This record was defined by never being in the same place at once--each song was recorded in a different location--but there’s a glue holding everything together.

Shopping want to be moody and want to be fun; they want to be taken completely seriously and want you to laugh with them. Though the album switches between states of feeling, it rarely drops beneath being anything less than brilliant.

Nothing on this record is secure, but its transitions are hauntingly beautiful. It will not be for those who crave immediacy. Some tracks are far from an easy listen, but it was never meant to be.

Grant has a fascinating combination of wisdom, world-weary cynicism and righteous anger; it never grates.

Accordingly, In Dream is an uneven affair; fabulously ambitious in places, and weirdly subdued in others.

Contagious and sarcastic, in-your-face and self-aware yet ultimately all about cutting loose, Wavves have offered up an album that proves themselves as leaders in the punk pack.

Despite the foreboding darkness within their offerings, there are still glimpses of light that shimmer within.

As coherent and arresting as everything is, it is true that some of the hooks are not particularly immediate. A few of the tracks seem to steam ahead but never really find an end destination, with any hooks getting lost in the mists of fuzz.

More than one kitchen sink has been proudly gafer-taped to their musical fun bus; every idea--however half-formed--integrated with complete confidence. Delivered with the swagger of someone who’s just half-inched Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat, it works spectacularly.

Holding Hands With Jamie remains an untamed beast that’ll pave the way for Girl Band’s unstoppable ascent. There remains a nagging feeling, however, that this deadly work could’ve forced an apocalypse if delivered with more conviction.

While he continues to be less elusive, his music continues to thrive from his stark directness.

Lewd, bulshy, and gaudier than a kitsch ornaments warehouse with a sprung glitter pipe, Rub is a return to form, and hideously brilliant, garish good fun.

Powers throws just enough of his own inquisitive character to find his finest moment. He does it time and time again on this record.

Not only safe, Music Complete serves to dilute New Order’s output.

Julia Holter always stood out as a left-field crafter of melody; this album establishes her as a unique lyric voice, too.

Too often, Disclosure find themselves playing it safe.

More confident in their own musical skins, it all adds together to make Every Open Eye a second album even better than the first.

By refusing to change the song structure or tempo in any way, Deez has created an album that is stuck in a memory that grows more rose-tinted by the day.

She’s created a world of her own, and on this latest record she sinks deep into its clutches.

Without any voices swimming around the noise, the record does lack the variety that came before. Instead, this is a stubborn embracing of all the weird things that make up this unique trio.

Eclectic almost to an extreme, Baio combines reckless abandon with infectious introspection to create something entirely, captivatingly new.

For all its unwieldy eccentricity, Good Sad Happy Bad is still fascinating.

The album’s title suggests fight and energy but much of this album feels too polite and too pedestrian.

Packed with powerful guitars and guttural vocals, the quartet may be over thirty years into their career, but they still know how to pack a devastating punch; with or without their original line-up.

While some may argue that Ones and Sixes sounds too familiar, it could be said that the trio are simply playing to their strengths.

There’s enough evidence on Ropewalk that The View’s songwriting senses remain sharp, but the turgid manner in which they’ve served up this group that renders it a disappointment.

This record is a set of huge songs that’ll cement their place at the top of rock’s ranks and so much more.

It’s the same bloatedness that often permeates through a Beirut record, and despite a short recording time Condon hasn’t quite been able to shake it, leaving us with a familiar and easy-going album that might step in a different direction, but ultimately remains distinctively Beirut.

This album is one of empowerment and regained vitality.

It’s a mostly successful and far more mature record; it just has to be seen as a more grown-up Anthems for Doomed Youth rather than the anthems from doomed youth that they previously brought.

Despite the missteps it’s What the World Needs Now’s ability to sound energised and fresh which makes it an album that you can’t dismiss.

Too is a big, dumb-smart, happy-sad, universally-specific beast of a record, then.

For the most it is a spaced-out, blissed-out trip that makes it hard to comprehend that it came from the mind behind Bangerz.

In Highest Point In Cliff Town, Hooton Tennis Club have produced a debut that’s utterly irresistible: a summer soundtrack that makes staring out of the train window significantly less mundane; an album that restores positivity in the type of Mondays that Courtney Barnett knows oh so well.

