With PUNK, CHAI have defied all expectations, decreeing that everybody to them is cute--and they don’t need to be.

Across the board, ’Mahashmashana’ might be his best to date, an album that ploughs a relentlessly adventurous furrow while striking a compelling balance between the epic and the intimate.

PVRIS might have been to hell and back, but a new era is here, and it’s utterly brilliant.

Despite all the doubts and the self-admonishing, in a strange way you won’t find a more affirming album all year.

These 14 tracks are so sonically rich with a multitude of textures, each listen peeling back just one measly layer; Molly’s vocal hooks and turns of phrase will remain in your brain days after the last listen.

At 15 tracks long, he occasionally falters under the weight of his own abundance, but there are so many great sweets in the pick’n’mix bag that you don’t really mind the odd underwhelming chew.

Ultimately, there’s a charming purity that runs through ‘New Long Leg’, and a sense that Dry Cleaning wasn’t the product of a masterplan. Instead it’s the by-product of the lives they were already leading which gives an uncompromising human quality to this debut.

The Underside Of Power is heavy going, but completely, necessarily so.

‘Happier Than Ever’, then, is not just a triumph in progressing a signature sound into new territories, but a lesson in how to own your reality with confidence and class.

‘POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES’ is not the soothing salve for a country tearing itself apart. Instead, it is the molotov cocktail and lighter threatening to ignite the people into taking action.

To call untitled unmastered a follow-up would be unfair, but what it reveals is that rap’s most innovative has a lot more left in his locker.

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

Both heavy and cumbersome and light and uncertain, it will prove difficult for some to find an entrance to it, but once you’re inside you’ll find yourself enveloped by its bold experimentation and the stunning way they execute it.

It starts with a slow drip and builds to a raging flood. It’s irresistible and so eloquently convincing that despite their claims of failure, Protomartyr are unstoppable.

Christopher Owens has emerged from it with potentially one of the year’s best records.

They may be using Morbid Stuff to face their demons head on, but there’s a sense of reckless abandon to the whole thing that makes it entirely freeing.

At a time when country-tinged indie rock is by no means in short supply in America - Wednesday, Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman all spring to mind - Ratboys have earned their seat at the top table.

It’s uncompromising yet nonetheless inventive, with eccentric flows and inspired production choices.

‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’ will likely take some time to fully unravel, but on the surface, it looks like a daring return.

Yes, Squid have travelled the world, but they have also returned home with a sense of self that’s stronger than ever, as sharp as a razor dripping with freshly drawn blood.

On all fronts, with ‘Daddy’s Home’, St Vincent has delivered spectacularly.

‘The Overload’ lives up to its hype with flying colours. Brilliantly constructed to unfurl like some sordid soap opera of Brexit Britain, it brims with vignettes populated by instantly-recognisable caricatures of the now.

‘The Art Of The Lie’ won’t act as an accessible gateway into John Grant’s catalogue, but for those already sold, it’s a deeper excavation into the mind of the man.

A dystopian, focused pessimism that sounds (unfortunately) exactly like the world outside, but doesn’t sound quite like another band on the planet. A perfect soundtrack to nagging doubts and creeping realisations.

After Saturation's freewheeling spirit and an insatiable appetite for fun, Iridescence had to confront the past nine months, and make a statement as to how the band move forward. It does so emphatically.

The result is a dynamic, difficult-to-predict listen that gently but deftly rebuts anyone who thinks they already know what Divorce are all about.

Their fireside intimacy remains consistent throughout, despite candid storytelling, as they ask for respite in response to an intrusive sex dream on ‘Hotel TV’, and endure cyclical break-up-make-up tension on ‘The Actor’. And even in their more minimal arrangements - see ‘Moth Song’ and ‘I’ll Find A Way’ - the group transmute emotion through their harmonic unison.

While some might mourn the loss of their one-time raucousness, ‘Gigi’s Recovery’ shows that their momentum swings only forwards.