‘Pink Noise’ is steeped in liberation, not bitterness – it isn’t just a heartening comeback, but an absolutely sparkling pop album.

With soothing production, enveloped with numbing vocals, she leaves you in a state of utopia. This surprise album of 2019 was something we didn’t know we needed.

We Are Not Your Kind is an astonishing record, a roaring, horrifying delve into the guts of the band’s revulsion, a primal scream of endlessly inventive extreme metal and searing misanthropy.

The tension created by the lyrics and music is wonderful and uneasy, ensuring that The Idler is endlessly fascinating and unlike anything else you're likely to hear this year.

Merriweather..., their psych-pop pinnacle, shares the simultaneous relentless complexity and instant simplicity of the best Of Montreal albums, but where Kevin Barnes’ last effort got lost in its clever-clever weirdness, shifting rhythms and textures in a way that felt like standing onboard a bus going down a mountain, Animal Collective’s is an easy, good-natured beast.

Their world - sexual, drug-filled, and occasionally paranoid - has become progressively darker, and as such we find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

‘On Bright Green Field’, in all of its weird, frantic and fantastic glory, they’ve gone above and beyond.

A rich and varied album that courses from atmospheric instrumentals (‘Interlude : Dawn’) to the smooth groove of ‘SDL’, on ‘D-DAY’ Agust D is an unstoppable, thought-provoking force, wrapping up his trilogy in peak form.

In ditching the artifice, Annie Clark has made her most generous and open statement yet.

It’s a shame that on The Mindsweep, Shikari's message is occasionally lost among the madness.

Listen to the beats and you'll find The Neptunes' best work in years. [27 Jan 2007, p.31]

If you want to know about the Glasgow scene which spawned Franz Ferdinand, 'Push Barman To Open Old Wounds' is pretty much essential. [21 May 2005, p.66]

‘Romance’ is the band’s most considered and intricately crafted release yet.

By breaking from what the world might expect from them and letting themselves do whatever the hell they want, they have produced a record that’s experimental, soothing and vulnerable; it’s a thing of great beauty.

‘Folklore’ feels fresh, forward-thinking and, most of all, honest. The glossy production she’s lent on for the past half-decade is cast aside for simpler, softer melodies and wistful instrumentation. It’s the sound of an artist who’s bored of calculated releases and wanted to try something different.

It’s an insane and challenging, ambitious and exceptional work of art.

Expertly curated, every single song in ‘Valentine’s relatively restrained 10-song tracklist feels like a fully-realised gem.

War Music is the best album Refused have ever made. It has more in common with the violent swing of a sledgehammer than any punk record we’ve heard this year.

It’s this delicate placing of guest vocals, personal anecdotes and on-the-street soundbites that make ‘Essex Honey’ the most organised sketchbook, one which perfectly encapsulates this particular moment in time.

Slightly less lo-fi than previous efforts--although as it blends together Slayer, Japanese noisecore and warp-speed prog intricacy, sound recording fidelity is a relative concept. [5 Nov 2005, p.45]

Across 10 air-tight tracks, meticulously crafted and elegantly delivered, it’s an absolute triumph.

The confidence in her voice gives you no reason to doubt her. All the way through this album, the pop star is in the driving seat, both behind the scenes and in the situations she describes in the lyrics. ... ‘Future Nostalgia’ is a bright, bold collection of pop majesty to dance away your anxieties to… if only for a little while.

Divers, her unusually tight fourth album, is full of lofty concepts (‘Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne’ sees time-travelling soldiers wage a futile war on their own ghosts) but her crafty tales, signposted by ornate folk arrangements, rarely outpace your imagination.

Though this is her most creative record to date, the lyrics stick to safer territory.

In the hands of someone less witty and schizoid, a near three-hour epic would be unforgivable, but Merritt at play is frequently magical.

The immediate reference point would be a Swedish Coral to the power of ten--but it's more mental, more hippy and psychedelic. [14 May 2005, p.67]

This is wild music, a celestial cabaret that absorbs and unsettles.

Bad As Me has to rank as a disappointment, since there are no surprises to match Real Gone's sepulchral funk or Orphans'... breathtaking sweep.