Clever, original, complicated, sometimes frustrating but more often revelatory, it will, given time, uncover its manifold delights.

ny quibbles are minor here though, for Devotion is a truly impressive debut album from yet another talented British singer.

One of the best albums of the year so far.

Nothing As The Ideal never fails to entertain and covers much ground in doing so. It’s a case of which aspect do you like about the band at times, though: the metal side or the stoner rock side. You probably won’t be disappointed if you sit in either camp; equally, however, you may feel disappointed that you haven’t had enough of your preferred All Them Witches fix.

Life Metal resonates in the surrounding air particles long after the last track concludes, and will reverberate in the minds of listeners longer still. A truly magnificent, very real, and ultimately restorative record.

It’s the sort of album which flows naturally along, with not a song, or even a lyric out of place. She’s been flying under the radar pretty consistently for a decade now, but if there’s more records of the quality of The Spur, more people will inevitably fall in love with Joan Shelley’s music.

Disjointed, imperfect, tender and raw, at the final reckoning it sits as a fitting epitaph.

Houck’s sixth full-length album takes the mournful country-rock seemingly perfected on Here’s To Taking Things Easy and runs with it, creating his most realised record yet.

Yo La Tengo have nothing left to prove and this allows them the room and scope to simply showcase their talents, which are many and admirable as well as being both under-exposed and under-appreciated.

They’ve produced one of the very best albums of the year, despite the long gestation period.

Clara is a supremely accomplished record, and deserves to sit with previous career highlights like Submers and Monument Builders as a masterclass in abstract electronica.

Some of the songs have one too many musical ideas being thrown around, and the album is arguably too long, but the fact it doesn’t tail off in the second half shows the consistency of its inspiration, the excesses illustrating the raw creativity within. Jade understands what works in pop music

They are like nothing you've ever heard before and everything you one day hoped you would, too strong for the charts and too corrupting for MTV.

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

This sense of being aware of our own impending death leading to a heightened sense of life sums up perfectly The Airing of Grievances, an album that bemoans the past, shrugs it's shoulders and raises a glass to the future.

With simple, delicate moments of memorable poignancy such as Banjo or Amen, he has now made a late masterpiece.

Although The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte might not be quite equal joyous recent peak Lil’ Beethoven, it’s impressive that, on their 26th album, Sparks are incorporating new sounds and concepts, whilst still sounding exactly like themselves.

It should be an overblown, riotous mess, but it's perfectly held together by musicians seemingly forged as one by long nights in spit and sawdust boozers, and in singer Craig Finn, a lyricist of remarkable poise and eloquence.

Until the release of this album, Shepherd’s output might have proved hard to follow for the casual listener, comprising as it did sundry white label releases, one-offs and remixes. Fortunately, Elaenia acts as a brilliant encapsulation of a huge talent.

Both artists possess in spades the ability to make affecting, heavyweight emotional music. This emotional intensity and willingness to continuously explore the possibilities of sound (heavy or otherwise) is what May Our Chambers Be Full pivots around over the course of these seven incredible songs.

Glitch Princess certainly isn’t an easy record to listen to, yet neither is it wilfully difficult or unwelcoming. It’s perfectly emblematic of the pop period we’re living in, with a new generation of artists changing the meaning of what it is to make pop music on their own terms.

Hell-On is a good demonstration of just how great she’s become.

It’s true that he’s certainly earned the right to pursue his artistic vision. It’s just a shame that this only partly inspired slog isn’t a little more, well, entertaining.

Two Hands is a good album, albeit one labouring under a slight sense of anticlimax given what has gone before.

Overall, Matthew E White and his Spacebomb house band have created a brilliant debut, one that will undoubtedly have artists queueing up to be a part of this newly established project.

While the theme of the album may be dedications to others, what Mehldau has ultimately crafted is an ode to the confidence, style and precision of his own trio's playing, displaying all the panache and charm of old companions reuniting once more.

To use an oft-heard cliché, Fir Wave is a life-affirming album – in the broadest possible sense. It celebrates natural phenomena that exist beyond our own life spans, to be present (we hope) long after we have departed.

Coral Island is an ambitious record that never topples under the weight of that ambition. Unusually for a double album there’s barely any filler and the songs have a timeless quality that keeps you returning. At the end of their second decade, The Coral have released the best album of their career.

Home Video is also Dacus’ most immediate, accessible album to date. While the general tone is quite downbeat, but she can switch to crunchy power-pop on tracks like Hot & Heavy and First Time.

As with all Björk albums there’s a lot to unpack and it requires several listens before it all begins to fall into place but, once done, there’s a case to be made for this possibly being the best Björk album (and certainly the most animated) since 2011’s Biophilia certainly in terms of breadth, aesthetic and overall engagement.

What she does best is create that sense of urgent euphoria, and that is all still present and correct on The Comeback Kid.

Some may find the relentlessly downbeat tone a bit hard to wade through, but it’s done with such a lightness of touch that it becomes almost uplifting. The journey to Leslie Feist’s sixth album may have been a long, eventful and sometimes troubled one, but the destination is as rewarding as ever.

