In all of this, it's not that any one song is outright horrific (okay, 'Pink Lemonade' is pretty unbearable), more that the entire experience is a chore.

Deeper represents an exquisite documentation of post-punk's darkest hour.

The band ensure they make music, which matches their aesthetic: airy, welcoming story-telling indie folk, which just happens to be painstakingly well considered and recorded. Ultimately though, where all this world building and curatorship comes to fall short is where it matters most: the songs.

No doubt delightful for existing Rundgren fans, you deserve a medal if, as an uninitiated listener, you make it out of Global feeling inspired like never before.

Eclipse blacks out nuance of every kind, resulting in a record which achieves its ambitions for sheer, bludgeoning vastness, but falls down on actually engaging the listener in simpler, more relatable ways.

The songs on this record have been delivered with the kind of aplomb that only someone with an unshakeable confidence in their work can muster, which suggests that Nadine Shah’s artistic future is mouthwatering.

In spite of all of this [still packed with his slow tempos, slurred sadness, and dour imagery], Grass, Branch and Bone stands as one of the easiest to inhabit of all of Joyner’s albums. Happily, it’s also as rewarding to explore as anything he’s done.

On The Air Conditioned Nightmare some of the songs feel reverse-engineered, with vocals serving to glue the songs together rather than providing a focal point in themselves.

A shimmering, optimistic record recalling Stevie Wonder and Brian Wilson, the LP makes for a comparative step back in time, with smooth yet fuzzy basslines, funk breakdowns, clever arrangements and soaring backing vocals.

This is both the album Ufomammut completists will have been awaiting and the best album for new listeners to get their ears stuck into.

A great, and fun, album.

This album ought to see Kate Stables recognised as one of the most compelling voices in alt-folk.

It’s very difficult to do anything new in psych but with their energy and enthusiasm, not to mention some interesting work with electronics, Wand have managed to bring a surprisingly entertaining offering to the genre.

Asunder, Sweet is Godspeed at their most conciliatory, most bloody-minded and most untouchable.

This album isn’t for you if you like your music handed to you on a plate. It’s not for you if you want constant twists and turns. It is for you if you’re seeking a suite of songs to immerse, and ultimately to lose yourself in.

Not everything works perfectly here but when he gets it right, he really nails it.

Claustrophobia feels richer and more worthy of exploring than the likes of ‘Hardbody’ or his Phenix releases.

Its sound is as beautiful as ever too, and the arrangements are captured well on Lost and Found, with a glow of warmth hovering around the instrumentation.

Liam Howlett and the boys embrace their psycho circus schtick on The Day Is My Enemy to the point of suffocation.

While Campbell's music hasn't done a complete U-turn and embraced sonic maximalism, the nine tracks on Hinterland benefit from greater depth, evident on even the sparsest cuts.

The Staves have added all sorts of bells and whistles to their sound. They all work.

A collection of songs as captivating, poignant and finally, ultimately, redemptive as any that Stevens has produced.

It’s a visceral, pulsating entity, echoing with tinnitus.

It’s unassumingly loud, and intensely physical, wrestling with the listener in a swarm of noisy sax blasts, gnarly riffs, and often surprisingly catchy math themes. Nonetheless, it feels unfinished.

Kintsugi is a finely-made tearjerker of a record that evokes similar levels of sadness as those examples, featuring some crisp and well-structured songwriting that launches torrents of emotive air strikes to summon an appropriate degree of solemnity.

Modest Mouse have written 15 good tracks that don’t amount to a great album.

Chambers is a beast. A glorious black hole of modern romanticism.

This sounds like Steve Wold, not Seasick Steve, and the result is an untidy, tedious affair.

It's intrinsically a strange album though, trapped somewhere between The Knife, Nineties acid house, Kraftwerk, New Order’s Technique album, and literally anything Eno did in the Eighties, but the warped pop sensibilities and gloriously plastic production make it a hidden gem.

The Cribs have managed to interpret the notion of 'pop music' into an often-spectacular record.

Dessner has captured performances that have a depth, a soul, a reality to them. Even if you hate country, this is downright good music.

This is Marling at her finest, but as she’s proved five times in a row, the best is always yet to come.

At its core, Bad News Boys is a joyous celebration of all things rock'n'roll by two guys who seem to have it running in their blood.

Ultimately Spaces Everywhere is a record that sparkles with little hints of wit, unconventional beauty and musical verve, but they shine so brightly because of the mediocrity that surrounds them.

