This compilation may primarily be valuable for illustrating the full length and breadth of Sylvian's musical progression.

Walking a fine line between being leftfield and hook-laden, Jaga Jazzist have delivered another selection of epic, psychedelic sojourns through electronics, brass and beats that consistently engage and excite.

A monumental, spectacular achievement.

Takk does what Agaetis Byrjun did by burrowing into the consciousness and snuggling down to bed there, purring. Each listen brings out another mood, another thought. It's gorgeous.

Ten Love Songs is an enormously creative, endlessly surprising album.

It’s an album that confirms the sound of an artist continuing to push forward, a unified expression of joy that is never anything but bold, playful and fun.

My Light, My Destroyer feels like a light slowly coming into focus after a dark period, and, in no small way, seems like Cassandra Jenkins’ masterpiece.

As from an unspeakable event a remarkable record has come. One that sits amongst Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ best. Skeleton Tree is full of grief, but full of heart too.

Heavy it most certainly is, but Daughter succeed simply by creating phenomenally beautiful music and heart-rending songs.

The release of The Next Day would have been one of the biggest stories of the year no matter what its quality--the fact that it also happens to be one of the best records of Bowie’s career to date just makes the comeback that much more triumphant.

This is a fantastic album. It may be the best of an already-excellent run of albums produced by – and it really does bear repeating – the greatest rock band in the world.

Here In The Pitch might only be just over 27 minutes long but it is a disproportionately affecting album full of wonder and magic. It will stand the test of time and be rightly regarded as something of a classic in years to come.

Taken end to end, Sound Of Silver is a thrilling, exhilarating ride on a fast machine.

By the time it finishes, it’s hard to avoid thinking that Cutouts is the best album by the best side project of the best band of all time. If you don’t get there, or if you read that and find that it doesn’t sell it to you, then you simply can’t be helped.

With Idlewild you get a sumptuous surface that constantly excites, but reveals its secret charms with repeated listenings.

This is a spectacular, rich and luscious album made up of a variety of sounds that many listeners will have etched into their minds and hearts forever.

Like low hanging fruit plucked fresh from the vine, the bacchanalian temptations Daniel and collaborators such as Angel Deradoorian, husband MC Schmidt and John Wiese offer are a scrumptious treat in which to indulge.

Simply put, his music seems alive, and utterly modern – despite its clear and obvious debt to The Beatles. ... This is a staggering work, a monumental achievement – and easily eclipses any of Jones’ acting to date.

On Wild God, he’s open and honest and raw and impassioned and vital.

The quality of Toledo’s songs is gobsmacking; the lyrics are enthralling, the melodies are to die for, the musicianship is raw yet brilliant.

So, from bed-bound broken foot casualty to creator of the finest debut album of the year in just over a year.

With the third in his Essex trilogy Darren Hayman has surpassed himself, creating an album that is intelligent, heartfelt, and musically stunning.

The sound on Welfare Jazz may be more of the same glam-phetamine trash disko bomp that made the first record so distinctive – a ramshackle wad of low-end guitars that spit and burn like chip pan fires and boisterous oft intoxicated vocals with a surplus of undulating sax – but there’s something else that’s been added to their arsenal, something that was hiding in plain sight all along. The protagonist of these songs may not be all that apologetic as he pontificates of his transgressions, but he is at least man enough to put his grubby hands up and forewarn friends and lovers that he’s a little damaged. It’s a good start.

This is an intelligent and deeply human album and it would be no exaggeration to say that it’s already a modern classic.

While Lux is certainly accessible, it’s also a challenging listen. The fact that it sounds like nothing else may put some people off straight away. Yet for those willing to fully immerse themselves in its overwhelming sweep, the reward is likely to be a dizzying, unmatchable experience which cements Rosalía as one of the most visionary artists working today.

A sensational album of varying degrees of pleasure and pain. ... Ultimate Success Today is their most cathartic statement to date.

Cabin In The Sky is a rollercoaster of an album that reveals its depth over repeated listens. Yes, at heart it is a eulogy for fallen loved ones, but it is also an existential crisis wrapped up in phenomenal guest appearances and carefully selected samples.

The album could have been a niche critical favourite that marked them out as just curious oddities. Instead every preconception has been firmly smashed. Firmly on track to become the biggest band in the country, Wet Leg are here to shake the post pandemic culture out of its slumber.

This is a magical, magnificent album – one of the best of Sufjan Stevens’ career.

Allo Darlin' have achieved their aim of not producing a carefree record again, and then some--instead, they've created one of considerable, admirable depth and nous, though it retains the warm, personal nature of its predecessor.

