Donda 2 is a complex of lacklustre ambling beats twinned with sluggish energy, only occasionally piquing (“We Did It”, “Too Easy”, "Pablo"). In fact, rarely does Ye find any stride. [review is for V2.22.22 Miami version]

The Badfinger-leaning “You” and quasi-Britpop of “Passionate Life” typify an era-colliding strain driving at Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard’s work, segueing track by track without feeling forced. Backhand Deals captures this pop revisionism, the band tweaking sounds of yesteryear with enough swaggering individuality in their own right.

Standout tracks on the mixtape include the fan-favourite “Obsessed With You”, using the queen of viral short-songs PinkPantheress’ “Just For Me”, and the more introspective “Cold Shoulder”, but the last two tracks demonstrate just how much potential we are yet to see from Central Cee.

The unstoppable momentum of hypnotic build-ups and genuinely unique, masterfully maintained combination of moodiness and muscular physicality that characterises Feeding The Machine place Binker & Moses far ahead of the combination.

It’s reassuring to hear her in this state of mind after the unrelenting heaviness of Head Above Water. Even if Love Sux isn’t a perfect album, it’s certainly a well-deserved victory lap from someone with little left to prove.

Bad Boy Chiller Crew have taken inspiration from music that was around when times were a bit simpler and having a good time became a whole culture in itself.

Sad Cities has proved that it can hold its own, and even allows the long-time follower to dwell in times past.

Segarra reaches, with stunning empathy, into the lives of people struggling with specific or universal hardships throughout and yet, crucially, these songs would be killer without the stories at the heart of them.

Each half of the album ends with a relatively sudden shift in pace (“Body Suit” and the contrastingly acoustic “Too Much Colour”), and when you’re consistently bopping along to track after track (which does also risk becoming monotonous, I know) it can be a little jarring rather than the breather they intended.

Whilst Small World doesn't quite pack as much of a punch as Metronomy Forever, it’s a sweet and uplifting album.

Author & Punisher’s Krüller is a sonic purge that rages and recoils in equal measure, enhanced by collaboration, but with Shone remaining the master of ceremonies of his distinctive noise.

The album is - as expected - a well-crafted, sonically flawless work. What it lacks in heart (as with all of their albums, there's very little humanity in the sound or the lyrics) it more than makes up for in style and finesse, and it continues the band's run of producing quality records.

The LP steps away from their usual repertoire, offering a softer, more stripped-back approach to their musings, teetering on the edge of almost folk-rock.

For now, what we do have is an incredible record from a band, mid-flight, delivering sweeping abstractions of Gen-Z anxiety that only this group, as a seven-piece led by Isaac Wood, could create.

Apart from a few exceptions, Yeule had yet to offer a multitude of songs as successful as on this opus. The whole of The Glitch Princess is a continuous demonstration, while being rich and varied.

Time Skiffs angles between incidental blasts of digital fuzz and the purely melodic, resurrecting the freeform yet tangible instinct of Animal Collective’s earlier work; ambitiously addictive without appearing self-indulgently so.

Pompeii shows Le Bon happily wandering into the obscure corners of what pop music can become, establishing a well-earned spot as one of today’s most captivating visionaries.

s Adams raises her voice and coats her guitar in discordant fuzz, it hints at potentially thornier and more abrasive (yet still intimately majestic) future directions that could address the one and only possible flaw with Metal Bird, the album’s uniformly first-gear pace.

It seems they're traversing into territory that may feel foreign at times. Still, each project, especially The Runner, has seen them remain true to who they are and the music they make while still managing to add a new dimension and layer of complexity to their story and vision.

Whilst Laurel Hell doesn’t necessarily feel like a new Mitski album, her talent as a songwriter is strong enough to support these new contexts to her storytelling. Her cleverly crafted lyrics captivates listeners without ruining her enigmatic persona.

Motordrome is a multifaceted delight and an early contender for pop album of the year.

