It’s a perverse and challenging listen that makes very few compromises. But the album is also both intensely lyrical and supremely musical--and it plays out in a way that is designed to be perversely uncomfortable for the ears.

Like all Björk albums before it, Vulnicura is the work of many but the vessel, really, for the voice--and everything that means--of just one persistently empowering talent.

The Russian five-piece move so defiantly through their debut the resulting radiance sings of a group unshackled by their limited means.

A bizarre little record, Music And Words was seemingly kicked off in 2007. With a seven-year gestation, it would be nigh on impossible to maintain a full sense of coherency, but the twin artists just about manage it.

It’s about love and life and happiness and positivity without being the slightest bit sloppy. It’s the perfect accompaniment to bashing away the January blues and starting 2015 with a smile on your face.

From the flicks of tousled hair and being pale and away with the fairies, the end product sounds more masterful and comfortingly in control than other fashion zeitgeists and angular pouters with every listen.

A curious oddity, Moonlight indicates that there’s far more to Hanni El Khatib than meets the eye.

It immediately stakes its claim as the rock album of 2015.

On Your Own Love Again is a timeless record by a remarkable talent only just starting to show what she can do.

The result is something that sounds mechanical and generally detached from emotion.

The speed-rock splendour of ‘Lowtalkin’’ put to one side, the band’s career prospects and longevity probably lie in the strained emotional hypnotism of the more muted, more self-conscious moments.

A strange brew of instrumentals both delightfully becalming and playfully boisterous.

Since that reboot 12 years ago, they don’t really know what they want to be. So they try all things, and only succeed at some.

For the most part, though, this seems like a step in the wrong direction: a Nicki Minaj album from somebody who’s thoroughly fed up of being Nicki Minaj.

The anthems are still here, rest assured; they’re less obvious, but definitely no less compelling.

One of the songwriter’s most overtly gorgeous works, it finds Panda Bear easing into new ground while maintaining his near effortless melodic touch.

An awesomely designed underground rising.

While there’s nothing particularly original or ground-breaking about this debut, CATB is a band that’s mastered the art of writing tunes that connect with an audience, and at a time when commercial rock is, apparently, at a particularly low ebb, that could serve them very well.

Despite the elongated nature of its creation, Black Messiah is a fluid, confidently cool piece.... A real showcase of his incredible talent.

Hallways demonstrates great writing, clever concepts, varying flow patterns and a solid ear for organic production--all of which nudges the boundaries without straying too far away.

It’s the ninth studio album to bear the Pumpkins brand, and probably the seventh that wouldn’t find a single track making most fans’ side-of-a-C90 best-of. But it delivers what it promises: songs by Billy Corgan that sound enough like the ones you recall loving as a teenager.

While it may not quite measure up to their very best work, this is still utterly unlike anything else you’ll hear this year.

An album of consistent high quality and endearing personality, Petals Have Fallen might have missed the deadline for a 2014 Mercury Prize nomination, but with ‘Dead’ and ‘Everybody Down’ making this year’s list, it’s worth popping a tenner on this exceptional LP matching their shortlist status in 2015.

This collection’s predecessor, 2013’s ‘True Romance’, showcased an artist willing to take on the pop world. Sucker finds that same, singular performer rewriting the rules entirely, never mind breaking any, and beating pop at its own game.

Shifting their past into their present, this intensifies retrospective beats with the primitive passion that’s always been at their core.

Sure, it's not all killer.... But still, this is AC/DC: an unstoppable volcanic force, a group that seems to weather every obstacle placed in its way.

Fragile yet utterly destructive, this wolf in sheep’s clothing will hurl you five ways and leave you hovering over a bleak abyss. In a great way, obviously.

Serious though he may intend to be, through the combination of Williamson’s Mr. Angry rants and Andrew Fearn’s tinny keyboards, Sleaford Mods do have a tendency to sound like a bit of a novelty.