Their debut buzzes with all the frisson of perspiring pre-teens getting their pseudo-sexual jollies playing Tetris under unmade bed linen; a sort of puerile Pavement with bigger laughs.

'Because Of The Times' cements Kings Of Leon as one of the great American bands of our times.

‘Flowers for Vases/descansos’ rakes back the debris and leaves Hayley Williams exposed. Sowing new seeds, it’s an approach that reaps rewards.

‘Glowing In The Dark’ travels through endless landscapes, erratically veering from sun-drenched psych-pop (‘Right The Wrongs’) to video-game instrumental weirdness (‘The Ark’) and acoustic bliss (‘The World Will Turn’). Vitally, though, its feet never touch the ground, and the illusion is never broken.

Accelerate is by some considerable distance REM’s best and most cohesive album since Berry left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling.

The irony of ‘Jump Rope Gazers’ is that as The Beths push themselves to do something different for album number two, they actually end up with the sonic sameness that the first record miraculously avoided. Only now do they sound like they could just be any other band.

It’s an all-enveloping record that puts the listener at the centre of the overwhelming intensity of Ferreira’s life these past few years – and offers a front-row seat to her wrestling back control.

Complex, original and even sincere, it’s a brilliant new departure.

Despite No Age’s enforced restrictions, they’ve come up with an album that--in its urgent, accidental variety--is far more exciting than the studied stylistic uniformity of most rock bands’ efforts.

A Bad Wind is a meticulously crafted album.

As Post tries new sounds on for size, some git better than others. Sometime it feels as though he’s still trying to figure this out as he goes. But it’s when he keeps things simple and goes beyond the clichés that he feels most like himself. ... Hollywood’s Bleeding is a playlist made for these times. It’s going to be huge.

There are just too many ideas for a first encounter. The good ones are special, no doubt, but a lot of the others are just other people's and lack the stamp of a band who know exactly who they are and what they're about.

It’s probably just a little too icy and detached to blow up in the manner of The Weeknd, Jessie Ware or similar indie R&B success stories, but Pull My Hair Back's pop sensibility renders it the most obviously accessible thing Hyperdub have released for a while.

And for her second album of Amos-aping MTV-branded Lilith Fair fodder, the barmiest, prettiest pretender to Tori's throne of corporate crackpot chic deals unashamedly in that tired and trusted heavyweight heart-tugging currency: relationships.

Just because it’s essentially heavy-metal karaoke, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it.

It's warm, out-there pop that was worth all the care and attention that has been invested in it.

Phases is a deeply autumnal album, perfectly for listening to while strolling down dimly lit side streets with crisp leaves underfoot.

There are many marvellous things about Orville Peck’s new six track EP, ‘Show Pony’, which shimmers as brightly as a cowboy’s pair of freshly polished spurs.

This is a creative period, one suspects, that both fans and White alike will look back on as one of his most complete and satisfying yet.

Never have Patterson Hood’s five-piece sounded quite so cranky and furiously righteous as they do on this terrific, ear-splitting sprawl of shit-kicking country boogie.

For all its fast-paced absurdness, Love Is Magic carves out quiet moments, too. These tiny, rare diamonds stud a world that can so often feel completely evil. It’s a balancing act that Grant ultimately pulls off.

Rather than settling on a unified feel, second album Culture Of Volume also delights in genre-hopping, but it’s less abstract and more coherent than its predecessor.

Exploration of I, Gemini reveals its quirks are knitted together with extreme smoothness.

A disquieting atmosphere is conjured by both the constant shifts in tempo and Niblett’s emotionally naked lyrics, while ’s naturalistic production deepens the album’s near-menacing intimacy.

When it works it’s potent enough to rival his 2003 breakbeat opus ‘We Want Your Soul’. When it doesn’t, such as on opener ‘Do You!’ and the turgid ‘Best Fish Tacos In Ensenada’ (every bit as lame as its title suggests), it sounds like the kind of crap that gets played early on at Reflex on student night.

This debut carries you on pillowy reverb and ribboned guitar to places only a handful of bands since Simple Minds have visited.

Remember Remember are more about awe than aggression, and resolutely their own thing: this is music to lose yourself in, rather than to.

If it’s less direct than the trio’s 2018 debut, ‘Stranger Today’, it makes up for it with a quietly adventurous textural approach. This album wears its nuances confidently while executing incremental shifts in tone and pacing with precision and care.

‘My First Album’ is an impassioned and idiosyncratic patchwork, one which paints a portrait of anxious and wistful personhood that is, on the contrary, definitive and assured.

