‘…Ocean Blvd’ might deal with some major existential questions, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had and cements Del Rey’s status as one of modern music’s most intriguing songwriters.

The overall lack of lyrics--the most repeated line on the 10-track record is a simple, wistful “oooh”--is only a positive, letting the listener get fully, deeply lost in the band’s fertile psychedelic world.

Prisoner isn’t quite up to the career-best standards of its predecessors, but it’s a remarkably focused and effective successor nonetheless.

This, his third album and major-label debut, stretches this sea of sound even further, ebbing and flowing from ethereal opener "Never Be The Same," to the folky strum of "For Good."

Central Cee could easily remain hidden behind his signature mystique, but instead tells the story of a boy turned man all while on the world’s stage. No smoke and mirrors, the album is authentically Cench every step of the way.

It could easily be a self-pitying album, one ready to dwell in the wreckage of incidents, but instead keeps picking up and moving on; providing a guide to how to keep on keeping on even when it feels like whatever you do is going to end in devastation.

This is a creative period, one suspects, that both fans and White alike will look back on as one of his most complete and satisfying yet.

The result is a fourth album both back-to-basics in a Ramone-next-door sort of way, but with renewed purpose and attitude, and eyeing new paths of punk-rock progress.

In places it’s a bit samey, marred by a shortage of songs. But The New Life is, nonetheless, a must-listen.

Mainly a deep pool of blissful, sedentary festival listening.

Who Me?, then, is a weird, loveable record to file alongside Wauters’ labelmate and touring buddy Mac DeMarco.

It's a collection of ludicrously fresh-sounding, short and sharp material (the majority of tracks are under two-and a-half minutes) that confirms he's in the midst of a seriously impressive rebirth.

Eels’ most complete and self-contained record, arguably the epitome of their ouvre and a record that places E – in his own gruff, xylophone-toting way –alongside the great downtrodden romantics: Cohen; Rufus Wainwright; Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields; Nick Cave.

Full of distortion-drenched vocals and slacker guitar lines, Yucca is a brilliantly messy thing.

A record filled with such emotional scope and range that it's tailor-made to showcase Lanegan's world weary roar. [24 Jul 2004, p.47]

Often, cover records are dismissed as simply a bit of fun or as an indulgent aside to an artists’ original output, but when Cat Power does it, it’s nothing less than soul-nourishing.

Displaying an amazing musical ear, as he’s picked monstrously riveting instrumentals to rap confidently on, Earl Sweatshirt’s latest feat feels so effortlessly him. And there’s not much higher praise than that.

Unlike Shears’ 2018 heart-on-sleeve solo debut, it’s pure escapism and his most effortless-sounding set since bursting out of the traps nearly 20 years ago.

They do propulsive pop-rock better than anyone. [11 Nov 2006, p.43]

That same battle between tension and relaxation runs throughout, fueling this understated gem of an album.

These songs may well do that all on its own, and its certainly a marvellous cap on a two-year campaign that did just about everything right--but it’s also more than that. Sucker Punch is the story of a young adult whose tales of friendship, love and more aren’t just relatable because they’re supposed to be--they simply are.

The volume remains punishing, but this record triumphs in melodic subtlety, political nuance and conceptual clarity.

It demands that you listen to it in this moment, not that you give it an easy ride because this is the man who made ‘Heroes’; and its songs more than live up to the demand.

He sounds similarly out of it on the dreamy-as-hell pair ‘Drunk And On A Star’ (“I’ve gone dizzy, like a ship/ When that water comes into it”) and ‘Ferris Wheel’ (“Well I lose my mind, sometimes”). By the end of this sublime record, you’ll have lost yours too.

Ctrl’s strength is how it doesn’t strive to be one thing over the other. It effortlessly winds between narratives and genres like it’s child’s play. This isn’t a star in the making, it’s a fully-fledged talent who’s practically showing off.

It was a savvy decision to recruit The Blessed Madonna: the result is a collection exciting, genre-splicing remixes that you could genuinely imagine hearing in the club. It may not have been the album celebration Lipa was planning, but ‘Club Future Nostalgia’ feels like a party all the same.

His debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ scratched gently at the surface of a songwriter of real detail and skill, but second time around he digs real deep for a wiser, weightier record stuffed with sax-soaked rock epics that touch on life and death, love and heartbreak, rage and regret.

Still, it remains a challenge to crack their ice-cool exterior, to really feel things as they feel - but does that matter? The Strokes are, and have always been, a band that looks great at arm's length - and consequently, 'First Impressions Of Earth' remains, in the best way, untouchable: the first - indeed, maybe the last - word in New York City cool.