When your nightbus home is beset by phantasmagorical drunkards with beady, threatening eyes, when your ears are bashed by mendacious line managers and eyes beset by the violence of news/advert/news, then this incredible album is your passport to a better place.

After the huge success of his second critically-acclaimed album like ‘Pieces Of A Man’, this small EP steps into the big boots it needs to fill before Mick Jenkins’ next outing. ... Delightfully dainty.

Throughout, singer Bid's smooth baritone paints intriguing vignettes ("He was the best thing that you've ever seen in Swansea", goes 'When I Get To Hollywood'), adding colour to an already rich album.

It takes half a dozen listens before the quality of it really sinks in, and is so all over the place that only the most devoted won't find it initially maddening. But throughout is a braveness and naive sense of wonder.

Metronomy Forever is, in many ways, remarkable: the band have proved their longevity and ability to reinvent, retool and still maintain their love and ability to pen stellar pop songs. We’re already looking forward the sequel.

The Saturday Night Live trio pick up where they left off with 2009's Incredibad.

It's a delight to hear. [18 Jun 2005, p.64]

These nine songs often build and build only to splutter out in a last, exhausted gasp. And then the next track cranks up and the cycle continues, giving the record a grinding, thwarted sense of frustration.

Having eschewed the garage rock roots of their debut, DOLL have morphed into a temper-explodin', strop-throwin' antithese to their Swedish peers. [3 Jul 2004, p.65]

Overwhelmingly, it all adds up to an album that will never make a fuss in your collection, but every now and then you'll remember how much you love it.

He hasn’t sounded this vital in years.

On ‘Of Earth & Wires’, Saleh reveals a new resoluteness as a singer-songwriter, fully embracing pop but without abandoning their experimental curiosity. Above all, they’re using pop as a medium to further advocate for social equality and justice.

Across a leisurely hour, the slow double bass pull of ‘Broken Wave (A Blues For Doogie)’, the deadpan spoken word and pattering steel drums of ‘Guy Fawkes’ Signature’ and the chatty lyricism on cuckolding regret ‘The Very, Very Best’ stand out, but it’s all golden.

‘iii’ goes in hardest, taking its cues from the harshest strains of club music, and beckoning in pure, confrontational chaos almost immediately.

What could’ve been a savvy dissection of seeking out connection during a surreal year instead see them go straight down the line.

So alongside the creeping softness of ‘Dreamliner’--which is full of Alt-J-worthy waves of sensual electronica--we get the biggest noises the band have made to date.

A beguiling, uplifting listen.

Namechecks for Peter Beardsley and Peperami show eccentricity, but once you get used to his atonal delivery, Dawson emerges as a talented chronicler of the tiniest, realest details.

This is an ambitious, adventurous feat that shows off Benee’s pop-hook panache and genre-bending range.

After three Twilight albums that never lived up to his previous might, he's now hit paydirt. [13 May 2006, p.41]

The result is a beguiling--albeit, at seven tracks, rather short--set of intricate, finger-picked songs.

Swirling synths abound, but remain encased in four-minute micro-epics which sometimes mine the icy ambition of pre-megastardom Simple Minds.

Overall Change lacks Wire’s usual focus.

A record that rather makes one want to have sex. [24 Sep 2005, p.47]

Jeffrey Lewis has stepped in to chronicle the detritus of the human condition for his amicable fifth full-length album.

Language barrier or not, it’s a divine second album.

A compelling record that bears more resemblance to the indie of Bright Eyes or Modest Mouse than anything found on 2003's 'Deja Entendu'. [18 Nov 2006, p.33]

As introductions go, this record makes for a warm and welcoming one – even if it doesn’t stray too much from what you’d expect.

‘Welfare Jazz’ sees them sidestep any so-called second album slump. There’s no huge reinvention of sound – except for some country-ish sounds, typified by the Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn-style call-and-answer ‘In Spite Of Ourselves’, a punk hoedown with Amyl and the Sniffers‘ Amy Taylor – but a definite reinvention of mindset.

Unfathomable brilliance from start to finish.

Anxiety moves between smooth grooves and kaleidoscopic electronics, but it’s the sensual vocals that carry the record.

Impressive debut. Somehow, he manages to tame the album’s kinks into a cohesive if not beguiling whole that’s eminently challenging and comforting to listen to.

‘TANGK’ is an adventure into pastures new. Talbot is keen to put arm’s length at the material that exorcises his past traumas and battles with addiction and general frustration at the modern malaise. Now’s a time of appreciation and restraint.

When you cover this sort of expansive, experimental territory, you're inevitably flirting with pomposity. But like Tool or Radiohead, Cave-In's progressiveness is hypnotic rather than alienating, played out with a sense of near-religious awe that's difficult to deny.