Musically it ranges from coruscating to eerie, from ominous to plangent and sees the quartet operating at the height of their powers. It’s a hard-hitting, ambitious album that only serves to further consolidate the reputations of all involved.

There is a polish now. A refinement. But it remains, beneath the surface, the same. An exploration that ends where it begins. A band at the edge, unwilling to fall, yet never fully reaching the stratospheric heights they or their listeners deserve. This is a good album, but in trying to find compromise, they give too much away on both sides.

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

At times, it is a little overwhelming over the 17 tracks, but there are plenty of beautiful moments here, the sort of moments which continue to propel BOC well ahead of many of their IDM contemporaries.

It may not be leaps and bounds ahead of previous St Vincent releases, but this is a rich and multi-faceted album to pay close attention to.

Loom is an intense record, full of feelings of loss, confusion and angst. It’s also an early contender for best electronic album of the year.

This is a superb album, and a slightly better one than Mercy, which says a lot, but whether it joins the pantheon of Cale’s most legendary records remains to be seen. One would certainly hope so.

It’s an album that needs to be immersed in fully, and played loud, preferably on headphones to appreciate its many depths. Some may also find the relentless discordance a bit too intense to fully concentrate on. But for those unafraid to dive in, Mandy, Indiana’s second album is an exhilarating, almighty jab to the senses.

The music throughout MONTERO suggests that Nas X has a very bright future ahead of him.

So minimal and calm is much of The Harrow & The Harves that Six Horses comes as something of a shock. It displays the same studied but honest approach to American folk music that characterises the whole album but adds harmonica and, yes, handclaps!

Lizzobangers is a triumphant album by an extraordinary artist and woman, whose girl-empowering lyricism and social consciousness puts her at the top of the underground and alternative hip-hop community.

Bonxie doesn’t contain too many surprises, and it doesn’t really have many answers to the bigger questions, but it does have a number of brilliantly written songs.

Lithics have made what is surely one of the most sincerely bracing albums of the year.

Overall, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a solid addition to The War On Drugs canon, and the full-on embrace of heartland rock means they may well find a whole new audience with this album.

Despite the often heavy lyrical content, Lucky Me mostly sounds light and fresh – with perhaps only Leach’s self-loathing becoming a bit oppressive towards the end of the record.

The National have pulled off a neat trick here - an immediate, commercial album that grows with each listen. While High Violet is patently as good as its antecedents, it is also very much its own beast.

Sometimes Simon suffers from a sort of elder statesman's churlishness or cynicism (like a musical version of Grumpy Old Men), which is not entirely appealing, and some of the songs seem a little under-developed. There is, however, enough here to suggests that new Paul Simon albums should be bigger events.

If there's one thing it proves, it's this: Goldfrapp are an exceptional singles band.

This is easily Beyoncé’s best album yet, a clear progression from her previous work and a musical triumph.

An album of gorgeous, lush songs.

This entire album is in a constant state of movement, and could just be their finest moment yet.

And Then Life Was Beautiful shimmers in the heat of the summer just gone, and strikes a good balance between exhortation and introspection.

In all aspects has Swift built upon her work on Folklore, creating a vast soundscape of poetical stories, and it is only at the end of this album you realise that Folklore did leave you wanting. Evermore also does this, not because it doesn’t reach up to the pedestal of folklore – in contrast, it covers the more complex ground.

While much of Memento Mori is thoughtful, and some of it visits the dark side, there is a great deal of positivity underpinning Depeche Mode’s work as a duo.

To say Lookaftering takes up where Just Another Diamond Day left off is an understatement. It feels like no time has elapsed at all since 1970, neither in her own life nor the outside world.

It’s another fine addition to a canon of work that has, over the last 20 years, been consistently excellent.

No longer the challenging, lo-fi music of yore, what has arrived in its place doesn't have the individuality or character to sustain longer lasting interest.

This is an astonishing work, one that highlights Kanaan’s remarkable worldview, that you’ll unconsciously find yourself gravitating back to, time and time again.

They still have plenty to give, plenty to say – and Bauhaus Staircase stands up there with the cream of their electronically harvested crop.

These songs are stamped full of her personality and they mark a major evolution as a songwriter. As the final chords of the heartrending Comfort ring out, it’s impossible not to think that yet another major Antipodean talent has put a new marker down.

It is clear from her latest opus that Marissa Nadler is at the peak of her powers, giving us a work whose intensity burns brightly. Here is a set of songs that keep their head while all around are losing theirs. The more you listen, the more you fall under their spell, just as you would want from your next box set craze.

Dance Fever is a startling return, full of all the elements which made us sit up and take notice of Welch in the first place.

At times, it’s so honest that you may feel like you’re prying into someone’s diary, but it will be a major surprise if this funny, clever, heartbreaking record isn’t nestling at the top of the Album Of The Year polls come December.

