making clear they shouldn’t be counted out.

The only caveat to Themes is that its stark cohesion demands a single two hour sit-through to soak in the weight of its patient, holistic, slowly-unfolding approach.

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

Where Superwolf imagined Sweeney and Oldham as blood-splattered riders or jealousy-crazed sailors turning into godless cannibals and sodomites, Superwolves has them sitting on the porch and watching the sun set as their children play in the high grass. ... That makes for a less gripping experience; the predecessor’s bitter, sexual tone made it unique and unforgettable, working off of the subconscious urges of the post 9/11 George Bush Jr. era, but the sequel’s gentle acceptance of the world and all therein allows something thought impossible on that first album: forgiveness.

His voice is consistently stroking it throughout the 16 tracks, ensuring it’s one of his most revealing bodies of work to date. A true and honest portrait of a complex human being.

Allo Darlin' makes this leap on Europe, resulting in an album that is subtly ambitious and surprisingly rewarding.

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.

Illusory Walls is a definitive document of the power of their combined ability and belief.

This album is just as vibrant, innovative and exciting as Alfredo was five years ago.

She has found a way to go beyond merely soothing; she nourishes her soul with each word uttered, building herself up into the titular Protector. This is the sound of her new day dawning, and it’s a wonder to behold.

The 10 tracks that make up DÍA‘s streamlined 33 minutes and 47 seconds channel that volatile orientation honestly, not forcing itself into a deliberate linear sensibility.

There's much to cherish here, but this isn't a complete effort.

The band’s most emotionally delicate and intricate record to date.

Windswept Adan is a landscape, an aquatic world to be lost within, and one from which you’ll scarcely want to emerge.

The fragmentation of characters, the dislocation and purposefully disruptive sense of a core musical identity on Warm Chris make this a collection of disparate songs rather than a body of work – for some this will be a boon, for others problematic.

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.

Instead of wry irony or wallowing in hopeless abandon, Pale Horse Rider achieves something more like a fellow soul joining in on watching a fire in the distance.

To his credit, he once again proves why he’s esteemed at the former via the blunt insights of “TMVTL”, but the “run that verse back” Benny is all but absent on Everybody Can’t Go. Once more, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he doesn’t seem sure how to replace that energy with conviction. Even The Alchemist gets dragged down by the pursuit of safe material.

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 stunning and properly weird ending to a weird album, and though it may be one of their most succinct albums, Sun Racket still showcases what the Muses are up to so long into their career, and why they should keep doing exactly what they’re doing.