It’s an intricate project – the record also comes with an accompanying 50-minute film – that could collapse under the weight of its concept. Bolstered by its author’s frank pen, though, and instilled with a sense of hope, it’s a powerful listen.

With ‘Scream From New York, NY’, Been Stellar trade in their title as one of the city’s brightest new hopes and emerge as a NYC staple.

It sounds like almost exactly the same record, just not as slap-in-the-face fresh. Still, if it’s more of the same, at least the same is pretty good.

The Very Best still know how to party.

Old Fears provides a fascinating insight into the mind of an increasingly-indispensable pop polymath.

As passion-packed as her visceral diatribes are, they suffer through being frustratingly free of dynamics.

Not one song feels out of place or undercooked.

On ‘All of This Will End’, she lasers in on community, mortality and how where you’ve come from impacts where you’re going all with her indie pop prowess intact. ... A wonderful album.

Drahla’s melodies are gnarled and resist locking together at all costs; warped pop songs emerge out of the gloom. This is a meticulous debut that juggles razor-sharp control with barely contained chaos.

When two such spiky forms collide you can’t expect everything to click, but FFS is still a wonder of gelling idiosyncrasies.

Whether by design or evolution, The Radio Dept’s third album fits the grand scheme of all things voguish and hazy rather perfectly--though that’s not to say they’ve made a faultless record, as ‘Clinging To A Scheme’ arguably hangs from just a few songs.

The record never diverts from a tried-and-tested formula, but Crossan brings a modern touch via nifty production tricks and songwriting knacks.

Aside from an introductory impersonation of Fleetwood Mac's 'Albatross' (on the title track), they continue where their 2010 debut left off.

Love gets to indulge his sweet tooth over a whole record. That freedom turns out to be part blessing and part curse, his delicate-as-a-feather jangle and wispy vocals eventually wearing just a little thin.

Does a new generation of music lovers really need a third solo album from [Malkmus] which includes songs that house guitar wig-outs and last up to eight minutes? Not really. [28 May 2005, p.64]

But while 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' delivered an aural punch above B&S's usual weight, it wasn't quite the return to form many claimed. That return is delivered here, on 'The Life Pursuit', Belle And Sebastian's seventh album and their best since '...Sinister'.

[A] great debut record laced with melancholy and beautiful moments.

The result is a record that’s as fun as it is furious, and as confrontational as it is cool.

'Guero' represents a very clever man being clever enough to recognise what he's good at. [19 Mar 2005, p.58]

What it does do, however, is remind us that he is a copper-bottomed genius.

'Real Gone' is not by any means easy listening. It is, though, possibly a new type of music. [2 Oct 2004, p.64]

While they still sound pretty much like Neil Young if he'd heard an Aphex Twin record, the anxieties that '...Slump' articulated have been replaced by frontman Jason Lytle's desire to address more simple matters.

'Kittenz And Thee Glitz' is not a techno album, hardly even a dance record, only partially an '80s homage, and not quite pure pop either. But it is also all of these things in one, plus some kind of warped comment on celebrity culture.

Laid-back and controlled, yet at times almost obsessively moody... [Collisions] hits all the peaks and troughs at just the right frequency. [4 Feb 2006, p.29]

The eerie, mist-shrouded 'Running On Fumes' is the standout track, but really, Diamond Mine should be taken as a whole, at night, in the dark, with some Scotch and a blanket.

Melodies bristle, harmonies surge, hooks fly dense as bullets in The Raid and Joe Keefe's lush stoner vocals trace out stories of neighbour-annoying hedonism, missing home and boozing and rocking all the way to the afterlife. Fun-drenched.

Caminiti's style is uniquely desolate and delicious.

It’s mid-album epic ‘Push It’ that best showcases their dexterity, an eerie bass-drum kick blending with a beautiful crescendo of soaring violin strings and piano keys.

Otherworldly pop that’s sweetly gripping.

This excellent eighth solo album again finds him honouring tradition while taking pride in his struggle to find his own path.

Sparkling synth melodies abound on ‘Time Enough’ and ‘Shapes And Patterns’, with only the meandering Pink Floyd indulgence ‘Vapour Trails’ dragging the journey down.

Their first two albums, 'Checkmate Savage' (2009) and 'The Wants' (2011), pulled together elements as diverse as krautrock, campfire sing-songs and pure, pulsing pop. Strange Friend is all this and more.

No Time is a fine and strange album.

It all adds up to an emphatic showcase of Pond’s personality, and their ability to inflict their eccentric spirit on any genre they fancy.

Childish’s defiant presence guides.

