These ten tracks come with such an earnest passion for the timeless pop form that any snobbery is punctured with an arrow drawn straight from Cupid's quiver.

The highs on The Men’s album are higher than Milk Music’s, but Cruise Your Illusion is the more cohesive statement.

These songs, Molina’s living animals, continue to make their way through the world, ensuring that their creator’s legacy lives on.

He continues his obsession with broken-hearted collages and interstellar folk music. [25 Jun 2005, p.64]

All told, while not every track has the immediacy of 'Lies' or 'Recover', there's not a weak one among them.

Ultimately, Gogol are all about a collective euphoria that's right in the here and now.

on their third album, the combination of Canadian indie (Broken Social Scene), psychedelic ’60s rock (Love), cosmic ’70s pop (ELO) and shoegaze (Ride) is nothing short of beautiful.

What you have here is the most agonisingly voyeuristic listening experience in rock, ever. It's also some of the most exhilarating and brilliant rock'n'roll of the past 20 years. [7 Aug 2004, p.46]

A record of rare and strange beauty. [4 Nov 2006, p.33]

This time round, there’s a more coherent theme to Lande’s songs. ... It’s all fascinating. Inspiring. Warm. Funny sometimes. All of it will make you feel better about the fragility of the mind.

Just as ‘BE’ cycles through the various ever-changing moods the pandemic has made a constant in our lives, it’s also finds the band constantly moving between genres, each attempt a triumph.

Everything is Love may lack the immediate impact of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s respective solo latest records, but it’s still interesting to see two of the biggest stars in the world relax. ... There’s nothing glitzy here; it all just works.

Always intelligent but never too clever for their own good, Here We Go Magic finally break into a huge, dumb guitar solo on 'News'. That's where they are, making the challenging accessible, a band forging their own path at last. Never mind, Be Small, this thinks big.

Assume Form finds James Blake clear-headed and in focus like never before. The influence of his new partner (actor Jameela Jamil) can be felt throughout.

Tracks on here like ‘Fine’ and the aforementioned ‘Racist, Sexist Boy’ are vital, powerful bursts of punk fury. Yet when they let their pop music imaginations run free it’s equally impressive, with tracks like ‘Growing Up’, ‘Talking To Myself’ and ‘Magic’ showcasing a gift for catchy, singalong choruses.

“The album’s aiming for something timeless,” Michael recently told Mojo, and it’s impressive how often this record lives up to that ambition.

It's a dream of the psychedelic tropics, a heady explosion of colours, an album that takes what it means to be 'in an indie band' and gives it a good shake.

‘Fuse’, their first album since 1999, is precisely that: the blueprint for any alt-leaning electronic act in the pop space.

A saddening case of brick production, paper soul--here the Quins are little more than twin airbags.

Aside from this one harrowing moment, ‘Nature Always Wins’ is very much an album packed with joyful pop songs and introspective anthems.

‘LIFEFORMS’ is an ambitious punk record that speaks of the everyday. Polished but with plenty of grit and light on ego, it’s the most relatable this band has ever been.

The musician’s previous concepts have both been compelling in themselves but, by stripping back the stories to their very personal core, Halsey has made a record that is as thrilling as it is vulnerable, and her best effort yet. This is Ashley’s world; it’s really nice to meet her.

Over 12 years the music Justin Vernon has created as Bon Iver has constantly changed, but that doesn’t mean the old sounds have been undone; they’ve been repurposed and reused, evolving into something different – but always as compelling as the Bon Iver of yesteryear.

A set of immense maturity that never rubs your nose in its thematic complexity, compositional innovation and thunderous thump-beats. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]

It'd be hard not to draw parallels between Calvi and [...] PJ Harvey. Yet while both women ooze an elemental kind of passion, Calvi is unashamedly slicker, especially when compared to Harvey's earlier, grungier work.

After a while, the whirling atmospherics give way to the Dandys' dorkier tendencies: the jaunty chuggers, Taylor's dissolute mannerisms, the quirky little twists and tricks.

Each winding soundscape sounds like it was made for those big budget nature documentaries with David Attenborough.

Rarely has reliability been this funky.

pite. ‘Sanctuary’ sums up Final Days best, a nine-minute odyssey of guttural vocals, noise and melody.

Coupled with their uninhibited star-crossed takes on love and relationships, these chiming refrains are addictive and refreshing, lending impetus to what can appear to be a dog-eared set of blueprints.

The Fall are actually at their most settled, stable and plain rocking in years. [1 Oct 2005, p.47]

The past eight years have seen Blanck Mass creep forwards to slowly become one of the UK’s most exciting experimental producers. Animated Violence Mild is the pay-off, a fantastic, delirious soundtrack to our demise.

