Tinashe flips so aggressively between genres that the record becomes unfocused and sporadic. Of course there’s nothing wrong with Tinashe showing emotional duality, but in transitioning so sharply from R&B to rap to stadium pop to EDM, ‘Songs For You’ makes you feel a little dizzy.

‘Meet The Woo 2’ does feature some slightly lacklustre – take the disappointing ‘Foreigner’, featuring fellow New York rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. A Boogie’s sloppy delivery might have been scraped entirely from the mixtape. Yet Pop Smoke’s latest is one for the mosh-pitting party goers. He definitely proves that – in his own words – “you can’t say pop and forget the smoke”.

‘What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?’ is Public Enemy’s best effort since 1998’s ‘He Got Game’.

Raw and rugged at every turn, the album captures the telepathic bond that these rock’n’roll renegades have cultivated over the years. ... Neil Young remains as vital as he always has been.

Doherty’s folky 2019 album with The Puta Madres was the sound of the former kid in the riot staring out to sea and looking for a little peace. Here with Lo, it feels like he’s truly found it. Now more than ever, this record is truly Arcadian.

‘Melodies On Hiatus’, adopts the same spaciousness of the territory it was created in, allowing Hammond Jr to spiral and sprawl out sonically. ‘Melodies On Hiatus’ may seem meandering at times, but eventually it lands where it needs to be.

The 2020s have found their pop king and ‘Golden’ more than secures him the throne.

There’s no question that Herring still writes songs capable of evoking strong emotions, but this time around they can occasionally feel too twinkly and repetitive. What’s missing is some risk-taking; unpredictable production flourishes that could better reflect the overall mood of the album and all the ambiguities that accompany a major life change.

What's left of the genius glam-punksters has returned in the guise of an above-average pub-rock band. [22 Jul 2006, p.31]

He’s still twisted, but Khan’s genius has never been more obvious.

[It] signpost[s] a possible future for emo. [29 Apr 2006, p.39]

Their debut album proper quivers and quakes with the cinematic electronics and emotional abandonment of a soundtrack to Armageddon.

A mind-tweaking knees-up in the second-chance saloon for Fox.

A quietly accomplished jazz project.

Mountain Battles is both a joyfully lived-in and boundary-free album.

A joyous and compassionate return, ‘Real Power’ proves that Gossip’s clear-headed maturity has ensured they achieve its titular sentiment.

This album compares favourably to Smog, or PJ Harvey at her most skeletal--not least in the confessional lyrical sexuality.

Simplicity means the record occasionally feels samey, but it seems mean to criticise something that feels so pure.

The most interesting moments on ‘Deleter’ arrive when the band embrace ’90s dance in all its euphoric, Technicolor glory. There is still plenty here for fans of the band’s more melancholic, anxiety-ridden electronica, but there’s some much-needed escapism to be derived from getting lost in Holy Fuck’s tripper soundscapes.

Throughout their debut album London Grammar walk a fine line between haunting and boring.

Spiky and cool where 'Songs For The Deaf' was smooth and tanned, tense and alien where that record was baked and ready to party, 'Era Vulgaris' is a record that feels like rust and stings like battery acid.

They're clearly not aiming for a worldwide banker, but the seam they mine is creatively profitable and floridly engineered.

This is a remarkable later-in-life debut, and one that proves that it’s never too late to make the record of your dreams.

The odd misfire aside, Feel It Break is self-assured and utterly consuming. At this rate, she'll be leading the pack soon.

Away from his day job, White is less creatively liberated, and surrounding The Dead Weather there's a very strong whiff of conventional, rather clumpy Middle-America jock rock.

After You shows an artist rejuvenated and fired up, and hopefully back on track to stick to a more timely release schedule in the next decade.

What is unfortunate is that she allows Lanegan to utterly dominate their duets.

A ‘difficult second’ album this is not, but the big set-pieces are left wanting. .... Regardless, there’s ample to consider, decode and treasure from an artist who consistently makes poring over the lyric sheet line-by-line as much fun as the finished product.

They've delivered the tunes, alright, but they can't help but fill them with angst, confusion and lashings of amp fuzz. Safe, predictable and packaged for the mainstream? This album is anything but.

Forget their poor punctuation: this debut LP is awash with bittersweet romance and deadpan derision.

There's always something heartwarming about a band discovering pop well into their career, especially when it sounds as good as this. [1 Apr 2006, p.43]

A record largely comprised of sulphurous gothic rockers such as ‘Lose The Right’ and ‘Be Still’, both of which sound like a band working from muscle memory.

'The Red Thread' is a frequently beautiful record, as dark and twisted and funny as anything the band have ever produced.

They have a new sound, a warm, lush and funky noise powered by producer Danny Sabre's sympathetic programming alongside Tony Rogers's bold keyboards, and they've created a great party record with it.