Sunne is a grotty, grubby and exciting refining of Cheatahs' sound.

The full, colourful spectrum of Jamie is on show here, as broad as it’s ever been.

Evil Genius is a perfect distillation of his talent, and we’re unlikely to see him outdo it, but it also underlines his unique position as bonafide star and rap outsider. This may be the biggest he’s ever allowed to get.

You’ll love it, or you’ll hate it, you’ll have no idea what’s going on, but revel in the fact that a debut like this is allowed to exist.

If you’re a fan of this stuff – powerful, bruising, operatic, performed with absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever – then there’s no question that Sabaton are amongst the best of the best. ... This is the album that could take Sabaton upwards.

This album is the stylish and streetwise mash-up of genres that you’d hear on an UNKLE or Gorillaz record. It never really blasts off, but this time it’s more about the journey than how fast you get there.

More. Again. Forever strikes a mature balance. It’s escapist in its sound but humane in its approach to the world. It’s experimental but familiar, and tests what the band are capable of while proving to be their more focussed work to date.

Star-studded, shimmering, danceable and intimate, ‘A Muse In Her Feelings’ is R&B in its purest form.

Sadly the last couple of songs on ‘The Bonny’ disappointingly tail off and almost feel tagged on. Thankfully there’s more than enough on here to help us dream of better times ahead.

As well as weighty statements, there is a sense of closure here.

‘Morning Pageants’ is a thought-provoking and totally unique body of work, one that will likely continue to inspire and confound as much as its subject.

The band operate in the same art-pop playground as bands like alt-J and Field Music, with guitars popping and chiming over Andrew Thompson and Bryn Jenkins’ rhythms, only taking a moment to change the pace for tracks like ‘Out to Get You’, with its prettily plucked pastoral guitar strings and close, breathy vocals, and ‘Smorgasbord’, which makes sparing use of anguished, weeping piano notes.

This kind of bug-eyed bish-bash-bosh is exactly what we need from Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes right now. Great records inevitably come out of shit times, and this is one of them.

This project is sure to surprise fans with its unique sensibility, further showcasing how difficult it is to constrict the artist into any specific genre. Chaz borrows multiple elements to create something wholly unique, skating through sounds to create a genre pastiche to suit every taste.

A cocky, self-assured record that blends Sports Team’s chaotic energy with a smart, heartfelt understanding of the power of guitar music.

Woven from a great many creative ideas, ‘Miss Power’ could have felt messy. But through Constance’s skilful bird’s eye view, it instead twists the key in the pandora’s box of her potential, re-introducing her unique take on the world.

The inner battles of ‘Permanent Damage’ are unflinching, and will likely stay with you long after the songs finish. It’s slightly deflating, then, that its instrumental flourishes often fade into the background, making for an album that takes risks without ever quite putting itself out there.

Poet Toi Derricotte once wrote that joy is in fact an “act of resistance”: listening to Monáe’s liberating latest album, you start to believe that pleasure is, too.

‘WEEDKILLER’ expertly weaves public and personal politics into an impressively captivating narrative for a debut.

Often catchy and always from the heart, ‘Killjoy’ is a deeply human debut. Their polished sound benefits massively from the odd punk outburst, and other parts of the album feel destined for boisterous end-of-gig singalongs.

Despite the fullness of its sound, ‘Call A Doctor’ never loses its personal touch, too. “You’ve been swell / Oh, what the hell / You’ve been dear,” closes James on ‘Outro’, bringing all this colourful melodrama to a touching end.

Leaning into catchy pop and garage rock mixed with an anecdotal edge, Bird’s debut album ‘American Hero’ has a gloss that is, undeniably, all-American.

Despite holding onto this grief, Wizkid puts that energy into more dancefloor fillers. Fun and experimental, while still harnessing an element of traditional afrobeats, the dance section of ‘Morayo’ builds on ‘More Life, Less Ego’’s high-energy yet effortless aura.

It’s the work of a group who’ve managed to grow up without losing their spark. On ‘Selling A Vibe’, the trio are still finding new ways to sound like The Cribs – and that’s a more impressive and unusual feat than it might first appear.

For all the music's cagey intelligence, Drake sounds like the kind of guy who comes sauntering out the traps in a 100m race and immediately breaks out into a victory lap, pausing only to remonstrate with hecklers.

Raw melody made Unknown Mortal Orchestra exciting two years ago; now they’ve matched it with attention to detail.

This madcap might raise the occasional laugh, but inside he’s crying, and for all your voyeuristic unease, you won’t be able to look away.

Far from bad... but so much of it sounds like a museum piece, the glum-pop self-harmings of another time. [12 Nov 2005, p.45]