All You Can Eat is easily the band's funniest and most diverse offering to date, their confidence coming out in full force this time around.

Sleep Well Beast sees The National flourish with candid lyrics and diverse song craft, embodying the band’s continuing evolution and life’s constant change.

Between the obvious stylistic growth of Shakey Graves and Rose-Garcia’s ramped up creative appetite, Can’t Wake Up presents itself as the definitive album of the project’s discography. It masters its own atmosphere, swelling with confidence at each and every turn while inviting all who listen to join in. It only gets stronger as it goes on.

The centre of gravity around which they've always spun, the human heart of Berninger's lyrics that was always caked under middle-class anxiety and "quote-unquote upscale tropical funeral" surrealism, has never been easier to find. This tension between open-heartedness and discursive, tangential songwriting--let's call it the distance between simplicity and complexity, for closure's sake--is the paradox on which this album is built, and to that brilliant balancing act you can always return when it feels like it's losing the thread.

The run starting at "XO" is the real DROGAS Light: a summery shimmer of pop-rap which hits breathtaking highs with the delicate jazzy musings of "King Nas", or "Happy Timbuck2 Day"'s Tribe Called Quest-esque tribute to a legendary Chicago DJ. The other album, where the Wave section of the album name is derived, which loosely comprises the first half of the album and revolves around a mythical group of vengeful drowned slaves, isn't just Lupe Fiasco's best but easily one of the greatest albums I've heard in recent memory.

D'Agostino remains one of music's most enigmatic yet intensely relatable figures. A voice like a car engine cutting in and out and the discursive, layered nature of his songwriting ensures the full impact of Empty Country won't land for several listens. This, if anything, is just another notch on its list of strengths.

Iconoclasts is pretty much a complete 180 from any of Anna's previous output. That may scare some long time fans, but let this fellow Anna lover ease your mind because this album is pure bliss.

Across all of Blue Weekend, one thing is very clear – this is Wolf Alice’s best offering to date, and clearly one of those albums that qualifies as an event. It’s emotionally stirring, sonically riveting, and just as unpredictable as always. It’s the full realization of everything Wolf Alice ever aspired to be: poignant and melodic, raucous and edgy, and certainly every possible shade in between.

Singing Saw is one of those albums that immediately captures your interest, but offers enough depth and hidden intricacies to make every subsequent listen just as rewarding.

While m b v is a record that is more than capable of standing on its own, at the same time it also sounds exactly like the sort of thing that we might have expected My Bloody Valentine to produce two decades ago, and this noticeable lack of allegiance to the present is perhaps the most potent thing about this entire revisionist affair.

With furious drama, callbacks to older tracks, and references to their own unwieldy name, the band’s fourth record would make for a theatrical swan song. Lord knows the revolving door that is their lineup lends itself to an unexpected and sudden demise. The World Is, however, appear to be tighter and more focused than ever before.

Every song possesses a distinctive identity, a different color fleshed out by its instrumentation. And the lyrical wonders Lamar works on top of all this is even more worthy of praise.

No one could have crafted this masterpiece quite like Nick Cave, and the staggering amount of material over his nearly four decade long career doesn’t prepare for what we have here. This stands as possibly his greatest achievement, as much a sorrowful exploration as a loving sendoff only for his fans, but more importantly, for himself.

A standalone masterpiece. It’s the kind of album capable of captivating a new audience; an evolution from traditional Irish troubadour folk that is both dark and masterful.

American Football has come back with a true classic whether you consider it post-rock, indie, emo or all of the above. Fans of all of those genres should be able to find lots to love about this album, and I'll tell you one thing, it's as addicting as music can be in this day and age.

If you're a fan of ambient, new age or soft folk music, there's not much here that you won't like. I can't think of many other albums where a harp is so prominent and the chilling, reverb-soaked vocals are a perfect compliment to the misty imagery that Julianna and Mary are able to solicit throughout the entire 42-minute runtime.

It is all about being strong. It reaches out and tries to help make sense of it all. It's a comforting empathy. The stories are intensely personal but are so easily transferable beyond their original inspiration.

Olsen has created an undeniable stunner that should go down as one of the strongest folk albums of the year.

The Film is that rare kind of collaborative effort that sees both parties' voices enhanced into something distinct, marked by careful restraint and caustic volatility. .... The Film is one to be treasured.

To describe this group's efforts as excellent or even superb doesn't do their record proper. American Dollar Bill is the record to the end of the world, maybe even to the world as it is right now. If it makes you afraid, then that's very okay. They probably want it that way.

Whatever voodoo made their unapproachable sound so damn fun and cathartic is completely gone. In its place is a something altogether darker and uglier, but ultimately more brilliant and enrapturing than ever before. You Won't Get What You Want is Daughters finest moment and everything I’ve wanted.

All the characteristics of JID's music appear in full force: the attention-grabbing beat switches equalled only by his effortless changeups in flow, absolutely absurd rhyme schemes and storytelling chops, and features that range from fantastic (Earthgang on their fun shit, a more fired-up Yasiin Bey than we've heard in the better part of a decade and a disarmingly beautiful cameo from James Blake) to the banal (21 Savage and Lil Durk, sounding exactly like you'd expect them to). ... Fun, idiosyncratic and personal.

The league Big|Brave are continuously uncovering is one of their own: not explicitly inviting, but altogether demanding and utterly rewarding.

Even with its minor misstep, Songs of a Lost World is a singularly sombre picture of triumph, a band in their collective 60s still making music so vital and beautiful it can genuinely steal the words from your mouth and the heat from the room.

UGLY is a headlong tumble into deep waters, careening sharply off the edges of decency and screaming out for meaning as it goes, arse over teakettle into the unknown. Follow it down if you want, just untie that rope around your waist before you do: this is the kind of fall you take at terminal velocity or not at all.

At its best, Overgrown brings to mind Frank Sinatra's iconic In The Wee Small Hours, a record that acts as almost a thematic analogue in its lonely tone and ultimate embrace of love as a painful yet beautiful emotion.

This is much more of a traditional rock record than anything else Frank has done, and that’s a good thing because it means that it’s probably the most consistent album he’s made.

The Electric Lady is also a dazzling artistic statement, a fiendishly clever endeavor that oozes enough feminine charm, wit and charisma to endow dozens of regular pop starlets with.