Emotion is packed with frighteningly relatable songs about love, longing and heartbreak.

The London trio's second full-length is a breakneck, open-eared, positivist post-punk canter.

MGMT’s return to pop is a much more welcome surprise.

Yes, there’s joy to be found in hearing a musician so unshackled from expectation and finding catharsis in the experience. But Boy Voyage lacks a running thread, centrepiece or concept to build itself around. It’s a wild, space-age trip that could do with a return ticket back to Earth.

Musically, Acts Of Fear And Love is the most accomplished of Slaves’ three albums, switching things up and pulling off new sounds without losing sight of the band’s DNA.

The result is an album that dovetails beautifully from party anthems to vulnerable confessionals. The production is tight and cohesive even when songs like ‘Pay You Back’ and ‘Splash Warning’ feel unnecessary. Meek is angry but eloquent.

While the sumptuous grooves that underpin the tracks are captivating, it’s also the thematic content of Bismillah that makes for repeated listens.

Aside from some uninspired, though pretty acoustica (‘Someone Else’s Trees’, ‘Laundry And Jet Lag’), ‘BREACH’ is a stellar progression overall. Lily’s lurch to zestier compositions is a welcome divergence.

In standing mostly still, Travis have found contemporary eddies swirling around them.

No doubt many of these songs will go on to be fan favourites, but while it’s not a step backwards, it certainly is a step sideways for a band who until now have been in perpetual motion.

‘Taste Of Love’ is one of TWICE’s more powerful releases yet – despite a number of notable misfires – and showcases the group’s versatility in terms of vocals and concept execution.

From their pen through to their sound, ‘Here Is Everything’ is emotive and glossy; one that gives space to breathe in this busy world.

‘Higher Than Heaven’ may not be strictly personal, but it definitely sounds like an album crafted with care, skill and no small amount of flair.

The album, frustratingly, proceeds on a perplexingly flat note. Clocking in at 14 songs, one wonders if the ferocity of ‘Grooming My Replacement’ could have completed a memorable ten-track collection, with the final few tracks lacking that consistent cutting edge.

As he ricochets through twitchy rave pulses, sugar-corroded pop sheen and chrome-filmed club futurism, Brown is still unmistakably himself – even if not all experimentation lands perfectly.

This is an album of difficult rhythms, squawking guitars and bohemian eccentricities that will leave fans delighted and everyone else baffled--just as their 12 others have done. Business as usual, then.

Majical Cloudz may be dark, but there's light poking through.

What Havilah does is jump up and down on the rotting carcasses of The Vines and Jet, stabbing them again and again with a flag that says “Miles. Better. Than. You. Ever. Were. Mate.”

Delve into the lyrics a little deeper, particularly the title track, and it becomes even clearer that Bauer sees his old band's split as the first step towards spiritual enlightenment and finding certainty amid the chaos.

Depending on your standpoint as regards selling out and cashing in, you'll either be baffled or delighted to discover that they've adjusted their modus operandi not one jot on the follow-up, O Shudder.

A record like a deep gulp of cold air on a clear, bright morning after.

With the standard set, Turner brings an almost literal meaning to the notion of 'traditional English punk' and, as always, it's a fearless venture for an artist with something interesting to say.

Lion King: The Gift is a great example of Beyonce’s fantastic taste, and of her ability to oversee an album that doesn’t focus on her while also cementing the soundtrack as a worthy substitute to the original. Most importantly, it puts a spotlight on artists from the continent in which the movie takes place.

Soaring closer ‘The Room It Was’ reminds us that, even after 10 years in the game, there’s enough punch and gusto behind this band to swerve overall disappointment, despite a lack of inventiveness and some lacklustre songwriting. ‘The Shadow I Remember’ undoubtedly packs enough muscle to excite at Cloud Nothings’ return to chaotic live shows.

The dark and sexy new songs shine their brightest when coated with a layer of her previous sparkle; which makes the artist’s second album a fine but frustrating release.

An eclectic album for Right Now, which shows what it means to be a modern pop star, and reveals a glittery crazy-paved path towards a brave new musical future.

You’ve got an album that revels in the simplicity of a great pop song while cleverly articulating the everyday truths of 20-something life, on Bognanno’s terms alone.

Welcome Home offers both a different approach and a welcome return.

Hip-hop may rule the locker room, but it’s the sensitive beats that make the girls swoon.

Time and circumstance have not blunted his abilities, and Understated is lyrically empathetic, musically emphatic.

Anglocentrically and have eternally teenage garage production values. In other words, a GBV record that sounds like everything GBV fans love about GBV.

‘Careful What You Wish For’s quality--along with that of everything else here, not least the closing ‘Silent Night’, featuring a full church choir epically utilised to yank up every hair on the back of the listener’s neck--re-confirms Glasvegas’ position as the most exciting British band right now.

