If Squid can make daring, experimental music sound as fun as this, then they will take some stopping.

Variety keeps things interesting, but it also allows the duo to flex their musical muscles, and they’ve traded in some of their previous blistering punk for a more relaxed pace on certain tracks, but without sacrificing any intensity.

‘Charm’ boasts a new level of maturity, its creator more poised and at ease than ever before.

A solid slab of new music from her – the perfect soundtrack for a winter of yearning and discontent.

It’s enjoyable and familiar, but retains Billie’s disruptive streak. It’s a brave and resounding first step for an artist with bags of potential and over the next decade, you’ll no doubt see popular music scrabbling to try and replicate what this album does on every level.

Utopia is where art, real life and deep experimentation intersects, and it’s utterly compelling.

It’s not much more than the sum of its influences, but when its influences are this strong, it really doesn’t matter.

'The Czar' is a microcosm of Crack The Skye: thuddingly impressive, richly textured and constantly surprising.

Often ‘Saves the World’ is brutal in its specificity – with devastating effects.

She’s no longer content with being the elusive girl behind the screen, proving she can shapeshift, push boundaries and still keep us hooked – all in under 20 minutes.

The south London grime don delivers a knockout debut that’s brash and pensive in equal measure.

The album’s first half is fantastic.... The album’s second ‘suite’ is mellower and less consistent.

Musically, it’s a soothing sound--think Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, Laura Marling and Tori Amos--that without attentive listening could be mistaken for a pleasant enough electronic-pop record. However, in Half Waif’s quest for some kind of calmness they’ve actually made an album that, inwardly, burns furiously.

Ultra-lo-fi, but an album nonetheless stuffed full of rich melodies and arch lyrical observations.

It’s good to hear Sprints develop on ‘All That Is Over’, but to do so without extinguishing that fire is the fine line they walk.

It isn’t flawless: a few tracks blur together in the middle stretch, and some lyrical moments fall flat. But the integrity and conviction behind the creative statement more than compensate.

Eschewing any grand, overarching statement, The Smile sound – whisper it – quite comfortable within what is now their established aesthetic.

Brimming with the prickling anxiety and stress that’s become commonplace during the pandemic, as well as the comfort Charli XCX has found in a strengthened relationship, it’s a glorious, experimental collection.

Their third album totaling 75 minutes and spread, slightly unnecessarily, over two CDs, it reaches unexpected new heights in the pantheon of 'metal bands who mellowed out'.

Josh Homme and his all-star pals prove the virtue of taking your sweet time on a record that’s as self-assured as it is damn sexy.

Compulsive and conflicted.

With Freetown Sound, he’s made something bold, challenging, uncompromising and overlong--an album, like the man who made it, that’s the sum of its parts and then some.

‘ÁTTA’ is at least the band’s best album since 2005’s monolithic ‘Takk’ made them a household name, and at most a record that gives Sigur Rós plenty more reason to exist in adding some pure and natural soul to this cold and unfeeling world.

Get past the initial jolt of weirdness and you'll find in his delivery a soul-puncturing cry from the very frontlines of life, able to evoke both desperate tragedy and skyscraping joy all at once.

It’s one of the oddest beauties of the year so far.

The style is cool, the moves perfect, but you can take as much of lasting value from a stick of gum as you can from these dank-basement stomps.

I Made A Place is a soft, sumptuous delight. It’s a cult classic, not a bestseller, but we’re pretty sure that Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy wouldn’t have it any other way.

Unlikely to sway anyone not already on board with Richard D. James’ weirdo-funk, Collapse is nevertheless a brilliant, warped addition to a canon like no other.