Gives up its delights slowly and not without a wry smirk along the way. [11 Jun 2005, p.66]

[An] impressive lo-fi debut. [27 Aug 2005, p.74]

Sounds like a man freed from the shackles of history. [22 Jul 2006, p.31]

There is a tail-off in quality at the end, but every track still has a chorus that Swedish song factories would sell their grannies for and, most of all, there's a sense that Take That are genuinely challenging themselves here.

Micachu brings all her talent for earache soundz to bear on 'Violina/Bread Before Bed', while 'Shapeshift', the collaboration with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard, might just be the best electro-hop banger since Roots Manuva's 'Witness (1 Hope)'. Which is weird, 'cos the UK rap don also turns up for a spot of Cameron-bashing on 'Capsize'. Tasty.

It [the first Mariachi El Bronx album] was a beautifully anarchistic move that's now spawned its second (more polished) album under the Mariachi El Bronx alias.

If you like your rap homespun, rich, physical and all 'summer-in-NYC '95', it's a dream. But considering he once reinvented the genre, it's disappointingly reactionary.

Occasionally. the jaunty positivity treads too far into Edward Sharpe territory and all you’re left craving is a healthy slice of cynicism.

‘Archaic Revival’ is the centre-point though; nine minutes of tension-gripped, creeping bass and echoed mantras, its queasiness adds a weight of darkness to this mesmerising trip.

The Curse Of Love is a neat record, filled with the mystic folk and lithe psychedelia that made them so refreshing back in the day.

She might be lacking an obvious crossover hit, but you get the sense that those will arrive sooner rather than later; in the meantime, Georgia has something far more valuable: bleeding-edge vitality.

The Wellington five-piece’s sixth album is a fabulous meld of power-pop, electronica and US West Coast harmony that swings through techno-country on 'Prawn', and even dabbles in soulful house on 'Celestial Bodies'.

The occasional leaden production job remains the album’s main stumbling block. But if Giggs is unlikely to follow Stormzy into the mainstream, it’s hard to deny this record’s bleak intensity or lyrical command.

With a lilting, mountain-spring-clear vocal, Lillie effortlessly brings to mind Dolly Parton, whose sass and strength she channels throughout her solo debut’s 11 tracks. This is old-school country music that digs deep into the past.

The four piece’s debut album is a grubby, clattering thing that takes its lead from 1980s LA punk trailblazers like X and The Gun Club, who took traditional country music and fed it moonshine until it fell down in a ditch, then scraped the mud off its jeans, handed it a microphone and a broken electric guitar and made it walk through broken glass to sing in a grotty toilet venue bar over a broken PA system.

At times joyful and at others surprisingly moving, Bad Contestant sets Maltese on the start of a path that marks him out as a true prodigious talent. This is the voice of a true original. The future, it seems, is schmaltz.

The result is an often thrilling, semi-symphonic ode to joy that peaks with ‘The Plans We Made’, a lilting trip-hop nursery rhyme on which Chapman sighs through the line “there’s only so much I can do” like a man who’s suffered a thousand defeats and still maintains his optimism.

He’s managed to morph his frustrations of the world into engaging and frantic material that packs serious spirit. Yet another album we’ll have to wait to see live.

It finds the band cruising along the middle of the road, with occasional interesting detours.

As with everything The Indications do, ‘Private Space’ is incredibly listenable, yet for all their efforts to expand their sound, they still rest often on the formula of old.

Despite its brevity, ‘American Noir’ still feels like a truly significant entry in Creeper’s discography. These songs sound truly timeless, exist outside of trend and genre and are instantly recognisable as the work of their creators.

Eloise’s attempts to gently push her sound outwards are admirable and promising. There’s a disquieting hint of sourness to the distorted layers on ‘Take It Back’, while ‘Vanilla Tobacco’ is peppered with moments of record scratching. They may be far from revolutionary, but the fullness of Eloise’s new vision vibrates in these tender details.

It’s a project where everything has been allowed to evolve and align properly: Clay’s willingness as a songwriter to go to a place where he was once uncertain, and his courage to compose and lead with his most authentic playing yet.

It’s a moment of pure pop catharsis that leans into the good, bad and messy of infatuation. This is the joy of ‘The Secret of Us’: it doesn’t shy away from the complex or contradictory. Here Gracie Abrams embraces her growing pains and celebrates enduring the difficult moments. She’s never sounded better.

The five new tracks added for the UK release, especially the Suicide throb of ‘Run Around’, suggest the real thrills are to come on their debut proper, but for now, this is an exciting enough introduction to a new force of darkness. Buy two, and give one to a hippy.

There’s no broad concept or industry-busting roll-out, just 10 pristine, richly satisfying tracks; no more, no less.

This isn’t a bad or a lazy album, and Elbow are too good a band to ever be dismissed, yet one can’t help but feel they could push their envelope a bit further.

At 18 tracks, Aquarius may be overstuffed (the ambient interludes offer little) but it’s an impressive statement that should elevate Tinashe far beyond the hype that has surrounded her mixtape releases so far.