After a year that took so much, the return of the Foos feels like the culture getting back in credit. Consider the record’s closing track, ‘Love Dies Young’, which sparkles with effervescence that the last 12 months have lacked – it’s one of the best songs the band have ever put their name to.

In terms of melody, Femejism is a more outwardly pop-leaning record than their debut, but the duo are still as heavy as Black Sabbath when they want to be.

Effortless and fearless, Sunflower Bean’s latest is a breakneck showcase of the trio’s talent. With each tune a high-octane chunk of the bold, New York indie the band have honed, it’s a triumph.

More adventurous and free-spirited than the Warpaint of before, but retaining the laid-back DNA at their core. For once, Warpaint sound like they’re having fun--and it suits them.

It sounds like the start of another beautiful friendship.

While their version of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Only Shallow’ sounds exactly the same only much more so, the unexpected choices work best.

The heart of the record, Bermuda Waterfall, crystallises a real sense of existential loneliness and leads into the outstanding, lilting waltz of ‘Darkness’ and ‘Hands Dance’.

Of course, for all its honourable intentions, it still paints a picture of 100 dudes in a basement yelling the refrain, “She’s good for a girl”. But when they aren’t committing feminist faux pas, Greys stand on the verge of leading a new generation of punk.

‘Odin’s Raven Magic’s is built on incredibly specific foundations – the particulars of Norse Mythology and medieval Scandinavian poetry is certainly niche – so key aspects feel lost in translation without a hefty visual component or matching blurb. It feels less like conventional album, and more like a live piece immortalised on record.

While ‘The Darker The Shadow’ is ambitious, packed with witty, insightful commentary on the human experience, its conceptual focus allowing plenty of scope for creative flourishes, it ultimately lacks the incisive punch of his earlier songwriting.

It's irresistible. [16 Sep 2006, p.36]

Thomas’ own music is more discursive, and this solo debut (seven tracks, 60 minutes) has its whimsical, proggy longueurs.

The Black Angels’ psych scholarship pays dividends here.

Adem mirrors the ambitious approach of Sufjan Stevens. [13 May 2006, p.41]

It finds the band more playful, melodic, cinematic and cohesive than they have since ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’.

The results are remarkably plangent and romantic.

On their sixth album, however, they advance on their trademark blokeishness to embrace a beefier and slicker kind of guitar-led groove.

The first glitchy music released this year that you could happily have sex to.

Patience is impressive, for sure, but The Invisible still leave us wanting to see much, much more.

If there’s one criticism you could level at ‘Crybaby’, it’s that its slow-burning nature lacks the immediacy or clear-focused thrills of ‘Heartthrob’ and 2016’s ‘Love You To Death’, or the clever concept behind ‘Still Jealous’. But once ‘Crybaby’ truly clicks into place, it makes for another solid collection from a band ever-resistant to categorisation.

This is a deeply personal record, unequivocally sensual.

At times Siskin’s story is also the album’s downfall, the music suffering from a lack of diversity despite being heart-wrenching. The high points salvage things.

All boxes ticked for hip retromaniacs, but certainly not “the next millennium”.

They feel like they could have been made at any time since 1951, yet they sound completely, compellingly new.

A caustic collection of shamanic thrash and malevolent gutter-blues, Midlands pair God Damn’s debut album is a cathartically gritty listen.

The band now merges genres confidently and coolly, creating carefree indie pop tracks, yet always reserving a seat for their rock band roots.

Admittedly, many of the techniques Skrillex uses in his transitions haven’t aged well. There are only so many sped-up snares and risers you can listen to without thinking of that one Lonely Island sketch (or this hilarious Soundcloud mix). But the drops are so worth it – and in a post-hyperpop world, it’s even more impressive that they still manage to make so much impact, like on the long-awaited ‘Voltage’, or the grinding halftime banger ‘San Diego VIP’.

Universal High is the reinvention we never knew we needed.

The finest line here is the one between effortless thrash-pop and Slowdive's arse, and My Vitriol just tripped over it.

Eating Us is their fourth full-length, and it’s a delight.

Mainly a deep pool of blissful, sedentary festival listening.

It's a hardcore record from a top-shelf kind of a guy, but the work of a unique mind.

Pursuit of Momentary Happiness is excessive at times. From most other bands a swooning old-time ballad like ‘Encore’ and the slightly indulgent power-ballad ‘Words Fail Me’ would raise a big alarm. Somehow though, in Yak’s case they just about get away with it. Excess, after all, is how this record was created in the first place.

While a grisly backstory doth not always a masterpiece make, the album's finest moments come when she takes a Misery-sized sledgehammer to the youthful irreverence of yore and reduces it to rubble.

Amid the smartly rendered pastiche of this debut, Bainbridge references Prince and Janet Jackson, yet turns those joyous sounds unpleasantly arch.

