Despite the album's likable, glistening production, though, the duo mostly chooses to dismiss the darkness rather than embrace it—emphasizing a pop veneer that is bold, bright, and, well, a little bit boring.

The Body's latest exercise in amplified bleakness, a blend of muck and misery whose existence almost requires a term stronger than “doom” to succinctly and conveniently explain it. To call The Body’s music “doom” is tantamount to calling the rapture an unexplained and coincidental spike in lengthy vacations.

A fuller, more measured affair, In Flesh Tones is an impeccable weaving of threads.

Throughout, I’m Not Your Man is a meandering undercurrent of predatory slyness, advancing with a slack but completely controlled swagger.

Wicked City proves that Jockstrap have nothing if not range, and secures their place as one of the UK’s most intriguing new bands.

Quiet the Room is a worthy addition comparable to Julianna Barwick's The Magic Place and The Innocence Mission's We Walked in Song, chamber folk reveries so entrenched in their own little worlds you can practically live inside them.

Outside Closer weaves an oddly distinctive set of roundelays between the Air-like poppiness and cheery melancholia of the negatives and the Massive Attack jams with The Clash in Reykjavik melancholia of winter 72, concluding with two of the most depressing songs I’ve ever heard.

For a band where constructing songs into rocket-fueled crescendos is their biggest strength, too often does A Black Mile to the Surface fail to take advantage of any momentum it builds, often taking the wrong fork on an ascent to a splendid finale.

Ambitious, varied and unquestionably fun, this is one of the most joyously unpredictable records of the year.

The tightest tunes here tend to be the mid-tempo ones, or the ones with the cleanest production.

On Your Own Love Again is a record about that struggle with transmuting feeling into expression. The grand themes of the album are heavily understated but, well, that’s kind of the point.

As snobbish as that may sound, you have to lose yourself in Wavering Radiant to hear and feel the big picture.

If they are willing to try out different moods and feelings, while still using that winning formula of tones and instruments, they could be a great band. On Mordechai, Khruangbin gets one step closer.

Lovesick Utopia is fairly lightweight and doesn’t grab the attention in the way that most of the other tracks do, and while Keep Moving is accompanied by a great video (co-produced by Wilson herself), it comes off as an imitation of a Jessie Ware track. These are minor complaints though, as the long period leading up to this record—not to mention the time afforded for additional audio work due to the coronavirus pandemic—means Wilson has had the space to hone her sound and deliver upon the potential her earlier releases promised.

At times danceable and thoroughly emotive purge.

Lenses Alien is a thick, abundantly ornate listen that overawes as much as it enthralls.

Dark and sonically cavernous, Marshall's fourth release as King Krule fills the innermost spaces of his soul with glacial rhythms that vacillate with tension and release.

This music is intensely free, ecstatic and original. But make no mistake - it’s very, very hard to listen to.

It kicks ass.

It’s an occasionally uplifting, but mainly standard, declaration that suggests they’re currently experiencing a transitional phase as songwriters.

By no means a feel-good record, Travels With Myself and Another is rich with enough black humor, sharp perspectives and tight muscular music to make it one of the best rock albums of the year.

A lean 35 minutes, the whole of In Spades eases us into Dulli’s gripping and emotionally fraught accounts, offering a noble reason for us to feel some sympathy for him after letting go some of his defeatist guise.

There certainly isn't a lack of beautifully crafted, well produced music on this release, but if you're looking for a full plate of pop-inspired power ballads, stick to the last two discs.

After you shake off the initial conceptual strangeness, Brill Bruisers builds up to a breathtaking whole.

These are tracks that are built for individual consumption across a myriad of online platforms, so the composition of the album perhaps lessens in importance. Nevertheless, a couple more from the darker end like Free Woman' and Replay would achieve a bit more of the blend I suspect she was going for. Chromatica has its moments, but it isn't an album to play on repeat.

While it is more realized than previous effort The Stand Ins, Okkervil River is showing potential for new direction more than they are showing versatility.

Despite some flaws in its execution, Biophilia does succeed in pushing beyond the already established album-singles-videos model, and the creation of a digital experience to compliment the music feels like a natural progression in the way that music is packaged and consumed.

They simply combine their voices and come up with something unique in the process, which they’ve achieved. I’m interested, though, in how far they take their sound before it reveals any potential lack of versatility.