As impressive as her gossamer-light voice layered over the strings and breakbeats on ‘Bad Boy’ is, Speech can do upbeat as well as down.

Power's handful of great tunes make it worth the wait, but its more affected moments make it difficult to love.

By the time ‘Axis of Evil’ rolls around to close things out, you feel as though you’ve been given the fullest scope yet of what the band are capable of.

There are no dull moments, but if there’s even a brief drop in intensity, it should only be used to reflect on the energy you probably just felt.

Unsurprisingly, the most thrilling moments are the most genre-schizo.

The likes of highlight ‘Ruby’ and ‘Step Into The Cold’ are gloriously faithful nods to their influences, executed with enough dedication to the head-music revivalist cause to make them far more than mere pastiche.

Hauschka’s bracing concept album.

Beautifully produced and filled with honest, unrefined conversations about love, life and sacrifices, ‘6pc Hot’ sees 6lack shoot straight from the heart. Even though it’s just a taster, it puts the Atlanta crooner in prime position to take over as the leader of R&B’s new school.

Malawi’s Esau Mwamwaya, however, is proof that even the West’s slickest and sickliest can be used well by inventive minds.

As irresistible at its peak - the luscious 'Little Eyes' and a lovely interpretation of Big Star's 'Take Care' - as it is baffling at its prog-jazz edges, 'Summer Sun' is the crowbar that pries open the door into a world of left-field beauty.

If he still sounds semi-conscious half the time, so be it. Three albums into his misleading career and Damon Gough, it seems, can still write strange, life-affirming pop music in his sleep.

This is an album that you'll like rather than actually love.

Its only disappointment is the absence of Roots rapper Black Thought to joust with him.

‘Hunted’ showcases Calvi’s talent for curation, with a selection of contributors here who know when to let the songs breathe and when to provide something unexpected.

With so much honesty packed into the 11 tracks, the album is an invitation and a challenge to go after what you want – without apologising for it.

Sadly there’s only one track here where singer Tigs’ urgent purr and the subtle combination of electronica and bouncy indie pop matches either of those two tracks: the mesmeric ‘Slick’. The rest is solid, but with New Young Pony Club back on the scene, tracks like ‘Two Hands’ feel unremarkable.

Closer ‘Sea Of Trees’ is as impressive, its restrained riff suddenly smothered by an almighty dirge. It’s a fitting climax to a record that unsettles from start to finish.

‘Open Up Your Head’ is an accomplished debut that takes Sea Girls’ brand of indie-rock on countless new adventures, and leaves plenty of doors ajar for further exploration for a genre in dire need of a kick up the backside.

Enough talk about reinventions, this is more of an evolution. On A Different Kind Of Fix, Bombay Bicycle Club have, quite simply, found themselves.

Having spent 11 years away from the studio, The Hives zapped straight back into the only mode they know: pure pandemonium. It’s about time new generations received this healthy dose of old school Hives, packed with the same intensity, goofiness – and of course, the matching black and white suits.

Across Forgiveness there's countless reminders of why you loved BSS.

On ‘Louder, Please’, Gray’s music has finally caught up with her lifestyle. The crackly sounds of the underground finally have their unfiltered moments, while her long-standing pop sensibilities still retain their place through respectable chorus hooks and addictive melodies (her classical vocal training is also clear for all to see).

These country-blues laments are seriously sleepy-eyed. [10 Sep 2005, p.66]

Eccentric spirit, production mastery and emotional heft put this alongside Four Tet’s very best work.

Nailed to the dancefloor by Flea-like bassist Pat Nature, and dragged up to date by hip-hop beats and random electronica, musically Liars are taut as a tightrope.

Whatever gear they have at their disposal, WITTR remain almost unbeatable for swelling, atmospheric excellence.

His new set is disarmingly jaunty, occasionally odd – as on the scratchy electro-folk of ‘Don’t Want To Sleep Tonight’ – and frequently lovely, chiefly on the parched reverie of ‘Ballad Of Fuck All.’

The Big Roar is the kind of epic-yet-intimate debut that does exactly what its title makes out in the most tactful of styles; an LP that ultimately delivers on every count on the four years of promise leading up to it.

War On Drugs engineer Nicolas Vernhes smoothes restrained standouts ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ and ‘Room’ into two of Kalevi’s best songs yet, but the whole thing bathes in glorious groove.

It's all rather one-paced and sags badly after tenth track 'Lick Up Ya Foot' but, by crikey, the likes of 'Big Tings Redone' and 'Dutty Rut' provide the perfect soundtrack for out-on-the-stoop sunshine boozing.

Silver Tongues picks up exactly where they left off: back on top as one of Britain’s most thrilling rising bands.

