Where Nothing Feels Natural suffers is in the R&D department. Many of the ideas only make a couple of appearances. ... Still, there’s quite a lot to like here, and it’s mostly due to Greer--the speak-sing existentialism of ‘No Big Bang’, the Everything Goes Wrong-era Vivian Girls homage on ‘Nothing Feels Natural’, the ragged heartbeat of ‘Appropriate’.

While infested by hooks, yet Life Without Sound bears itself with moral clarity and resolve while rocking damn hard.

All in all, Voyager is both a pleasant surprise and an addiction.

Although the performances on Live in Paris are spot on, they don’t fulfil the promise of the concert. It can’t convey the feeling of the floor moving during the chorus of ‘Bury Our Friends’. It lacks the visual component of Tucker and Brownstein kicking and howling while playing.

What Hansen and company have accomplished with Epoch (and their previous albums) can only be described as tapping into the sublime.

By removing its circumstantial baggage entirely, The Wild Heart Of Life is satisfying and uplifting, and continuously so. But it feels in every way--sans the band’s personal serenity--a regression after Celebration Rock.

Encompassing everything from the smallest quibbles of youthful existence to the largest problems facing the world today--all delivered in a slightly cartoony, extremely bombastic and hugely enjoyable package.

Finally, she has stepped out into the light, her outward-facing confidence having infused her music with a timeless joy.

Wiley has curated a project that binds the generations of Grime and acts as the final confirmation of the genre’s return.

However she managed it, whatever we will take from it as it settles, delving further past its placid surface into its cavernous mystery will surely remain one of the year's earliest true pleasures.

While AFI (The Blood Album) may not have the mainstream crossover potential that the band enjoyed a decade ago with Sing the Sorrow and DECEMBERUNDERGROUND, it is still a highly enjoyable album that both diehard fans and anyone looking for massive rock hooks alike should enjoy, despite faltering a bit toward the end.

There is a sturdiness to the xx. The band’s innate talents for melody and texture, even when expressed in the wrong proportions, persist.

The result is a chaos of sound that leaves little direction for the listener.

SOHN doesn’t drown on Rennen, nor does he tread water, sticking within the confines of the music he’s already created. Rennen is SOHN diving into new creative depths, and triumphing.

Its an album free of ego: the mirror isn't directed towards its creator, but clearly rather towards his hope that we will catch some glimpse of ourselves in its murky, softly swirling depths.

Utterly theatrical, it represents without presenting; evokes without mentioning; transports without moving. It's as fake as the time we're living in, and as fascinating as our own decadence.

We've had countless albums predicating calls for mobilisation before, and they're generally provocative and valued but ultimately specious, but on RTJ3 there's a visceral directness that cuts to the aorta.

Goodbye Terrible Youth is not a perfect record by any means--but it is an emotional record, and an affecting one at that.

Glover has delivered an inter-generational, retro-futuristic 11-track history lesson on the healing and inspiring qualities of funk.

Woman is by no means a bad listen, it just isn’t a very original one either.

It’s more of the same, but when it’s this groovy, this killer, this consistently beguiling, that’s absolutely no bad thing.

While Starboy may not be a giant creative risk stretching away and beyond what we've come to expect from The Weeknd (like many of his A list peers such as Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kanye West have done with their albums earlier this year), it's a continuation of Abel's edgy salacious narrative and a complete assassination of pop's thematic normalcy.

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.

Devil Music is unabashed reverence, almost innocuously so, but articulated with thunderous gravity and primitivism, if not focus. It won’t feature on many end of year lists, but it’s a helluva road trip, albeit one you’ll forget a year later.

Jessica Rabbit is a fucking great feminist-punk record, one of the pop highlights of the year, and the best thing they’ve ever done.

Unlike countless hip hop albums that feel slapped together to fit in the artist's favorites alongside the label's, flow unconsidered, each moment of Big Baby feels earned.

It’s an album crammed full of massive singles; the musical equivalent of a table full of gaudy, delicious cupcakes. You know too much of it is probably bad for you, but you can’t help but diving in and sampling each and every one with relish.

Throughout you can’t help but feel the constant swing of life’s moods, channeling through Elias Bender Rønnenfelt to become a drug that’s uplifting, unifying and ultimately deeply entertaining.