Murphy’s music remains grounded in Hercules & Love Affair-style housey electronica but these songs unfurl slowly and unconventionally as they take detours into skulking Grace Jones funk ('Uninvited Guest’), opulent cosmic disco (‘Evil Eyes’) and lush country balladry ('Unputdownable').

Marvel soundtracks have a new gold standard, and it’s this.

A warts-and-all reckoning, his most exhilarating project to date from front to back.

Kill For Love keeps in this spirit, playing with the attention to detail of an art-house movie (and a near 1½-hour running time).

It's fair to say Gaslight are a band who have made people's lives immeasurably better simply by existing; American Slang won't change anyone's world and it's unfair to punish it for not, but we just hoped for… more.

It takes a while to work out what an absolute waste of 21-year-old Londoner Naomi McLean-Daley's incredible talents this album is.

Fresh, modern soul music.

Taken whole, it’s a looping, dense, all-encompassing experience where anger and tenderness bang heads throughout. Marshall’s world is grimier than ever.

This isn’t just a striking return for one of the most individual bands of the last 20 years; it is, musically, an astounding masterpiece. Their finest hour? Quite possibly.

A constantly surprising and relentlessly melodic pleasure.

Is ‘Masquerade’ a classic? Time will tell, and Cardinals have demonstrated the potential to grow into something more special. At the very least, they’ve made a record that’s sadly but beautifully in tune with these times and the scars of where they’re from.

An elegiac, neo-psychedelic collection of labyrinthine naive melodies that's the schizophrenic lovechild of Four Tet and The Magnetic Fields. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

Smith Westerns might not play barre chords, but they're properly good songwriters – smart kids with mean tunes, sharp minds and great record collections.

Wolf Alice are the kind of band that keep on getting better with every record, and here, they raise the bar on themselves once again.

In among the usual awkward, bad sex and sharp-yet-jaundiced eye on what others settle for, there's something unusual for this pair: hope. [12 Nov 2005, p.45]

Full of sombre, skeletal and obliquely confessional songs, it's a crafted collection with ruminations on sex and loss. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.

Sounds like a collection of songs poised to steal the heart of anyone with a bruised soul. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

The emphasis is on soft, kinetic beats, with melodies pulled out of unpromising materials--discordant synths, laser pulses--and it’s one whacking great testament to what dance music can do with a bit of imagination.

They're a band who are defiantly British and who haven't sold their soul to current trends--and they're all the better for it. [20 Jan 2007, p.29]

It feels like the ravishing opium dream of a Victorian gentleman explorer, trying to recreate the exoticism of a long trip abroad through a prolonged period of narcosis.

Ultimately, what makes ‘Heaven Knows’ such a compelling debut is its ability to create British wistfulness. The emotions and sounds are familiar enough to pull you in, and peculiar enough to make you stay.

Unafraid to experiment amongst all the traditionalist, lovelorn expression, the American Football of 2019 is a record both classic in intonation, and future-facing in intent. No longer a band of nostalgia bangers, American Football are back at the top of the pile.

Tassili, too, sounds neither glossily packaged for western audiences, nor too easy to please.

Souls is a sinewy beast, abundant with creativity, and while it ostensibly sounds like most other Maiden albums, there are subtle--or not so subtle--differences.

DIIV need you, and you sure as hell need DIIV.

‘After Hours’ stands as The Weeknd’s strongest record in some time.