Tracker is seamless in both embracing technology and adapting it; recreating the intimacy of personal experiences within the confines of an uncluttered, contemporary folk backdrop.

Mysteries is by no means terrible, but Tigercats are a long way from earning their stripes.

Maze of Woods is a superb record and one that should give confidence in the continued potential of the band.

While unrelenting fury is a major feature in the songs here, what really brings From Safer Place to life are the curveballs it occasionally lobs out.

Era represents a pleasant contradiction in that it is an unhurried, languid collection of music, but not one which is at all difficult or daunting to get into. Nor does it ever feel laboured or drag at any point.

There are few traces of the musician Cooke has presented himself as previously, but if this is how he wants to strike out on his own, the comparisons to his other bands should be incredibly short lived.

It never really lets itself go enough to really explode and take things to the next level but it’s in its reserve, precision and craft that its charm really lies.

This is a confident, electrifying, weirdo-pop stormer of an album that deserves your attention.

This self-titled album isn’t bad, and certainly far from unlistenable. But in refusing to risk being something other than middle of the road, they have become arguably worse. It’s boring.

This is a solid attempt by a band in thrall to electronic music to redefine themselves, but it’s their love of this music rather than their ability to explore its limits that is communicated by Dilate.

While Rebel Heart is greatly superior to her last set, MDNA, it suffers from the same malaise of of overabundance.

This is another brilliantly executed four tracks and, if it is anything to go by, Cheatahs needn’t worry about The Difficult Second Album.

The record is alive. It has punch, guts, heart, all the things you would hope for really, whilst at the same time maintaining the central potency of what made Ghostpoet so great in the first place: that voice, delivering paeans to lost love and the reality of life like really no-one else can.

Come album three, they’re not tied down to something tired or fumbling around experimenting with ill-suited sounds, but instead are simultaneously concentrated and expansive, defined by an addictive and inclusive sense of purpose.

This brooding, almost gothic feel is the key to this album’s success, and proves that Purity Ring are far more complex than their surface lacquer of innocence may have led us believe.

Aureate Gloom stretches spontaneity to the point of feeling rushed. None of these songs are among Barnes’ best.

On Rapture he’s traded atmospherics for dominating vocals, making the stylistic leap towards ‘tell don’t show’ music. It’s a move that will undoubtedly bring Tropics to a wider audience, but robs the listener of emotional nuance and understatement; everything that made him interesting, back when he was still making music in his bedroom.

The rich production and ambitious, multi-faceted arrangements provided by White’s Spacebomb crew are the perfect foil for Prass’s soft, exquisite voice and expressive, tear-stained songs, such that the overwhelming impression of the LP is, against the odds, one of triumph; of beauty both wrangled out of and amplified immeasurably by loss.

Chasing Yesterday [is] an exceptionally easy listen that manages to stay just the right side of Easy Listening. An excellent record for Sunday mornings or autumn car journeys, staring at the landscape going by.

What’s striking though is that a band known for a very particular sound can produce such individually distinct pop songs, with equal aplomb, while remaining within their self-defined parameters of 'the Dutch Uncles sound'.

Like a beacon of light emerging at the outset of Spectres distorted vision, its audacious nature and ever-changing mood perfectly sums up Dying's idiosyncratic nature.

Citizen Zombie is a lot of fun, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Their debut was already loose enough, but EarthEE slackens to a level of shapelessness, and is gloomier with it to boot.

Ultimately, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth’s LP is so tasty, it’ll have you unashamedly coming back for seconds, and thirds, and fourths, and dessert, and a cheese course, and just one tiny little wafer thin mint.

Restarter is a severely underwhelming return from one of the foremost breakthrough guitar bands of recent years.

This is an often bold and sometimes brilliant offering, even if its heart is more mechanical than you may hope for.

The LP is repeatedly let down by its own exhibitionism.

The result is consistently fascinating and occasionally completely enchanting.

Sour Soul is sublime. Rather than standing around starstruck, BBNG have more than proven their worth as Ghostface’s backing band.

As a warm up exercise for Barât’s musical muscles and an honouring of a debt to The Jackals, Let It Reign is absolutely fine. But Libertines album number three will need to deliver a lot more than this.

It’s a messy record, in the best possible way: organic and live sounding, with few overdubs and little complication, tipping its hat constantly to its retro inspirationg.

