‘A Goood Sign’ never really goes anywhere and gets a bit lost in its murky pool of synths, while ‘i.v.’ doesn’t add much to the record. But overall, the falsetto of Mockasin and the electronic sounds of Dust marry perfectly into something stunningly weird; the kind of marriage where’d you wear multi-colour suits and dresses and tuck into an inflatable cake.

What you see is what you get with Kero Kero Bonito. Instant sugar rush pop with extra icing on top, they’ve perfected the quick fix formula.

Lady Wood isn’t an album made for radio or easy digestion. The hooks are there but, like Tove herself, they aren’t succumbing expectations.

Branching out musically is a bold step that pays off in flashes, but the riff work in ‘Welcome to Hell’ and ‘Jailbird’’s brief guitar solo confirm that, at heart, Crocodiles are strongest with guitars in hand.

An album that’s sometimes a little too abstract to truly connect with.

Put it all together, and listening to Savoy Motel’s debut in its entirety can leave you struggling, wondering if you’ve accidentally left the album on loop and yearning for something--anything9--that doesn’t begin with a bassline boogie.

Intentionally overwrought, brash, and totally different to anything she’s ever done before, Lady Gaga’s Joanne doesn’t quite nail the artistic frankness she’s aiming for.

American Football meanders a lot less than its predecessor, and it’s a much more focused record, every move carried out with precision.

By recycling the same guitar and drum effects, it comes across as a poor man’s reworking of ‘Broke Me In Two.’ That only leaves you desperately wanting to return to the gems that frontload this curiously unbalanced album.

The whole record shows them as a band who wear their heart on their sleeve, a perfect mix of ‘90s guitar nostalgia and sweet-sounding slacker rhythms.

With short tracks, skits and interludes admittedly Yes Lawd! does feel a bit more like a mixtape than an album at times but that’s simply the NxWorries way. In a pairing with this much chemistry, they can be forgiven for getting a little carried away.

Anybody yearning for reinvention or experimentation is going to be let down, but the fact that Building a Beginning remains so in thrall to Lidell’s soul heroes suggests that perhaps such drastic action wouldn’t be a good idea anyway.

Powell’s music is for sweaty, unconcerned nights of utter debauchery--the kind of whirlwind Saturday night where there’s no way you’re getting home until at least midday. This makes listening to the album as a whole a frankly exhausting experience.

In an age where any era of music is within a second’s grasp, The Lemon Twigs’ reliance on nostalgia is at best dated; at worst, pure laziness.

Ruminations feels like a comedown as such. His first solo album since 2014 ‘Upside Down Mountain’ features only Oberst, a piano, an acoustic guitar and the occasional flash of harmonica. It’s possibly his most reflective, nostalgic work yet.

Despite its curiously downbeat nature, it’s thoughtful and packed with intricacies waiting to be revealed. You’ll never want to leave once it sucks you into its gravitational orbit.

Whilst Heems’ verses amble along with wry humour and charmingly lazy wordplay (“Inshallah, mashallah, hopefully no martial law”), Riz MC’s (actor Riz Ahmed) are typified by a razor-sharp flow, as fast as it is furious, and breathlessly references the refugee crisis, Aeneas from The Iliad, Trump and his film career in short order, before throwing down that he “run[s] the city like my name’s Sadiq”.

They still sound like they’re on a process of self-discovery, just a couple of steps away from striking gold.

Perhaps not perfect, but a recovery position from which Two Door Cinema Club look primed to soar once more.

It lacks the immediate bombast of either that last LP or 2010’s ‘Come Around Sundown’, but neither is it straight-up boring.

Doe always hinted at such results from an LP, and Some Things Last Longer Than You delivers the lot and then some with devastating power and sincerity.

It’s a record that’s well-travelled, that’s absorbed a whole myriad of influence and taken two years to digest it into something cohesive. But, impressively, it’s a record that still holds its identity despite all the ideas it’s binding together.

It’s a record that feels at once deeply personal and eloquently grand at once. All this aside, musically Sirens is up there with Jaar’s best work

Requiem is the furthest Goat have ventured in expansiveness and length. Despite that, Requium is their most accessible moment to date.

Four full-lengths in, this is the most comprehensive full-length Joyce Manor have ever released.

While so many albums today are front-loaded, this one saves many of its treasures for the final stretch, ending on a high with ‘Highland Grace’, an appropriately elegiac closer euphoric horns and vocals.

There are some cringey bits, the title track relying a little too much on well-trodden punk tropes, the vocals ‘Still Breathing’ not as vulnerable as the lyrics might warrant, and ‘Youngblood’ a bit of a mis-step. If punk’s 50th anniversary has shown us anything, it’s that many old rockers grow old, go soft and give in. On that count, if not all, Green Day are faring pretty well.