An album packed with shimmering highlights.

Merging aquatic Americana that casts its net over the gang mentality of Arcade Fire, The Polyphonic Spree and Broken Social Scene – and that most über-overexposed of F-words, folk – it’s clear why Johnny Marr is touting the Californian throng as his new favourite band.

Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride have the Human League/Thomas Dolby textures down to a tee but, crucially, they haven't skimped on the songwriting

There's depth, sincerity and beauty in abundance here.

It's sonically peculiar, coolly melodic, relentlessly detailed and, frequently, exhilarating.

Considering Take Care is an affecting masterpiece easily on par with his debut, there could be no greater accolade for the genius of this man.

Sounds like his band are having too much fun.

A record whose luminous soundscapes are at once alien yet familiar, adding hazy heartbeat rhythms to their seductive take on ambient masters past and present such as Brian Eno, Harmonia and Tim Hecker.

Here, on their seventh album and two decades down the line, Enter Shikari sound perhaps the most joyful they’ve ever been, and even when they become characteristically philosophical, it still comes from a place of positivity.

This fifth album of Afro-Latin rhythms, tropical chanting and brass from the former TV On The Radio (on 'Return To Cookie Mountain' and 'Dear Science') and Foals ('Antidotes') collaborators will do nicely.

Overall though, A Star is Born is one of the best Hollywood soundtracks of recent years. Far from being Oscar bait, these are songs that could feasibly shine on their own--and ones that feel entirely believable.

This record shows that Vile isn’t about to abandon the formula that’s served him so well since he left The War On Drugs over a decade ago. It packs that wholesome, easy charm he’s always held, almost as if the songs fell out of his brain while he was strumming away on his back porch.

In this slim volume of three-chord thrashing there's proof that while punk may reside in middle age, in some quarters its vital signs have never shown more strongly.

When The Bees hit the target, as on domestic-violence lament 'Angryman; and the glacial funk of 'Sweet Like A Champion' the ghosts of everyone from JJ Cale to Hall & Oates to the Stone Roses enter the room.

Packs melodic punches with its killer Wilson-esque tunes. [18 Dec 2004, p.51]

This isn’t so much a progression as a rebirth.

This surprise is an entirely pleasant one. [27 May 2006, p.33]

No-wave krunch meets mutant disco shuffle meets snippets of global radness and, yeah, it's better than Animal Collective's new one.

[Has] the unmistakable feel of an instant classic. [28 Jan 2006, p.34]

So while The Haunted Man deals in less trinkets than its predecessor, it's not scant in splendour.

Hardcourage steps on from the broken UK garage rhythms that typify much of FaltyDL’s earlier work and into the sort of soulful, pleasurable house grooves occupied by the likes of Four Tet and Jamie xx.

It works, up to a point, but means the whole smooth and romantic-sounding affair, though not quite boring, lacks that special spark.

This follow-up to April’s excellent ‘More Than Any Other Day’ debut is a scattergun 24-minute journey, and its every destination is a delight.

This album acts as a bookmark of his creative evolution, and its polished production work makes it a good representation of his musical identity thus far.

Seventh Tree is bound to ruffle a few electro-feathered fans, but there’s no denying it’s a venture that sets the pair into new experimental territory.

Often shocking and consistently, unapologetically direct, every word and note here is positively swollen with meaning.

Spirituals’ gets more brutalist as it goes on, weaving its way from tropical space-pop through cosmic reggae to the gothic R&B cranks and coils of ‘Ain’t Ready’ and, finally, to ‘Fail First’, a wonderfully New Order-ish concoction of indietronic chug, industrial grunge guitars, spectral cheerleader chants and punkoid yells.

Wander no more, Lanegan. It’s clear to see that, with Soulsavers, you’ve found salvation.

Ghostface calls upon most of the remaining Clan members, switches the formula occasionally and hey presto, yet another minor Wu-Tang classic 20 years on from their debut.

If your relationship with Sonic Youth chiefly consists of boozily chucking yourself around to their sprinkling of indie-disco floorfillers, you may be surprised to know that Thurston Moore can 'do tender', let alone do it very well.

Through glowing stasis and solemn ceremony, Divide and Dissolve’s sonics of despair and destruction have been crafted into a remarkably life-affirming experience, and it’s never been more needed.

There’s really something for everyone here; they embrace winning ways but also dive into new realms too. Many bands have chartered these waters before, but nobody does it like Parquet Courts.

A brilliant, invigorating reintroduction.