Anyone interested in music of whatever form, the work of any of the contributors who are present here, film scores, or Tiersen’s early work specifically, will surely find Portrait to be quite the perfect picture.

Dim Probs feels more personal, confidential, and ultimately vulnerable. It reaffirms Rhys as a generous author, celebrating his first language but taking in rich influences and instrumentation from countries far and wide.

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.

trip9love…??? is what happens when brilliant artists navigate their way around self-imposed limitations: most music doesn’t sound like this, but perhaps it should.

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.

While it’s a stretch to describe the record as ‘poppy’, it’s certainly their most accessible material to date, with songs like The Arbor, Videograms and Let’s Get Lost taking up residence in the head long after the record has stopped playing. ... It may be only January, but there’s already been a place filled on that Best Albums Of 2019 list.

This is sensitive, heartfelt and resolute rock music that shuffles its feet while looking at the stars.

Their previous albums were exercises in fuzzed up, energised sonic assault, and whilst Fantasy Empire is no different in terms of attack and intent, there’s a clarity to it that makes it more effective.

Recent years have seen outstanding releases by people like Claud, Chloe Moriondo and, on an even more successful level, Maggie Rogers. Jordana is firmly in this lineage, and Face The Wall is an outstanding realisation of a prime talent.

It may never be regarded as his best work, but for certain fans at certain points in their lives, it’s all they need to hear.

Voices also feels like a celebration and validation of music itself – its capacity for profundity and to be a conduit for ideas. The world may be going through an unprecedented period of difficulty, but Voices is an album that will no doubt prove a worthy, supportive companion throughout.

Looking back on traditions of the distant past and moulding them within a modern sound and context, it marks a striking release from an artist that is still surprising and innovating deep into their career.

Former Pulp bassist Steve Mackey eventually ended up producing the record, and he gives Pierce’s various sonic wanderings space to roam, but sadly it’s an amble of a circular nature.

As Days Get Dark is a remarkable return, a new Arab Strap that updates, deepens and re-energises their sound.

Weighty topics, then – but don’t think for a minute these difficult subject matters do not make for a good album of pop music. For BC Camplight is an incredibly smart songwriter, capable of channelling deep-seated thoughts and emotions into pop songs that work just as well for the surface level listener.

Listening to Meshes Of Voice is somewhere between a terrifying hallucination and a relaxing daydream. It makes it a memorable, and strangely enjoyable, experience.

As the title of the opening song goes, Parquet Courts are swiftly becoming masters of their craft on an assured debut album brimming with unimpeachably great songs.

For the most part, though, Morby is refashioning his admiration for canonical songwriters through a closer attention to mood, atmosphere and the evocative potential of sound.

Chaos For The Fly is a captivating debut that showcases his artistic evolution outside of the post-punk bombast of Fontaines DC. These songs bleed through in their honesty and lack of over-thinking to demand active engagement, to explore their intricacies and contemplate their themes.

It’s a record that follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, offering up melodic psyche-pop numbers in which walls of sound are daubed with deceptively dark lyrics.

Listening to the music in the knowledge of its back story makes for a poignant experience, a reminder of how music can be an incredibly cathartic means of expression for both listener and artist.

These intense, dramatic songs are the perfect companion to these times – at long last, The Anchoress is stepping out of the shadow of her famous friends to show that she’s an almighty talent in her own right.

Soft Tissue shows Tindersticks at their masterful best, a band that is crystal clear on where they want to go creatively and how they want to get there. They may never truly get the wider attention they deserve but for those already invested the emotional rewards only continue to grow and deepen.

On Love’s Crushing Diamond, Lee offers seven immaculately composed tracks, all of which feature his refreshingly optimistic ruminations on love and life in today’s world.

With this record Teebs continues his reputation for immersive, sophisticated instrumentals.

The friends have created something memorable here – not just to bring attention to serious causes, but to captivate and delight all those who stop to listen.

Overall, The Ballad of Darren is a captivating sonic journey that goes to great lengths to ignore much of Blur’s rich legacy, but it shows that bands – even those long in the tooth – can still continue their musical growth without sacrificing quality.

Stars is simply a wonderful work by a wonderful artist, which can be enjoyed with or without the contextual groundwork of its sister album. Enjoy liberally and often.

Cancer For Cure is a dependably bold, powerful statement, perhaps not quite as masterful as its predecessors, but still overflowing with ideas and innovation.

Despite the album’s central concept and expansive nature, it is in fact a tight and cohesive work. There’s rarely any self-indulgence, making these songs in total Ufomammut’s most direct and accessible work to date.

Vynehall’s potential has always been apparent, but Rare, Forever is a truly beguiling record – equal parts poignant and hedonistic – which allows his vast array of talents to shine.

This is an album that demands to be properly listened to though, not reduced to background music – properly immerse yourself in Villagers’ Fever Dreams and it’s an experience you won’t want to wake up from.

Horace Andy is clearly an artist not content to rest on his laurels, and with this album he strengthens his position as a bona fide reggae legend.