The Age of Immunology honors a potentially fading ideal. Should it all come crashing down, it's hard to think of a more fitting, colorful, and ambitious tribute than the one Vanishing Twin have given us here.

They continue to plough the same furrow as on their previous albums, yet with a little more urgency, consistency and richness that some of their earlier work lacked. There is a simplicity here, both in terms of lyrical content and musicality.

Fantasy Empire is the sound of a band modifying their sound rather than totally changing direction and whilst their spontaneity may have been tempered by their new ways of recording, their intensity and creativity remains very much intact.

Jason Pierce and co. have earned a victory lap. Thankfully, rather than gallivanting about the record, the band are still very much engaged, crafting what can feel like a Greatest Hits of all original material.

Islands is truly singular work, emotionally affecting, funky, infectious and philosophical.

All in all it's a time of self-expression and free-revelation, common features that make Love's Crushing Diamond so very beguiling, and warm its very earnest center.

Spelling continuously reinvents herself and her sound. What at first listen may turn many off bears repeated listening, through the often terrifying kaleidoscope of sound is a melodic pop centre.

At their peak, and not infrequently on Snares Like a Haircut they’re within touching distance, No Age are one of the most thrilling rock bands on this planet.

Ultimately though, it is about mixing disparate influences and seeing how they blend together. Happily for all of us, this approach works brilliantly.

They motor through these fifteen tracks with an energy and a precision that is a joy to hear, with the needles in the red all the way.

Unpacked individually, there’s a lot to love about each track and a laundry list of potential inspirations.

Freddie is an easily digestible trap album, not revolutionary or underwhelming but average considering Gibbs’ catalogue of work.

Jenny Hval has never come closer to a universal truth. If she’s often felt to have been speaking from on high, Hval has never been more purely human than on The Practice of Love.

Named both in recognition of this being the band’s fourth studio album and for the passing of lead singer Jeremy Bolm’s mother from cancer in 2014, Stage Four is a towering record. Few albums this year, if any, have felt more capable of telling such vivid, striking stories with such clarity and palpable emotion.

Channelling the vivacity of the Beatnik poets in her hurtling metre and arrestingly forensic imagery, Tempest unravels a modesty in the metaphysics all the more powerful for its naturalism.

It’s her most complete-feeling album to date, and never seems like Halo is trying to please anyone but herself. Yet, she also manages to create emotional bridges through the sincerity of her compositions.

Hadreas let a little light in, upped the production values and expanded his sonic repertoire, creating a near-masterpiece of hair-raising emotional evocation.

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.

Blood Bitch an interesting step forward from previous record Apocalypse, girl. It takes the guilty, ominous tone of that record and transforms it into something transcendent.

If Springsteen’s characters aren’t all that multifaceted, they’re at least part of songs that are. ... When Springsteen cuts into his characters’ pain is when Western Stars stands out as one of his best late-period works.

Wildheart is a leap in the right direction but Miguel hasn't shed off all of pop's restrictive trappings just yet.

Even at five tracks, Heterocetera is a strong, visceral electronic record that maintains its ambition and intensity from beginning to end.

Ephorize signals the true genesis of a fully realized, ambitious voice in hip hop.

With Hope Downs, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have adroitly taken their trademark sound and expanded it into a thoroughly enjoyable album--and they’ve done it in rapid time.

It shimmers with an enchanting beauty that this writer at least has yet to find in any other song this year.

Burn Your Fire, through increased complexity of instrumentation, creates a new dynamic--the vocal is more understated and reserved, less elusive and divergent --it's autonomy partially tethered by the whole ensembles balanced interrelation.

Here, Cardi’s explosive personality translates flawlessly into confidence-saturated rhymes about hardships, love and success.

Singularity would be a dependable record to show someone in the process of discovering the wider world of electronic music, as it is exceptionally accessible, yet at the same time I feel that that same sense of accessibility and friendliness is what is wrong with it.