The resulting album is a total knockout.

On ‘The Prettiest Curse’, they’ve taken their sound and unashamedly experimented with it. They’re all the better for it.

Teyana Taylor has finally delivered a record that scratches far beneath the surface of her persona as she triumphantly prioritises herself, from her sexuality to her vulnerabilities. In fact, it feels as though, on ‘The Album’, her vulnerabilities are her biggest source of strength and clarity.

Whether she’s playing loser or victor, the swathes of frenetic energy that buoy every note are always present.

Showcas[es] Rufus as one of, if not the best songwriters of his generation. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

Having developed their sound over six albums and finally tossed the carcass of previous band Red Red Meat, these super-sized ideas are Califone’s primest, most satisfying to date.

Cease To Begin is the second album by this trio from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains and, with angel-voiced lead singer Ben Bridwell at the fore, it's a delightfully soothing record.

A reverence-inspiring return.

Overflows with pristine melodies, sugary harmonies [and] a barely-definable sense of heartbreak. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

On ‘TYRON’, Slowthai roars.

The record fares better when it shoots for genuine experimentation, like on the weird, spacey ‘Lavish’; otherwise, ‘Clancy’ is more often than not the sound of a band spinning their wheels, caught in a strange space where their colourful conceptual ideas are being painted from a beige musical palette.

The overall lack of lyrics--the most repeated line on the 10-track record is a simple, wistful “oooh”--is only a positive, letting the listener get fully, deeply lost in the band’s fertile psychedelic world.

Antique keyboards pulse, fretless basses thrum and a variety of voices echo in and out, underlying the trippy feel and making this pretty much the most scintillating and daring record of the year so far.

This third LP is jumpy and beat-driven and banishes the memory of the dubstep scene he emerged from.

Sunbathing Animal is not an immediate or cushy listen, but it is gripping; a considered and brutal reminder that Parquet Courts’ aren’t necessarily an accessible band.

Musgraves’ assertiveness feels like a real glimmer of light amid the sparse compositions that run through this thoughtful, imperfect, down-to-earth record.

Heavier, harder and with a lot more clout about them, Circa Waves’ return is finally something you can believe in.

The 10 tracks disappear in a brisk 28 minutes, as if to say, ‘Chin up, mate, get on with it’. A heartbreak record--done the British way.

Wrecking Ball [is] a triumph.

It’s not quite picture perfect, but ‘Seeking Thrills’ is Georgia’s jubilant and insightful document of the life that moves under the disco lights.

Here and there, though, it’s a bit of a grind.

Another set of unassuming Americana. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

‘TILT’ is a record that proves that campness and ridiculousness doesn’t have to come at the expense of real depth.

The Bake Sale is way too good for posturing.

The vibrant ‘Shine’ is filled with languid horns and sweet doo-wop backing vocals. Rolling ragtime piano (‘Flowers’) and hip-shaking melody (‘Better Man’) pick up the pace and there’s bluesy sass in the shape of the upbeat ‘Twistin And Groovin’.

The tightness of ‘First Two Pages…’’s singles like ‘Tropic Morning News’ and ‘Eucalyptus’ are somewhat absent, though the looser structures and decision to allow the songs room to grow, melodically and lyrically pays off.

There's a strange disconnect here, one that might be ironed out by facing the past head-on rather than treating it as a concept.

At times things seem a touch over-produced--something that's always a risk when you spend half a decade working on 11 tracks. But mostly, Marshall's thickly layered studio shenanigans make Sun shine.

This album shows his growth as both an artist, and as aa person who’s had to deal with the most private aspects of their life being publicly dissected. It’s a stellar--if somewhat overlong--artistic statement.

As good as it is, ‘Hackney Diamonds’ does have bad spots. Country honker ‘Dreamy Skies’ would’ve sounded outdated in the ‘70s – and even a cameo from founder bassist Bill Wyman can’t save punk-y cringe-a-thon ‘Live By The Sword’, another victim of Mick’s interminable Johnny Rotten impression. Those low points are thankfully scarce, fewer and farther between than on anything this side of 1981.

His straightest record yet, delving into crunk, rock, drum'n'bass and pop with varying results.

It’s far too long at 67 minutes, but that’s the price of free expression.

It all has an affecting, intimate power.

On her debut album, they all blossomed into a rich, self-reflective record that shows the artist beyond the beats.

A dollop of deliberately sloppy post-grad college rock. [23 Apr 2005, p.51]

Succeeds as a standalone work, regardless of its authors’ statuses in the indie-folk world.