In some ways, Microshift is Hookworms’ equivalent of that album [Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion]. A band with an established sound embracing electronics and pop songwriting like never before, but managing to do so without it feeling remotely forced, and finding their biggest audience yet as a result.

The new release of Twin Fantasy never panders to the original. Nor does it feel like Toledo is forced to adhere to the limitations of his previous work. It’s a development, not a remake; the full realisation of what was always supposed to be--and it sounds all the more incredible for it.

It's fun, it's queer and your straight friends will like it too because, ultimately, it's about being less alone. Everyone can relate to that. And the world genuinely feels like a brighter place with PWR BTTM in it.

Through 11 effortlessly sophisticated and deeply-layered torch songs, Adele's powerful vocals glide between thunderous roars and rib-cracking falsettos over large dramatic piano swells to fuzzy, warm lower-register rumblings. Ballads are bold and demanding.

He continues to hold our attention as he makes sense of his own findings on God and race and legacy and perfection.

Sulphur English strips the band’s sound of much of the colour and light that they had increasingly let in over their past few releases, to send listeners careening, disorientated, into a dark and stormy night of the soul, with little promise of a brighter dawn.

This is not a record for the faint-hearted. Hell, it should come with a health warning, but if you give it a chance you'll be rewarded with the most innovative electronic albums in a long time.

Guidance is not only Russian Circles' best album yet, but a standard-bearer for heavy, guitar-based instrumental music.

Big Thief’s most empathic and ethereal work yet. U.F.O.F. is by no means an album that will grab for your attention, it just rests in the atmosphere like a wavelength, waiting for you to tune in – and you’ll be richly rewarded when you find it.

On what could very well be the band’s breakthrough record, they continue to trade on the values that have won them so many fans up until now--deeply unfashionable concepts such as patience, simplicity and reliability.

It encourages you to empathise with the subjects of the songs, and therefore adds some light to the melancholy. It scores highly because it weaves all these scenarios and tales over subtle yet richly varied music. For Mark Kozelek this is yet another career highlight.

It is undoubtedly made to be heard in one sitting. It may not always be a comfortable listen over the course of its hour, it will unflinchingly show you its grotesque beauty, and each listener's reactions and visions produced in the face of such peculiarities will be unique.

IDLES believe that community spirit and togetherness will be what ultimately guides us closer to happiness as a whole, and in Joy As An Act Of Resistance they’ve created a monumental banner for the movement.

Peasant is a pretty staggering departure from the massed ranks of 2017’s batch of albums. It is a restorative, headstrong burst of inspiration from an artist with the courage to execute his vision without compromise. If ever an album deserved to rise above the fray, it is this one.

Our natural world may not need artistic representation, but there’s few better to reflect upon it than Tim Hecker.

This is an album that is constantly unfolding over its themes, so the only option remaining is that of acceptance of her ingenuity. If you want to make it easy, you can acknowledge the density and move on. If you want to understand the core of the record, you'll have plenty of details to work through for what now seems like forever.

Dose Your Dreams creates a vividly realised world I love to visit. Once I press play, I feel compelled to see it through to the end. Other listeners will tackle it in chunks.

The term 'masterpiece' is thrown around a lot.

Future Islands have crafted the best ten of their career.

The death enveloping Skeleton Tree doesn't get in the way of his limitless sense of emotional elaboration.

Genuine, life-affirming innovation is hard to come by, but you recognise it when it asks more questions than it gives answers. I challenge you to find an album that's less intended for straight-up consumption.

Each song compulsively and unabashedly recalls fragments from their oeuvre but when unified these fragments are cleaner, more assured, and more essential, than possibly anything they’ve thrown at us before. From head to toe, front to back, it bangs; but more importantly, it actually has something new to say.

Are We There is one of those rare albums when you stop listening to the music as simply a combination of chords, melodies and carefully constructed instrumentation, but as essential, emotional communication from one person to another.

Reduced to his own devices, our gentleman hero has crafted both the most intrinsically soulful, emotional, and heartfelt record of his career. No less, he's delivered on one of music's greatest archetypes--and with aplomb.

With Eagle already standing as one of the peaks of modern folk music, we would not necessarily have expected to hear another knockout record from her, but there’s no denying Semper Femina stands toe-to-toe with her opus.

Take Me Apart doesn't feel desperate to reach for anything, it is comfortable, prepared for whatever may come, much like its bearer. Greatness hasn't sounded this natural in this arena for some time. This is everything.

Heartless is a triumphant metal album, and is yet another entry on the list of arguments for Pallbearer being among the few bands in the genre’s peak echelon today. With Heartless, Pallbearer has laid down the gauntlet for the entire metal genre to even contend for its album of the year.

The album takes a few central tenets of dance music of the last couple of decades, and sends it fearlessly spiralling into a shimmering vision of the future. It is possibly something that will bemuse some, but absolutely enthral those willing to use it to spur the imagination--and that is often the sign of a truly provocative and thoughtful artwork.