This is an album in possession of a rare innocence and charm.

If ‘The Messenger’ was everything anyone could want a Johnny Marr solo record to be, Playland is pretty much all anyone could hope for as a follow-up.

The album may seem short at only nine tracks, but there are enough ideas crammed into Curve Of The Earth to call it one of the most well rounded records of 2016.

Throughout ‘Open Wide’, Inhaler display a powerful confidence that’s impossible to resist. Comforting, cathartic and heaps of fun.

Classically trained, the breadth of Ainsworth’s talent is laid bare on Darling Of The Afterglow.

Intelligent and visceral in equal measure, PUP is effortlessly cool, charmingly nerdy and wholly brilliant.

Goodnight Unknown is another understated treasure from the prince of the perpetually bruised heart.

It gleams like a skate-park erected in the clouds, and this is your invitation to strap on shin-pads, get up there and carve up some cumulonimbus.

Startling from the first listen... the band are heavier, more menacing, more rhythmic than ever. [19 Jun 2004, p.55]

This is an impeccable debut: two feet in the past and one open mouth pointing towards a very bright future.

Though there’s always a lot happening on the surface, at the core of ‘Baby’ are songs so finely hewn that they’re never overshadowed.

With this heavy payload of imagery, it's a miracle that Sparklehorse's third album of backwoods blues hasn't ended up a junk shop of Southern Gothic clichés. Old dog Tom Waits even wades in, hollering like an incestuous uncle on 'Dog Door', while Linkous' rusty cabin music creaks insalubriously beneath. But that's just the first of many wonders of this exceptional record.

Urban Turban is more grin-inducing than a piano-playing cat.

It’s no reinvention, but there are subtle tweaks here and there for a polished record that cements their place as a kick-ass rock’n’roll band with longevity.

Another slice of NYC art-punk brilliance that channels their surroundings with an authentic growl.

Paying tribute to the music that they love while staking their place in rock’s future. For a young band to think of their career in those terms takes a lot of confidence, but it pays off on this debut. It’s one to last.

One of the most frivolously brilliant slabs of shiny retro-pop anyone's had the chutzpah to release all year. [20 Nov 2004, p.56]

Overall, ‘times’ is an incredibly cohesive collection of slide-across-the-kitchen-floor dance-pop bangers that encourage you to hold on to the good times. SG Lewis’ long-awaited debut album is a much-needed beacon of light.

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.

For the most part, this is an album of love songs: not in the trite, wishy-washy sense of the word but as an elemental and all-consuming force.

You get the overarching sense that they are more than a little bored with the current musical landscape and want to inject it with their own restless brand of creativity. If this is art rock, then the Shears brothers have crafted a pretty damn impressive collage.

Yet it all hangs inexplicably together, thanks to heavy doses of charm and wit, its ability to propel your emotions from thrilled to weepy to lovelorn in a trice--and the promise that Kiran Leonard might grow into a properly important figure in British rock.

Bridges’ latest offering maintains the traditional elements of old-school soul heard on his previous work but introduces a new, vibrant, almost luminous aesthetic, comparable to the likes of Snoh Aalegra and Brent Faiyaz.

We’re left with a sprawling, obvious, uber-commercial, stoopid punk-pop album that might just stop five million American idiots from voting for a war-mongering Republican baby-slaughterer when they grow up. Works for me.

She steps up the challenge, revelling in the church-like acoustics and delivering a heart-stopping 'Cosmic Love'. 'Dog Days Are Over' is rendered as fresh and powerful as when you first heard it, rather than the supermarket shopping soundtrack it's now become.

Excepting curious conceptual moments like massage fantasy ‘Lonely At The Top'--Platform can concentrate on being beautiful electronic pop: think The Knife 2.0, perhaps.

Eye Contact is a piercing glimpse into an imagined Utopia of infinite possibility, as if they've focused their years of digital psychedelic jamming into a single beam, and fired it beyond a horizon peered at in vain by their peers.

She allows herself to revel in her own possibility of healing, singing directly about her past and who she wants to become, letting her formidable voice guide the way: cool, curious, full of momentum.