A statement for all of the limp new rave pretenders to pack up and fuck off, a return to form rarely sounded or felt so exciting.

Hadestown may have gained her success through her successful harnessing of external inspiration but by turning attention inwards on this occasion she’s delivered one of the quietly outstanding albums of the year.

Olsen, her arrangers and producer (The Paper Chase‘s John Congleton) have created an album that simply bulges with perfection and timeless songs.

The cover of In Waves may be black and white, but the music within proves every bit as colourful as his debut, with the added bonus of frequent dancefloor highs. What a thrill it all is.

The third Self Esteem album that takes the best parts of Prioritise Pleasure and her debut Compliments Please, and turns it all up to 10.

WU LYF are a band to celebrate, a DIY tour de force, and their first album deserves a place of reverence in the modern indie-rock canon.

One of the best albums in North America last year and surely one of the best of 2006 for us; Live It Out is sinister, intelligent music for sinister, intelligent people.

A neat album of only 10 tracks. We find her in life-admin mode, clearing out any dispensable trash that she no longer has time or the inclination for. ... Sublime.

Mesmerising as the words and delivery are, the album is also musically excellent.

Shunning a tried-and-tested formula to focus on evolution and experimentation is always a massive risk. But by choosing to embrace their calmer, and often much darker side, the Dubliners could well have given us their masterpiece.

Love Kraft is the greatest realisation of the Super Furry vision to date.

In a parallel universe, Getting Killed would be the album that catapults Geese into superstardom. .... This is Geese’s finest album to date, and one that will no doubt find its way on to many people’s best of the year list.

It might take a week, a month, or even a year for it to yield up all its treasures; but after only a week in its company, this reviewer's instincts tell him that Have One On Me is a masterpiece.

This is a fantastic box that will occupy fans for the next few weeks and months, but it’s also a superb gateway into the world of Tom Petty for those who like both pretty things and great music (and have a few bob to spare).

This is out in the margins, removed from 'pop' and 'alternative' genres by the scale of its reach, its bloody and bold ambition. It is complex, multilayered, densely plotted, wordy. It's also scary, harsh and bruised.

Here, Gira shows that the Swans resurgence isn’t a fluke. Not even close.

Songs like Joy and Cruise Ship Designer and Hit My Head All Day offer enough immediate pleasures to ensure the replays keep happening. It adds up to an incredible record from one of the very best bands in the world.

Fontaines DC wear their influences close to their sleeve, with nods to The Pogues, The Strokes and Joy Division, but these influences are absorbed into their identity, to create something that instantly familiar and accessible, but also thrillingly compelling. ... They’re going to be big, and one listen to Dogrel will convince you of that fact.

Magdalene is an album that, like FKA twigs herself, defies both genre and classification. Yet it’s a late contender for album of the year, with songs that will live you for months to come.

Western Stars is, annoyingly, another fantastic album to add to your rotation. But then it is a Bruce Springsteen album. Of course it’s superb.

Their best album to date.

This is an astonishing debut album, one to immerse yourself in and live with for weeks, if not months – an intoxicating statement which announces one of Britain’s most exciting new bands.

The themes and ideas are the same [as Funeral For Justice], but the execution makes it into something original, and in this case essential. In fact, this is probably the most essential acoustic rock album of the past decade.

It’s imbued with a spirit and attitude that only the very best pop records have. Much like Dua Lipa’s incendiary second album Future Nostalgia it’s the sound of not just a step up but a whole leap to a new exalted level of pop excellence.

Overall, Rice has produced a release which equals and perhaps even surpasses his debut, a album that takes you through emotional highs and lows you are unlikely to hear anywhere else this winter.

Lookout Sea paradoxically Silver Jews' most complex and most accessible work to date. Better yet, it improves with each listen, as more and more nuances and links are revealed.

soil is an extraordinary album, triumphing seemingly without making any artistic concessions.

Despite Tim’s absence, LSD is awash with his presence. LSD is a masterpiece and evidence of what can be done in the face of adversity. It’s a record whose importance is more than its music.

In this globalised but fragmented world, now so obsessed with immediacy, rapidity and digestibility, Ten Freedom Summers is a visionary work of protest and power.

It’s a debut album full of confidence, heart and ambition, with songs that sound both instantly familiar and also like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

Thundercat has, by skirting around the edges of darkness, created a moody, magnificent, endlessly replayable record that also makes sense in late February.