Don’t Let The Kids Win shines brightest for its clear, and charismatic narrative voice.

Tempest has delivered a compelling, thought-provoking insight into our troubled times.

There’s a lack of ostentation from start to finish. The sound is uncluttered but never lacking in clout.

It’s lusciously written, produced, and arranged.

I Had A Dream That You were Mine is a record that manages to capture that closeness and intimacy perfectly.

Gloomy, grey but definitely not dull, The Wytches have cast another stellar spell.

Each track is a musical sketch that assembles fragments of thoughts and shadows of daily pursuits. Escaping the urgency of old, this Ultimate Painting is a picture of a disquiet melancholy.

Tracks such as ‘Answer’ contain more light, pop-ridden sensibilities, yet it’s with the grittier, heavier-sounding choruses where Phantogram are at their best.

These songs [The Trapper and the Furrier, Tornadoland, and Obsolete] are, ironically, more cinematic than anything found on her last album ‘What We Saw From The Cheap Seats,’ and that sense of drama helps make Remember Us To Life a return to form.

The Altar is very close to being a razor-sharp pop blueprint.

Their past is a double-edged sword, but that doesn’t prevent Head Carrier from having its own unique strengths.

This is an album which very much belongs in 2016, and an expectedly assured debut from a band who are by no means redefining the sound of New York City rock ‘n’ roll, but are laying claim to being worthy flag bearers of it going forward.

It’s a record that does more than just pitch him just leagues ahead of anyone else in the game; it’s a portrait of a man who’s more than happy to invent a whole new one.

The most uncomfortable elements of life, colliding to create frantic, disorganised, but completely coherent mess, this record isn’t basic. It’s anything but.

More often than not, musicians determined to avoid old tropes are exhausting. But 22, A Million stands out as Bon Iver’s finest moment yet, a cross between invention and beauty that’s delivered without compromise.

Self-aware but undaunted, every moment sees the band pushing at the walls, daring to take it bigger, promising to make it more open.

The results range from dazzling to disastrous.

A surgical dissection of a full decade of influence, Merchandise pay homage to their upbringing without ever breaking eye contact with the sprawling future set ahead of them.

A clear adoration for 90s bands doesn’t stop Return to Love from being an extremely strong album from 2016, and an undoubted step up.

This time, the fiery furnace powering their new record comes from slashing open every membrane; letting ideas wildly collide like supercharged, excitable atoms. Brushstrokes and processes are all over this record.

Nick Cave’s lyrics have always dealt with love and grief, so while the themes seem more poignant because of his loss, in truth the content isn’t so different. It’s the raw nature of the tracks themselves that hit harder than usual.

Still Corners’ dream-pop takes on a nightmarish hue with snatches of ominous electro and brutally honest lyrics. Their time away has served them well on this new record.

Mykki is a promising starting point for some, a jump into a different league entirely for his following.

Fixion is not a traditionally cohesive record. It does not flow as whole, in fact it is all over the place, joined only by a sense of sonic darkness. But for a chameleon like Trentemøller, creativity is his cohesion, formula the enemy--and this is his most creative, experimental record yet.

While Kindly Now consequently makes for interesting, albeit heavy listening, the prospect of Henson’s next move is now all the more intriguing.

It’s a sleek collection of pop gems that will live long in the memory.

This is Against Me! shifting the topic but retaining all the glory: biting lyricism, punk fury and rock prowess wrapped up in an infectious and perfectly imperfect package.

Their second record hits harder, digs deeper and lingers longer than that promising debut, and keeping all eyes on their art proves to be the best statement Preoccupations could ever have offered.

Deap Vally were always turned to eleven, Femejism has them reaching for twelve.

It just falls short of completely engulfing your interest and really exposing itself as anything completely fresh and inspiring. It’s pretty in places, but you’re left wishing that it was truly beautiful.

With Schmilco, Wilco are getting funnier, more surprising and more interesting, two decades after forming.

Here joins the rest of the group’s catalogue in being consistently enjoyable, yet on this occasion not without flaw.

Allah-Las’ third album rambles as it soars, and with a distinct disregard for convention, it paints a picture of life at its most freewheeling.

ures might underplay institutional factors, Local Natives deliver these ideas knowingly. The beauty of Sunlit Youth is in its optimism rather than its pragmatism--a record that cements their status as one of our most special proponents of emotionally-charged guitar music.

With this second album, they’re still offering an exciting, engaging alternative to pure chart pop, and they do it so bloody well.