It is fair to say that the album is missing hooks; it is a difficult listen and the tracks’ sparseness renders them similar. But, when the sound is so spine-tinglingly moving, that’s not too much of a problem.

They’ve taken the strengths of ‘Teen Dream’ and ‘Bloom’--reaching pop highs with ease--before being deceptive like it’s some kind of game. It’s not unfamiliar in the good sense, and it’s an odd outlier in an otherwise brilliant back-catalogue.

There’s a constant feeling that instead of edging towards going one bigger, this band have embraced their calling. And if Foals didn’t already have enough songs in their arsenal to top festival bills, they’ve just added ten more.

It’s novelistic. It’s smart. Of course it is, it’s a Destroyer album.

This is a collection of tracks that see the potent, unafraid icon that is Carter return to the forefront of British punk and he’s using it as an opportunity to really say something.

Perfectly pop yet delicately dark, Spector really have redefined themselves.

Less scrappy punk and more slick guitars, there’s an air of the Queens of the Stone Age about their debut, and it’s a sound they wear well.

M3LL155X is sometimes more show than substance, but it’s ultimately a sign of twigs getting more confident by the second.

Their newest full-length feels both quintessential and refreshing, a modern classic which sees the band growing into more confident versions of themselves.

For the most part, this is a record about chasing a specific kind of pop aesthetic instead, which largely comes at the detriment of any kind of real connection.

Flashes of the airtight songwriting that ran through ‘Scream Aim Fire’ and ‘Fever’ remain--closer ‘Pariah’ does controlled fury very well--but otherwise, it has to be case of back to the drawing board, because Bullet sound as if they’re beginning to run on fumes.

Where things ought to be reduced and given more purpose, they instead stampede into goodness-knows-where. Ambition doesn’t always equal perfection. Rock operas have their place, but this isn’t the pick of the bunch.

They have created another cohesive body of work that’s unhurried, considered and produces all the classic components of a timeless record that embodies the very moment.

There’s a sense of comfort running throughout that does result in repeated motifs, fancy tricks that have either appeared on previous LPs or within the same eight songs.

How the listener takes Death Magic defines everything, but once again, even at their most open and exposed HEALTH completely defy definition.

Perhaps it’s even a more accessible album for smoothing off the edges and toning down the vitriol, but it’s also largely forgettable in a way that Frank Turner’s best could never be accused of.

This is not a perfectly crafted album; instead, it’s an incredibly human one.

There’s two sides to Blood, that much is certain, and it’s the juxtaposition of these cradling tracks with the gut punchers that really leaves you breathless for more.

St. Catherine is a quasi-nostalgic LP that’s sonically soothing, while exhibiting finely-woven musical textures. It’s clever, without being intimidating or pretentious.

It might not hit with the sit-up-and-listen immediacy of previous albums, but make no mistake, Currents is just as accomplished.

Something that gradually becomes clear is that this is an album of uncertainty.

Broaching love, lust, power-dynamics, jealousy, and heartbreak along the way, Years & Years bring that all important human touch to their massive pop anthems.

Working Girl isn’t the sleekest of albums but the stumbles and scrapes that Little Boots overcomes are a testament to her desire for change.

With an astute sense of mischief and a knack for snazzy hooks, Best Friends’ debut full-length offering is as endearing as they come.

Distractions is a highly intelligent, subtle and thoroughly immersive record. Each hook and strained vocal witholds a considered approach that is testament to the brittle nature of the music that Sauna Youth create.

she’s written a brilliantly fun pop record in the process.

This is a messy, disorderly but beautifully blissful and idiosyncratic record--and that seems like the statement he’d like to make.

Persuasive, pummelling, precise, Refused may have--quite literally--set the agenda with ‘The Shape Of Punk To Come’ but here they’re proving that they can still translate the blueprints regardless of how much time has passed.

Inji is the sound of Dust discovering his own identity. And to achieve this, he tries just about anything and everything that crosses his path.

Cemetery Highrise Slum is a maze; disorienting and satisfying in equal measure.

With layer upon layer of vocal, groove, and percussion, Jaakko Eino Kalevi is a reminder that pop can be both for your head and your feet.