The demo vocals she’d already recorded are pretty much album-ready, their slightly unpolished edge even helping throw back to the band’s 1992 debut album ‘Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’, home to the immaculate-if-overplayed ‘Linger’. It’s rare indeed that a farewell brings a career so neatly full-circle.

With ‘Intruder’, he’s chiming with the times – and sounding thrillingly relevant in the process.

‘Requiem’ has brought something new to a discography that, until now, has been an exploration of human suffering. It’s led to the band’s most nuanced record to date.

Growing Pains finds Blige on chirpier form.

Squired by The xx producer Rodaidh McDonald, this second album is hugely accomplished.

Even though Gliss Riffer comes with no added extras it still creaks under the weight of its experiments.

‘Typhoons’ is not only their best work to date, but all the better for Royal Blood being free to explore what they’re capable of.

The result is an album that’s spiky, surprising and not quite cohesive, but never ever boring. Tove Lo was always much too interesting to be a slave to the algorithm.

The moments of dark introspection still linger in the album's secluded corners, but overall, 'A Brighter Beat' is exactly that.

‘SUGAREGG’ is confident and assured.

It’s unlikely to gain any new converts to the cause, but you get the impression Hitchcock stopped caring about that sort of thing long ago.

Like Johnny Cash jamming with Holly Golightly, Little Amber Bottles is the grizzled embodiment of everything that's brilliant about sleazy, Deep South rock'n'roll.

It’s honest, personal and wholly relatable. Rostam may have defined Vampire Weekend’s sound, but with Half-Light he begins to define himself.

Recorded with Vår’s Loke Rahbek on synth and Malthe Fischer, ex-Oh No Ono, on guitar and production, these 10 electro-pop songs truly glisten.

Now well into her stride as a solo artist, with ‘Black Girl Magic’ Dijon has produced another collection of standout, all-inclusive house classics that’ll dominate dancefloors for years to come.

If 'Let's Get Out Of This Country' was a person, you would want to hug it until its big doe-eyes popped out. [10 Jun 2006, p.41]

Far from experiencing growing pains, Car Seat seem to have had a lot of fun here.

While there’s a comforting familiarity that comes with all things Suede, it’s wonderfully shrouded on The Blue Hour by a very new, romantic and alluring strangeness. These are not hits to shake your bits to. Nor will these beats shake your meat. Rest assured, Suede remain the beautiful ones, but are just looking for beauty in ever more curious places.

I Never Learn is an album about love, but not a record to love.

While Food may be more home-cooked comforts than Blumenthal experimentation, at its best it’s a fulfilling portion.

There are a few early misfires here, but they are rescued by a stunning second half on which Beck’s trademark sound is stripped back and drenched in a glistening synth-filled air that takes him into a daring new era.

Dense, detailed and idiosyncratic, Redemption doesn’t slot in neatly next to the tropical beats and minimal pop hits that are currently dominating the charts. But there will always be a place for music as rich as this that dares to be a little different.

An album both beautiful and challenging.

Their sixth album is also as pretentious as you would expect a record named after a novel by Austrian feminist author Elfriede Jelinek to be.

It’s no Pinkerton, but Weezer, finally, are back on track.

Not only a fittingly accomplished conclusion to their most adventurous and masterful project to date, ‘Part 2’ is also a thoroughbred belter of a record and utterly complete album in its own right. Add it all up and the ‘Everything Not Lost’ era is testament to all that Foals are capable of – in sound, in scope and in greatness.

This record is not the sunburnt wooze of Tame Impala: it’s angrier, colder.

It’s lyrically weak, however, (sample: “The moon falls in your doorway”) and although there’s sparkle in the production, Johns reveals himself to be a far from charismatic singer.

Fifth time round, they're proving there's still plenty of value in their elegantly downtrodden aesthetic.

None of these 13 tracks break the three-minute mark, but each works an enormous amount of inventiveness into its brief running time.

At times, its a record that feels slightly lacking in range as a consequence; as this album chugs on, Night’s wittiest turns of phrase can’t help but take centre stage against a familiar backdrop.When The Regrettes shake things up, they’re most ferocious.

It shimmers with wonky ’90s-indebted pop smarts, a daisy-chain of balmy nostalgia with blissed-out guitars, hushed vocals and kaleidoscopic lyrics.

After all these years, the songs still stand up, even in a different dimension. ‘Black Stallion’ can either be listened to as the twisted inner monologue of a masterpiece, or a standalone rattling gun of gnarly and weird electronica.

You finish this collection feeling lighter, a little more optimistic about what the world has to offer.

In the end, Taylor stands strong, heart laid bare in a tender, nuanced close to an imperfect but heartfelt album that proves that you can find your way back to yourself.