Producing a mixture of satisfaction and exhaustion, A Moment of Madness offers bawdy, top-of-the-room choruses on each of the first six track

A bleak and wilfully impenetrable album.

A a good, clean indie-pop record, it’s a solid foot in the door for an act with a prosperous future ahead of them.

As to be expected in this setting, the collaborations are occasionally guilty of overindulgence.

Trick is a record that feels like a trip back into what he once was, only with all his senses heightened. ‘Grudge’ was polished; this is as rough and ready as it gets.

Contradictory, complex, and worthy of endless re-listens, Angel Olsen has crafted her most compelling record to date.

This is the sound of a songwriter in transition.

It’s only in the moments with somebody else in the driving seat that The Anonymous Nobody shines.

Los Niños Sin Miedo is a richly enjoyable exploration of the weird and wonderful, and a big two fingers up to all those who ever doubted them.

The sound of two artists pushing each other forward makes for a fascinating listen. This isn’t just the sound of two polar opposites coming together and hoping something sticks. This is a group that have earned their right to be heard. They should be taken seriously.

Their new record showcases inner madness, characters you’d cross the street to avoid, and some of the band’s smartest pop songs to date.

Frank’s rich sense of storytelling is still here, it’s just fragmented. But once Blonde’s ambiguity begins to piece together, it becomes something remarkable.

Despite hiding behind the veil of electronic experimentation, Thom Sonny Green has taken a brave step forwards.

Cold Pumas peddle a kind of post-punk that’s long since been done to death by this point; it takes real ingenuity to find a way to imbue this particular template with genuinely new energy, and on this evidence, they haven’t found that yet.

Steeped in decade-spanning traditions of pop, rock and folk, it’s an ambitious record marred only by early and apparent nonchalance.

25 25 sounds as great in a bedroom as it would do in any sweaty nightclub, and for that reason, it’s a triumph.

The record doesn’t achieve a great deal in saying anything new. It’s far from a disaster, though. ... The main issue with Amnesty (I) is that Crystal Castles needed to say something different.

Basic rhythms, simple synth melodies and the occasional burst of fuzz guitar provide a primitive vehicle for Cameron’s idiosyncratic lyrics, where the record’s real pleasures reside.

From gut-wrenching lows to stratospheric heights, A Weird Exits is an adrenaline-fuelled ride of epic proportions.

Unfortunately, this slightly more mainstream vision is consistently obscured, making Innocence Reaches a frustrating listen.

Spend the Night With is rough around the edges, but it thrives under this approach.

There’s little here that will convert Dinosaur Jr sceptics. But for those who enjoy their nostalgic licks, Give A Glimpse of What Yer Not is a pretty satisfying addition to their back-catalogue.

Spiraling from stripped back laments into squalling chaos with an innate dexterity, Johnny Foreigner subvert their surroundings into a place of their own making.

Full-bodied production is at the heart, though takes nothing away from the more laid back moments.

A fifth album u-turn that few could pull off, Boy King is the sound of a band reborn. The core elements are all still there--that falsetto-baritone play-off between vocalists Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming as prominent as ever--but they’re glitched-up and garbled.

The result is a consistently textured record, with beautifully integrated strings.

It’s a very special record that offers more with every listen.

The only real criticism is that, in trying to present all of her sides, Nao hasn’t been ruthless enough in the cutting room. At eighteen tracks, For All We Know feels its length but, to be fair, it’s hard to suggest what to trim.

It remains evident that the pair stellar pop songs in their armoury, but their over-reliance on a standard formula finds this debut stuck in a bit of a creative rut.

So far, so great. But when the use of vocals is taken into overdrive on final track ‘Go On Without Me’, where Jacob Bannon from hardcore punks Converge offers up his jarring scream, it’s almost on the borderline of becoming too much.

This is a landmark album for a previously forgotten musician, an incredibly neat and satisfying collection of songs.

Ultimately Beyond The Wizards sleeve sounds like what it is--a hobby. As an outsider, it simply doesn’t reap the same rewards as it might have for its creators.

What Clams Casino specialises in and what makes this record a success is his ability to seemingly carve beats from ice, so cold is the production. His signature sounds otherworldly, with the breathy synths and crisp bass a soundtrack to some interstellar gang warfare.

An ambitious double album filled with reverb and distortion this it not, but if a new, playful kind of Biffy Clyro take your fancy, there’s more than enough of Ellipsis to dive headfirst into.

A racing sense fun propels much of The Julie Ruin’s latest, and it’s a more refined step forward from the debut.

Gone are the days of Mokolo, but Take Her Up To Monto remains just as resilient; proving that Roisin Murphy’s productive world of pop madness has a rightful place in the present day.