It's easy to stand in awe at the masterful abrasiveness and thrashing communication of anger and unease on Dog Whistle, but its pacing is an equal wonder to behold and a perfect reason to deem Show Me The Body as ambassadors of hardcore’s future.

This is what the whole record has managed to capture; that truth is indeed a beautiful thing, and it is explored with vulnerability and grace wholeheartedly.

They don't shatter boundaries or expectations, but instead provide a grand, bedrock-solid opus stuffed with 10-tonne emotional blows and tranquillity most indie-pop groups shun.

What elevates Turn Out The Lights is that it’s sensory as well as earnest, personally destabilising while artfully assured; it oscillates in the spilling synaesthesia of panic attacks, the dizzying clarity of epiphany, the paralysing futility of depressive episodes, the unfathomable locus of being okay.

He has further upgraded, re-geared and honed the sound The War On Drugs have been working towards, taking the style and vision of 80s rock titans and updating it to something that sounds truly modern, but with that nostalgic haze.

Though it’s a record perspiring uncertainty and the fear of becoming stagnant, Be The Cowboy is Mitski’s most personal and confrontational thus far. It’s violently poignant and the mark of an artist who’s barely tapped into her singularity.

The Julie Ruin have moved closer to the show tunes influenced half of punk, and further from the grunge influenced half. In its honest mapping of the experiences of being a women involved in music scenes though, it is consistent with the very best of their previous work.

Very few records are able to transport the listener to a different world full of visceral, palpable feeling for even just one listen. A Moon Shaped Pool manages to do it over and over again with the feelings deepening rather than cheapening with each successive listen.

Nothing feels forced. The ease with which the compositions flow and lyrics are sung is something any aspiring musician should hope to accomplish. case/ lang/ veirs wrote an album that captures the beauty in pain and the flaws in magnificence.

He wants to continue to be happy the way he is and that contentment is helping him to produce some of his finest work. For a musician, that's truly unique.

The Talkies is rough around the edges, is of a debased, primal nature, yet is incredibly on-point with the unsettling atmosphere it communicates. Girl Band is officially the crown jewel of Irish punk, if a beautifully horrific crown jewel.

If you can convince yourself of TMLT being a novel, a musical, or five EPs crammed into one record, the experience becomes more immersive and rich.

Fitting snugly right alongside the likes of Vashti Bunyan and Julie Byrne, Bare is of the class that just may stick with you for a lifetime.

Whatever headspace produced Swimming, it captures this perfectly.

It may not be one you play often, but it's also one you will never forget. It's omnipresent. Words fail.

Whilst an extraordinary album from start to finish--there are moments that really stand out.

The world it creates is in many ways richer, more affecting and bolder than the ones that came before.

After years of delivering on her promise, it comes as no surprise that Hiss Spun is as good as it is. The instrumental tracks dance around Wolfe’s soaring vocals and ultimately collide with them perfectly to create a collection of songs that are a joy to listen to.

A Seat At The Table--like the headlines of 2016--is the score of black pain, black rage, black strength and black joy. And for everyone else enjoying the enticing R&B, it's for the rest of us to quiet ourselves, listen, learn and respect.

It's an album that, despite its placement more as high art, isn't afraid to embrace pop music for everything it's worth, managing to be accessible while also challenging, drawing the listener in with familiarity to then unleash upon them this cryptic, paradoxical world that just begs to be explored over and over again.

As a careening, breakneck listen, this will be up there as one of the best of the year.

Slugger is a no-holds-barred art-pop surge of iron-clad beats, and acute lyricism that goes beyond post-breakup reflections and confronts the listener to actually think about the state of being a biological, self-identifying, or perceived female in today’s world and the ardent misogyny they face.

This is not an album for a breakthrough, nor is it a bastion in the storm. It's something grander.

Too Bright is a strident and bold statement from an artist who has finally undone the knot of his past. It won't be the record which brings him mainstream success but it will be the record that frees him from the pigeonholing of his bruised and broken singer-songwriter image.

By having more passion, more energy, more imagination than most of the field combined. By making an album that's weird and wild and I suspect unlike anything else that'll be released this year.

This album is perhaps even more ambitious than its predecessor and, unlike East India Youth's debut, finds the artist stepping out from the shadows to produce a stunning, transformative electronic record.

The production isn't the only platinum facet of LIZZOBANGERS. Her technical ability is unparalleled. She doesn't just summon narratives or tell stories, she uses pace and rhythm and dialect to shape a song.

Unlike so many reissues of late, the out-takes and demos on Painful genuinely do give an insight into how the record was made, how the band honed their sound and what direction they were headed.