Its tales of fleeting love begin with a swagger... [and] the next seven tracks represent a complete emotional collapse. [8 Oct 2005, p.43]

Bold, brash and brilliant, this is Charli XCX at her most genuine, and it’s dazzling.

Though there are less standout moments than on previous records, it is a wonderfully cohesive whole that renders brooding menace into graceful songcraft.

This time, Suede sound bolder, brave and better than they have in over 20 years.

It almost goes without saying that this album is intense as hell and not exactly teeming with light relief. It’s also an intricate and an endlessly compelling artistic statement that only Halsey could have made.

A collection of songs that showcase the tangled feelings of this time, the young artist’s third record is a poignant, powerful thing.

Despite its dips, there are plenty of strong reasons here to keep Dinosaur Jr from extinction.

This album offers an elegant blend of trilling piano, strummed guitar and crisp digital beats, but it's dominated by Mason's voice, and his monastic chants prove as soothing and stirring as when they wafted across The Beta Band's deathless debut 'Dry The Rain'.

Common has just gone way, way off the hip-hop map.

As intelligent as it is ferocious. [31 Jul 2004, p.40]

There's a good single album here in need of editing.

Where there was tension and urgency [on his debut], now there's bigger, poppier and probably more commercially viable folk songs that don't quite pack the same punch.

The album features more deep cuts than you’d expect from a Megan Thee Stallion record, but it shows just how she’s pushed her pen since ‘Good News’, while also illustrating her broad musicality.

This is a very well-crafted album that succeeds on its own terms.

Propelled by sharp, angular sounds, ‘The Center Won’t Hold’ craves connection above everything else in a world that can often seem desperately lonely. Each dirty and distorted throb (unlocked to full potential by Annie Clark’s gift for making guitars sound positively devilish) seems to yearn for another body to hold onto.

Heavenly.

Girls are genuine drop-outs, bona-fide freaks who’ve made a record far removed from the predictable cycles of the music industry. Now that’s a real story.

It’s a more honest, human, realistic--and totally wonderful--guide to life.

Though by no means a disaster, they needed to hit back, and Arabia Mountain doesn't disappoint.

As ever, Blake’s singular vision results in electrifying and innovative electronic music.

This is a powerful, memorable collection. Accessible from the get-go, ‘Life Under The Gun’ carries a universal message while staying true to its hardcore roots.

The Machines have grasped that the zero tolerance of punk for the values of Yes did as much harm as good. [26 Jun 2004, p.56]

It has the reckless spirit of a record that hasn't been over-analysed, but with an intense flurry of ideas from someone in the absolute prime of their creativity.

The Manics’ 11th album is a subtle, satisfying record that showcases their continuing ability to soar, albeit without digging anywhere near as deep as their politico-punk-pop totems, 1992’s ‘Generation Terrorists’ and 1996’s ‘Everything Must Go’.

Fat White Family are a band reborn. ‘Serfs Up!’ is the richest, most accomplished music they’ve ever written.

It’s not only the boldness of Mason’s subject matter that makes this a brilliantly disquieting record, but also his ability to make it consistently warm and wholesome.

It's not quite diminishing returns, but more a sense that Oldham's going round in decreasing circles.

Butter is twitchier than a smoker on a 12-hour flight, and you wish Hud-Mo would have more confidence in his majestic melodies before shredding them. For the intrepid listener, though, this is popping candy for the ears.

‘Welcome To Bobby’s Motel’ sees them flexing their muscles and trying to find their own space within it, all while having a hell of a lot of fun along the way. By the end, you’re desperate to find out just who Bobby is and how on earth you can beg, steal or borrow to spend a night in that mysterious motel.

There’s new confidence here, and a sense that she’s stretching herself musically and lyrically.

Factor in some brilliant shards of melody in songs like 'Clearing', 'Call Across Rooms' and 'Holding' and Ruins becomes an unexpected gem: that rare album that reels you in without even trying.

If you enjoy using your brain rather than listening to it fizzle to the strains of Virgin Radio, then buy this.

With this jumble of wordplay and hooky songwriting, they’re unmistakably on fighting form.

‘The End, So Far’ may rattle many of the metal faithful, but for the prowess and lasting impression of this record alone, this is a true Slipknot record. It’s unlikely that many fans who’ve been along for the whole ride would jump ship now.

‘Loss of Life’ is imbued with just enough sweetness that by the time it reaches its overarching message – “nothing prepares you for loss of life” – it doesn’t just make you want to prepare yourself, it makes you excited to do so.

It may have taken over a decade for Doves to pour their souls into ‘The Universal Want’ but if it turns out to be their final transmission, it will be a worthy closing chapter to their epic legacy.

Like nothing else you’ll hear this year.

‘Love, Damini’ had the potential to be the biggest record of Burna’s to date, full of heart and rhythmic passion. But it falls frustratingly short: too often the tunes are repetitive and, other than the aforementioned highlights, don’t show much progression.