It's rare to be so gushing about a debut album--yet after living with this album for a few weeks, you'll be hard pressed to find any flaws.

Middle Cyclone is the sound of one of the most interesting, independent, and consistently brilliant artists recording today at the top of their game.

The Promise is what got left behind, and the quality of these 21 songs serves to remind the listener how brilliant Darkness On The Edge Of Town really was, and how discerning its craftsmen must have been to leave so much in the dust.

Night Network may not be the 12 tracks which would shake the person who doesn’t like The Cribs out of their most curious position. But it is 12 more assertions of greatness from a band who you really should like.

It all adds up to a magnificent third album which serves as the crowning point of a career that is, excitingly, still in its infancy.

Songs Of Praise distils the best features of classic British alternative music into a vital band passionate to enervate, communicate and entertain.

To those of you out there who crave immediate, wistful pop music that will make you smile about the future and make you cry about the past, you won’t find a better album this decade.

Prioritise Pleasure is a richly compelling album. It’s also a big, glorious pop record, the sort that Taylor hinted at back in the days of her former band Slow Club’s Complete Surrender. ... It’s the album of Rebecca Taylor’s career, and surely quite comfortably the best record that will be released in 2021.

Japan would go on to at least one better album than Quiet Life, but they would never again capture the same kind of nervous youthful energy they display here. An essential album from an essential band.

Thin Black Duke should be regarded as a genuinely innovative and exciting piece of art.

This album, though not what anybody on the face of the Earth would call ‘fun’, is an absolute classic of modernist architecture. It’s certainly the best thing she’s ever done.

The final results are of such subtle beauty they take the breath clean away.

You Belong There is a genuinely transporting, multi-dimensional song cycle and a glimpse into a fascinating musical mind that demands repeated plays. It’s destined to appear on album of the year lists but its depth and sense of ambition will ensure its treasures last well beyond 2022.

Fur and Gold announces Natasha Khan's Bat For Lashes as a talent impossible to ignore and beguiling to behold, an album that, time and again, plucks one away from the mundane and offers a bewitching alternative galaxy of delights.

It’s an album that manages to remain accessible while still sounding challenging and unconventional, an album that can sound heart-stoppingly beautiful one minute and scratchily acerbic the next and, ultimately, an album that’s impossible to grow bored of.

The National were worried that they wouldn't be able to follow up Alligator, that fans would be disappointed. Boxer proves their fears ungrounded - and that Alligator was no one classic wonder.

It’s a very special second album that will resonate deeply both with early adopters and the wider audience that Ought will surely capture.

Welcome To Hard Times is his most magnificent album yet.

There's not one duff moment during the album's 50 minutes - it's pop music to be treasured, loved and listened to for years to come.

It’s all intelligently arranged, but also in thrall to the energy and swing of jazz tradition--there is plenty of rhythm and blues during the improvising.

Coxon has come up with an album full of raw guitar licks, killer hooks and heartfelt lyrics.

It's a brilliant exploration of the inevitable interaction between sound, the passing of time and the active process of listening.

It is different in many ways, but never neglects the melodic, vocal and lyrical genius that has established, and will continue to establish, his status as one of the all time greats.

Yet, at its simplest and most sedate, Bookish's new work is utterly beautiful.

Ultimately, The Eternal acts as a fitting and timeless aide-memoire of everything this mighty band has ever achieved.

Gallon Drunk are now eight albums in to their storied career, and their strain of narcotic rock is getting more and more potent with age.

Is Romance their best album? Possibly. The best rock album of the year so far? Certainly.

Much like their debut, it'll take a few listens to be pulled towards Myth Takes by the force operates at its core.

If the career plan was to go to the lowest of lows before releasing an album of resurrection and real substance, he ought to be applauded for conducting the whole stunt to perfection.

It’s fair to say that long term fans will greet Nothing Lasts Forever with warmth and delight but even when assessing it with a more critical eye, it’s hard to avoid thinking they’ve rarely sounded better.

It has an astonishing level of clarity about it.

Like all the best albums, it keeps you on edge, never quite knowing what’s coming next.

Pain Is Beauty not only shows Wolfe’s penchant for atmosphere but for stylistic diversity.

Beautiful Thing works so well because it reminds us of that fact without losing its own emotional resonance.

The result is surely one of the best pop albums of 2020, and is possibly Ware’s finest to date. A sensual delight, What’s Your Pleasure? is the ultimate in post-disco gratification.

This Stupid World sees them further consolidate their position as alternative treasures.

These are truly wonderful songs that deserved to be poured over and analysed for months to come.