Tthis is a solid, soulful effort from a performer plagued by so many issues; it’s just a shame that taking the emotions out of the mix, what we’re left with is essentially easy-listening.

Although the themes in the album vary hugely--uncertainty, fear, hope, regret--the quality and confidence of the music is consistent.

In truth, it feels rather lightweight, as do much of Ryan James and Tomas Greenhalf's more adventurous flourishes, seldom though they are. As the narrative unfolds, nothing arrives at the punch of promising earlier efforts.

It’s the unhurried nature of these improvisations which are their greatest strength. Couple this with his sharp ear for melody, not to mention his frequently unbelievable fingertips, and this album emerges as another incredibly strong outing for Sir Richard Bishop in a truly interesting and consistent discography.

The ten tracks here convey no pleasure, and lack any form of belief in their own urgency or desire to be adored.

Hayman has given us a beautifully crafted love-letter to the real humanity that is the soul and centre of socialism, both sad and sweet, melancholy and inspiring--a collection of songs that belong to everyone and cement Hayman’s place as a nationalised treasure.

Albums such as this one will often be defined as ‘difficult,’ and the love of its content will derive more from muso appreciation than genuine affection. Six Organs of Admittance have sidestepped this by crafting a piece of work that diefies categorisation: it feels mathematically precise, painstakingly composed, entirely freeform and joyfully performed.

While Transfixiation doesn't answer that question ["What have I become?"] specifically, it represents another giant step forwards in A Place To Bury Strangers' continual evolution.

The focus is there, the execution is there. It’s a record that delivers, satisfies, challenges and is occasionally sublime.

On the moments that they commit to one priority over the other, Crushed Beaks show an energetic flair which most likely translates to a blistering live sound. But when they try to split the difference, the results are middling on Scatter.

Some of their critics will remain unmoved, but the fact remains: Kodaline have acquired confidence in their abilities and are on top form throughout their second LP.

Whether the songs zip like ‘Ringfinger’ or sprawl like ‘Rainy Summer’, they all feel very much of one piece, giving them a cumulative strength beyond their individual merits.

For every one of the album's fumbled subtleties, there are several moments when The Districts feint at being great. Enough to show they’re flailing in the right direction.

A brilliant album certainly not lacking in other highlights.

If Conduit was the warm-up for their come back, then Chapter & Verse sees them break into a full sprint.

There is only really one misstep on Unguarded.

This EP is a welcome reminder of James’s ability to utilise decidedly avant-garde ideas in a manner that, although acutely alien to our idea of musical normality, is nevertheless engaging and inspiring.

The Unthanks have never been gentle background music as some might expect, as they’re always drawn to the darker stories that they can dig up. On Mount The Air, those stories are matched by some sumptuous, confident music, and they sound all the better for it.

This is a challenge of an album, a challenging listen, but an album with plenty of soul.

Having set high standards for two-and-a-half decades, Modern Nature serves as another prized addition to The Charlatans' already wealthy canon.

Shadows in the Night is an extremely well-made covers album that feels divorced from Dylan’s day-job.

This is the richest, most musically complex she has ever been.

Troyka have the tools make his dream a reality. Well, they would do, if they'd just stop with that dastardly noodling.

It’s not that there’s a shortage of good ideas on Depersonalisation; it’s just that, in its attempts to sound lo-fi and to shroud everything in darkness, a fair few of those ideas have been smothered.

Refined yet audacious both in execution and delivery, Pinkshinyultrablast exemplify sonic pulchritude. Despite its lengthy gestation, Everything Else Matters offers living proof all good things come to those that wait.

It’s easy to admire, but difficult to truly fall in love with.

Stevens and Vogel have been playing together for almost 22 years now, if you can believe that, and We Are Undone is a fine addition to their catalogue.

While it’s an intriguing album, it’s one where ideas lack a little conviction.

If Björk’s last two albums were impersonal voyages of artistic license and collaboration, Vulnicura is deeply personal and so much more rewarding for it.

10 Futures categorically sounds like an album that was made for the sake of it, for the joy of it.

The only constant is the deep, mellow drum tone that brings the band’s disparities together and creates a beautifully cohesive narrative flow.

Throughout the album Ronson plays the role of puppet master to an impressive collection of musical talent.

The lyrics’ meditations on transience and memory suit the sounds very nicely. And so the whole thing congeals into a brilliant whole.