Throughout this album, despite its structural flaws, Shah paints several affecting and profound images. Her words are almost always sung in her trademark jazzy, vibrato-heavy style, which adds some dramatic flair to even the more mundane moments, as do tiny instrumental touches.

At every turn acts of rebellion is deceptive. She preaches simplicity, reveling in the individual power within all of us, but the music layered and complex, full of bubbling and whirring elements behind every danceable beat.

Vocally, lyrically, and sonically, Fratti captures the way in which the micro and macro are forever colliding, shrinking, erupting, dissolving around us and, more pressingly, within us.

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.

It makes its own statement, and it does so with the level of maturity and succinctness that we've come to expect from Hecker, an artist who has well earned his place as a leader amongst his peers.

While Balsams was supremely confident, something special, The Cinder Grove reaches even further forward and inward at once, arriving on some far-flung shore that is entirely, supremely Johnson’s own.

It’s an electronic album from DJs who love to sample the music that inspires them, and in the past they’ve successfully done, furnishing us with some of the most golden-crisped memories. With some trimming, We Will Always Love You might have been a victory lap, but instead it feels like The Avalanches would have been better off taking another decade to fine-tune it.

Far In handles weighty themes outside of love, such as the apocalypse, but Lange’s gentility is what we take from it. His presence is always thoughtful, sincere, never forceful or selfish.

The music feels traditional, yet modern and accessible.

She reaches through your speakers and pulls you into her fold where you ride buoyantly through her musical world, just as Peter Vajkoczy became part of her life of movement and dance.

Yes – this is possibly Aoba’s best work. Music incomparable to anything else, beautiful and eternal.

Fucked Up actively refuse any sort of definition, and David Comes To Life proves that they're more than capable of shouldering that burden.

A honed songwriting approach from Rankin seems to fuel Blue Rev, with only a few songs inching beyond three minutes. This excess-trimming approach makes Blue Rev the leanest the band has sounded, but also makes it their tightest work to date.

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.

It may not stand at the forefront of its creator’s dauntingly strong body of work, but Gold Record more than earns its place among his never-ending soul searching.

Aesthetically, it may be polarizing compared to the hit factory that was her debut, but Happier Than Ever stands on its own as a powerfully flawed, overstuffed, but meaningful exploration of what it’s like to live as both a teenager and a superstar in ways that none before her felt comfortable saying.

SICK! is a pure rap album, as only Earl Sweatshirt could deliver.

If any record of this relatively young year demands your full attention then Shaking the Habitual is it, as it opens up as a vast chasm of unexpected possibilities, and despite any possible subconscious misgivings, you’ll immediately want to jump in without thinking twice.

With pop music gradually crumbling under the heel of the algorithm-driven technocracy, their grotesque bricolage of styles isn’t so easily replicated or defined. ILION finds SLIFT banging at the walls, and at the very least, leaving some serious dents in the process.

There are bright spots on Spoon’s 10th album, which indicate that Daniel’s bargain with Lucifer can still inspire him and his band to deliver the goods. It’s just that for now, it appears to be only a strong EP’s worth.

Because of the fractured, whimsical makeup of the album, it can become a bit frustrating for the listeners hoping to detect Half Pearl‘s beating heart. But listen close enough, and resolve is there beneath the rubble in the chopped jazz pop of “Wild Animals”, in which Liv.e struts to her own self-belief, untethered from other people’s expectations of her.

By linking up wuth the most expansive list of collaborators she’s tapped to date (BADBADNOTGOOD, Exaktly and Butcher Brown are among the producers), it also finds her weaving through arguably the most layered, fine musical backdrops she’s yet presented.

Keepers of the Light is as much of a singular expression of the hardcore continuum as it is an exploration of it, but maybe the best way to soak in its two and half hours is as a richly constructed sound world unto itself.

She’s a painter of sound, of mood. And one feels after listening to this document of searching textures, yearning melodies, and newfound sonic intimacy, that she’s only getting started.

These tracks are sparse but airtight, haunting but unrelentingly gorgeous, both logical successors to the stunning second half of Aerial and completely unlike anything she's done.

One wonders how the band would navigate longer, more involved compositions. For now, we can enjoy their succinct yet impressive debut, as they raise the hardcore bar, mixing fury and a penchant for well-informed experimentation.

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.

While it isn’t horribly different from previous solo record Hundreds of Days, it does feel, overall, like her grasp on her tools is firmer, and her ideas feel a bit more refined and distilled here, like she’s reached a purer version of her vision.