A record that is surprising, affecting and invigorating in its honesty.

Even if ‘Painless’ occasionally settles into a consistent, thudding groove at times, when Yanya goes full pelt, she’s at her very best.

The simple fact she's intent on change makes her and the rest of her career infinitely more intriguing.

A striking funereal stomp, considering its bleak subject matter, it really shouldn't be quite as sensationally sexy as it is.

It's an unassumingly great record that exists solely to celebrate the pleasures of making a gigantic, melodious racket.

A clearly adult, unfashionably sensitive document, all grace and understatement, experimental through what it leaves out, and the effects it plants in the background.

It’s the softest of her records, yet perhaps the most emotionally violent. .... If this truly is the end of her story, it’s hard to imagine a more heartfelt way to lay Ethel Cain to rest.

The band dub these 2022 sets as works-in-progress, and say that none of its members are precious about the songs, a problem that thankfully doesn’t bely this release. You sense even better is to come. ‘Live At Bush Hall’, then, offers a remarkable snapshot of a band in transition, one willing to push on and not let circumstances stand in the way of what they love doing most.

Significant Changes is at once both ludicrously fun and inquisitive, knowing exactly when to fuse Jayda G’s learnings and passions into music that’s, quite clearly, full of heart and wisdom.

Gives hope to a hip-hop stuck in a mire of mediocrity. [18 Jun 2005, p.64]

Hopefully Total Control can continue because, brutal as it is, Typical System is the year's finest punk album.

Towards ‘Blue Water Road’’s conclusion, things start to drift a little, ‘Everything’ feeling longer than its three-minute-27-second runtime and the Thundercat and Ambre-starring ‘Wondering/Wandering’ not quite landing as memorably as you’d hope. For the most part, though, this album finds Kehlani in spectacular form – softer, stronger and better than ever.

From the rebellious energy that dances across the album to the twelve-minute shape-shifting epic of ‘Angel’ that closes out the record with giddy excitement, Working Men’s Club don’t know how to be boring.

Intimate and inventive, it’s a beautiful exercise – and one that could provide a bridge between last year’s ‘Any Human Friend’ and the musician’s planned return to melancholic material on her next original work. For now, though, she’s given us a rich new world burrow into, filled with soothing familiarity but brimming with the excitement of the new.

The Cribs’ best album in 11 years.

After exploring the isolation of feeling like a “nobody“, Mitski’s explorations of being somebody prove just as compelling.

There are a few radio-friendly moments. Happily, they're so sufficiently steeped in classic rawk that songs like 'Curl Of The Burl' don't sound like cynical stabs.

This resulting debut is a masterpiece of desert blues; blending American guitar licks with Malian groove.

It’s an impressive step-up from an artist who was already operating miles ahead of their peers. ‘soft scars’ can be an emotionally excruciating experience, but it finds yeule connecting with their humanity in ways that seemed impossible just one year ago.

Returning to psychedelia of a more modern variety after the Polaris-winning 'Andorra' saw him pegged by some as a '60s revisionist, electronic whiz Dan Snaith's latest offering is a triumph to top even that masterstroke.

Narrower in scope than 'Odelay' but more immediate in impact, it's clearly been conceived as an accompaniment to our hedonistic habit of choice, the last great party album of the millennium.

Filled with both a clarity of instrumentation and thought, this is an album of undeniably mature work. And one which knows how to effect a large emotional impact without unsightly flexing of the muscles.

Against the odds, 'Think Tank' is a success, a record which might not mean much to Strokes fans but which shows Blur's creative spark is undimmed even while their stomach for the pop fight fades.

Intriguingly adventurous, ‘Bird’s Eye’ marks Lenae expanding her musical repertoire and exploring new vistas – an ambitious accomplishment.

Where that debut album focused on Slater finally becoming the songwriter he had the potential to be, its follow-up reworks and refines his strong storytelling. Here, the frontman enriches his lyrics and pairs them with a dash of chaotic energy brought in by his bandmates and the unity between them.

This is both a fine and fun album. [21 May 2005, p.65]

'Grinderman' is an almost defiantly edgy record.

Making relevant, accessible, uncringey protest music in this day and age is such a difficult task that most artists have decided not to bother. Anohni has been brave enough to take that risk, and the most vital album of recent times is the reward.