On this timeless record, Gaye consistently sparks joy even though he’s scared about the future, and its 2019 release is chance for a whole new generation of listeners to connect with the legendary singer. It’s a reminder of an era in which our pop stars spoke from the heart, unafraid of losing a million-dollar endorsement, more concerned with uplifting their people.

Viola Beach is an album that, against all odds, leaves you with a smile on your face.

Similarities to She And Him abound, but minus Zooey's showtune splendour, the vulnerability in Caitlin's voice chimes as true as the clink of a quarter in an old jukebox.

Convalescent, and luminescent.

Their eagerness to look into music's past only serves to make them sound timeless.

Cheetah isn’t bad, but it could be the work of lesser producer.

Written in the patient gaze of parenting for similarly patient ears, ‘The Dream Of Delphi’ is by no means as immediate as her previous work. With it, Khan has pieced an intuitive scrapbook of first-time motherhood and, with the turn of every page, uncovers chapters of potential in who her daughter may become. It is a symbiotic symphony to unlocking unknown parameters of love.

Perkins clearly has stories to tell of difficult journeys travelled, but unfortunately it comes across as yet another Yank putting out the roadside campfire with dribble from his harmonica.

It’s a smart, self-aware and compellingly imperfect record with a pretty unique point of view.

While the Nicolas Jaar, Liars and Lindstrøm remixes add synthetic space to ‘Sleeping Ute’, ‘A Simple Answer’ and a Daft-ly disco ‘Gun-Shy’ respectively, it’s the fragile new tracks ‘Smothering Green’ (a muted, modernist Cole Porter clatter), ‘Taken Down’ (falsetto Fleet Foxes) and the two versions of ‘Everyone I Know’ (one churchy, one space-jazz meltdown renamed ‘Will Calls (Marfa Demo)’) that are the real treasures here.

There are moments of brilliance on both records. ... Thematically, ‘Everything Sucks’ and ‘Everything is Beautiful’ fail to deliver anything new.

An excellent third album. [23 Sep 2006, p.31]

This is technically the fourth full-length they've released, and it seems AV don't quite reinvent themselves under pressure so much as contort themselves into bigger, better and weirder ways to take everybody's ears on a massive tangent.

They normally strike a few bullseyes per record though, and so it is with Hold It In.

Where he once seemed like a busking Rodney Trotter, he’s now left the loser affectations behind and is more like Del Boy, a man aiming for bigger and better things and becoming a national institution in the process. Lovely jubbly.

Truly, Weller's back. And this time, he rules.

Stripped of her day-to-day outfit Vivian Girls' fence of lo-fi fuzz, Katy Goodman's faultless way with Technicolor pop melodies blazes through La Sera's second album.

It is thrilling, weird, danceable, frequently inspired and Day-Glo to a fault.

Just as their previous fetish for deep distortion and a limited set of chords did, pink-hued noir here can prove to be something of an acquired taste. However, it never sinks into unintentional parody, earning it the acclaim of sounding like nothing else currently out there.

While he shouldn’t have to answer all his critics, Bridges does so on ‘Good Thing’ with remarkable aplomb. If he was indeed once a rehash of the past, this time he can’t be tied to one specific time, past or present.

This is business as usual: string-laced Americana that ranks alongside other literate types such as The Shins or Midlake.

Daft Punk have pulled off a brilliant wheeze by re-inventing the mid-'80s as the coolest pop era ever. And not even the officially approved retro-kitsch cool of Madonna's lukewarm excursions into post-Daft terrain but all the bubble-permed, sports-jacket-and-jeans excesses they can muster.... Mostly, though, 'Discovery' is simply fantastic pop...

It’s not something you’ll be hankering to press play on repeatedly. Not that it’s bad music: excuse the pretension, but it really is an experience; one that would lend itself better to accompanying Jaar’s physical art installations than a standard album listen.

S.C.U.M may still have a way to go before they truly master their references and get a handle on their lofty metaphors, but their debut is a hymn to maturation.

‘Your Favorite Toy’ is a few more tracks of that depth away from being the most vital Foo Fighters record since 1997’s ‘The Colour and the Shape’. For now, at least, they have remembered that no-frills punk, played fast and loud, suits them much better than middle-of-the-road dad-rock.

In this brilliant new time of directional change, the piano-led analogue boy is practically smiling his words out on the Mark Ronson-produced 'Ballad Of Old What's His Name'.

Despite all this seemingly new wave-laden, impeccably cool, retrograde influence, 'Make Up The Break Down' is indisputably now.

Put it this way - if you don't loathe the likes of Starsailor and Travis with every fibre of your being then there's absolutely no fucking chance whatsobleedingever that you'll like Ikara Colt.

A modern, commercially-viable, carefully crafted rock record that also sounds violent, deranged and desperately, incurably sad all at the same time.