Haim take us through a dark place and they do it frankly. But they never let the momentum dip. And they never lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s wonderful to find so many moreish layers in music that was, apparently, composed so quickly. Grab yourself a bean bag and settle in for the long haul with this one.

Notionally a five-track EP, M3LL155X is in its fullest realisation an art film/performance (co-directed and co-choreographed by her), freely available on YouTube.... Musically, it’s a more focused, coherent application of the same kinds of sounds and vocals used on LP1.

A remarkable case of sonic reinvention.

An album heralding a talent as intriguingly fully-formed and distinctive, in its own way, as Marling, Mitchell and Bush.

["A Little Bit Of Everything"] is a thoughtful, mature conclusion to an album that seems to summarise one of the more welcoming trends in American rock

Truly, the album of a lifetime.

I’m pretty sure that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is going to be one of my albums of the year. Because few records managed to be this soothing, and interesting too.

Two Hands is Big Thief’s best to date, and undoubtedly one of the best of the year.

Most of them slot together with an appealing combination of simplicity and enigma – like those little puzzle cubes made of three types of wood. All the while, you can hear the careful questioning with which the songwriters have honed one another’s thoughts until they slot smoothly together to become satisfying tactile emotional experiences.

A surprising meditation on fatherhood, family and friendship. Kendrick Lamar’s work has always been introspective, but Mr Morale and the Big Steppers – with guest spots from artists including Florence Welch, Beth Gibbons, Summer Walker and Sampha – has a delicacy and tenderness to it that is unprecedented for the father of two from Compton, California. Because of this, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers is most redolent of Lamar’s second album good kid, m.A.A.d city.

Wherever you look, there’s a fierce artistic sensibility at work.

The good news is that the perma-brilliant James Blake has flooded his fourth album--Assume Form--with euphoric sepia soul and loved-up doo-wop. His trademark intelligence, honesty and pin-drop production remain intact.

The wonderful Wildflower is cause for celebration, its Zappa/Beasties-style collage of voices, samples, beats, sounds, and especially laughter offering a joyous affirmation of life.

It’s an album fuelled by southern heat, with plenty of grit to boot. Their best yet.

The subtle melodies on The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We can take their time to gleam through the murk. So give it time and space at night, when you’re alone, to allow its wild darkness to shine.

I was rendered wonderfully weightless by a journey that delivered whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context. Trust me: the force is strong in this one.

This is the most country she has ever sounded. The most lavish, too, despite the album having been stripped back to only its most necessary parts.

FKA Twigs emerges the high priestess of R&B's latest corruption, and the world will kneel at the altar.

With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.

The sheer ambition on We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering. ... This may be one of the band’s most personal records, but the rage they capture is universally felt.

It’s a terrific, family-friendly smorgasbord of a record that delivers all the classic ABBA flavours.

It’s all delivered with welcoming warmth and humility, over impeccably buttoned-down soul-funk grooves.

It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.

There's a consistency and homogeneity about the 11 tracks (seven from The Red Shoes, four from The Sensual World) which echoes her work on Aerial, and which lends the project a character entirely its own.

Re-Animator packs global anxiety and paranoia into exquisitely crafted songs. A superb album.

Despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours.

Everything about the album is fragmented, and dizzying in the vein of Samuel Beckett’s Not I or T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land. Even the lyric sheet is a glorious mess.