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.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, they’ve instead covered it in thousands of sequins, loaded it into a fluorescent cannon, and fired into the deepest, trippiest stratosphere in the whole solar system.

Zun Zun Egui's endlessly enjoyable second album is a bold and brilliant statement--an amorphous thing that entices and beguiles whilst simultaneously delivering heart-quickening thrills.

Matador is a precise work of outstanding talent. While it may recycle the emotive wild card a little too often for some, any keen ear will be able to tell you this isn't some half baked solo project.

If you were a fan of Inside Llewyn Davis, this a great way to bring the film to life a little more and to expand on the world which inspired it, and also a quality live album in its own right.

Throughout Fantastic Planet her music sounds ordered and restricted. It’s a sound that suits some but, given that previous Noveller records thrived on unfolding at their own pace, the jury is out on how far Fantastic Planet benefits from being constrained by its determination to fit preconceived structural limits.

The songs might not be classics quite yet but the sounds on offer here suggest that the best of Siskiyou might yet be ahead.

It’s Greenwood’s own work that’s most compelling. The album runs in a different order to the film itself, although, perhaps incongruously, still includes snippets of Joanna Newsom’s narration; there’s not a great deal of coherent relation to the picture’s narrative, then, and anybody who saw Newsom’s name attached to the project and hoped it might have finally heralded some post-Have One on Me material will be disappointed.

Viet Cong's volatile brew often coalesces into something disarmingly catchy.

There’s also an over reliance on the sonic pallette of their Nineties forebears, but those feel like nitpics because Ratworld, despite wearing its influences on its sleeve, presents a world that is uniquely its own.

The Mindsweep is Enter Shikari at their most inspirational and consistent and as a result, their best record yet.