Though Bones is almost as dramatic as a standard week on Albert Square--occasionally to its detriment--it’s also impossible to fault this album’s single-minded pursuit of sheer, maxed out saturation.

This debut sets a nice, if mostly safe, blueprint.

After years of the slow build, the release is here. Believe the hype.

Baird has produced a record that you know deserves to be heard, yet want to keep all to yourself.

This is an album designed to move people, and Payola manages to do so in so very many ways.

Slowness doesn’t surrender its wonders easily. But when it does, and there’s no guarantee it will for everyone on every listen, it can be perfect.

This is music in its purest, most experimental form. This is a record which doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t have to.

Everything Everything have sculpted a masterpiece.

It’s still a work that’s defined by its own dynamism. Anyone following these guys from the start won’t have doubted their capabilities, but that doesn’t stop A Dream Outside from dwarfing expectations.

Lantern is this duality between experimental and easily-grasped embodied. Unsurprisingly, it is the more left-field elements to the production that are the most intriguing.

The streets of home are always going to stir emotions but rarely does that cocktail of of loneliness and belonging get articulated with the gut-felt precision that Prinzhorn Dance School manage on their third record.

There’s a real sense of optimism and summer to the record.

While some moments are clearly domain of a single entity, the truth is that the six-headed monster don’t always make it that easy, instead opting to blur their sensibilities into a playful, dance rock smear.

On the surface Of Monsters And Men’s second album is a lush master-class in pop sensibilities and folk storytelling but Beneath The Skin is more than a name. Scratch below that glittering surface and you’ll discover a band that has discovered themselves.

Wild Nights as a whole feels like a step forward for Pins; they’ve played to their strengths in genuinely self-assured fashion.

The intricate layering of warped guitars and echoing vocals is all well and good for the background to summer fun, but for No Joy to be more than this More Faithful relies on these more intimate moments. Although these are sparsely scattered throughout they’re just enough to make More Faithful more than just a half-listened to soundtrack to road trips and festivals but an album with heart, confidence and intimacy.

Four Year Strong sees the Massachusetts four-piece at their most refined, eleven tracks that not only succinctly sum up their fourteen year history but confidently remind the world at large that they’ve still got something to offer.

No doubt some old fans will continue to decry this latest chapter in Rolo Tomassi’s seemingly endless search to scratch their inner itch, but make no mistake; this is a confident return to form.

It’s so ludicrously colourful and loud and just the right side of ridiculous and whatever the mission may be, domination is the likely result.

For all of Before We Forgot How To Dream’s subtle touches of production, it’s Soak herself who stands out the most.

The real charm of this record comes in its additional moments of character; the spoken-word interruptions (‘Do Something’) or soundbite introductions (‘She Wants Me Now’) which somehow tie the album together even more tightly.

Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad have already proven themselves as songwriters with a great deal of potential, and their debut record properly only confirms that they’re only just getting started.

A showcase of his ability and the things he loves most (Romy and Oliver Sim’s guest spots are a vital part of the LP), it’s the most confident he’s ever sounded.

Whatever the lyrical content, musically every move feels like an affirming one. You’re never more than a short skip from something gigantic.

The record’s constant hums and oohs at times whitewash even Algiers’ loftiest intentions, but the moments of clarity amongst all the murk mark the trio out as something staunchly individual.

Ultimately, it turns out The Darkness are at their worst when doing an impression of themselves, which is exactly what Last Of Our Kind is.

The strength of A.L.L.A is when Rocky dodges the conventional diss tracks and instead tells his story without any strings attached.

The Vaccines still know how to write a direct hit--‘Handsome’, with it’s opening “oh God oh God oh God” panic attack, is still an indie-tastic thrash--but they’ve got other gears too.

By building his own synths and meeting his troubles head-on, Nielson has created a bizarre take on romance, one that for the most part breeds devastating results.

With The Story So Far continuing to write unapologetic good time bangers, pop punk is very much alive.

They might not have returned to their hardcore roots, but Ceremony have veered off into an abyss of misery of despair again, and they’re back on track because of it.

Streamlined and with every moment as vital as the next yet playful and curious, Heydays manages to craft a new path from a well-travelled landscape.

Why Make Sense? is a stripped back affair, an album of emotionally intelligent, lithe, pared back R&B.