Three Dimensions Deep is an album that has helped Amber Mark to recover and find peace within herself. Yet somehow, it has potential to lend itself to anyone’s personal challenges, defining Mark as a force to be reckoned with.

“Complicate it”, “heavy”, “heartbreak3r”, all standalone fine, but ultimately all bring the same contribution to the shape of on to better things without providing much else. Where he digresses though, he does so excellently, promising that maybe with the challenge of a feature or with the fire to push his sound a bit more, he could be great.

If these stories sound less compelling than those of her past work, rest assured that Mitchell’s talent as a songwriter has remained undimmed in the decade since Young Man in America.

With this album, Palace have offered a spiritual voyage through the fluctuations of life, and the uncertainty that holds its hand. If Shoals is anything to go by, Palace will be filling stadiums before too long.

With shades of their influences Neil Young, Weyes Blood, and Sonic Youth — as well as the attitude of contemporary New York art-punks Bodega - Silverbacks’ Archive Material is a record that makes the best of a truly bizarre, banal, and jarring time.

Here she is not just a musician, but a generational talent capable of creating transfixing otherworlds and, with The Gods We Can Touch, an ethereal masterpiece.

It can range from snarky and contemptuous to comforting and reassured, but every time you listen to The Overload you notice and feel something new.

As emotionally sharp as ever, and as easily vulnerable but with some fierce love in her corner, this is the sound of twigs really loving what she does and putting herself at its core.

Fragments feels like the culmination of everything that Simon Green has been building up to over the last 20 plus years. A rich and cathartic release from a musician at the very top of his game.

Hop Up lives up to its buoyant name, carefree, poignant and a tonic of testing times.

SICK! carries the ever-popular lo-fi vibe as well as a blend of stellar hip-hop. Artists utilising lockdown as a creative direction is not uncommon these days, however Sweatshirt’s attempt carries a distinct sense of realness.

The result here is a compelling record that is as confident in its shiny, polished singles as in its crepuscular oddities.

What better balm for the start of another troubled year than our biggest star making music as good as this?

So much is happening on Now Or Whenever, but it somehow adds up to even less than the sum of its parts.

Megabear is something truly special—not only an album of moving songwriting and carefully considered craftsmanship, but an album that each listener can make their own in whatever way they see fit.

The Dreaming is, overall, a diverse album that showcases new sides of Monsta X whilst also meeting the ideas and feelings that fans look forward to.

This project DJ Kicks is the most successful as it is marked by a spirit of rebirth of its author.

The best songs here are absolutely, sonically at least, the safest. ‘Is It Insane’ is Ella Fitzgerald cosplay, plain and simple, but my god does Keys play the part well. With some jazz-lounge piano, lightly tapped drums and some actual vinyl crackle, the depth and versatility of her voice is on vivid display.

Marriage is an impressively balanced album with highs and lows, and songs to make your adrenaline rush while others make you feel perfectly submerged in pensive emotion. The evidence is clear, Deap Vally have really come into their own here, encompassing everything you could ask for from a rock album - ego and bravado diluted by cold hard self-reflection.

There’s a rough finesse to each track, one which is clearly purposeful – the production and instrumentation is strident yet incisive. It feels churlish to critique such a lively, soul-cleansing burst of energy, especially since the album is filled with hints of killer choruses trapped just beneath the surface and itching to break through.

I see it as less of a leftovers album, and more of a personally curated buffet.

From its songwriting to production, its emotive lyrical content to considered vocal performance, it’s a home run of a project. Holly Humberstone is destined for great things, and this EP is just the beginning.

It's All Smiles is an experience that can be appreciated all the more on an end-to-end listening.

The last installment of the KICK cycle is much more tame, less experimental, less intricate than the three others. It’s almost hollow in comparison to its counterparts, paradoxically harder to make sense of than the more frantic entries released at the same time. Arca adds a new dimension to the mix with kiCK iiiii’s insistence on centering silence within the music.

KicK iiii soundtracks the edges of her universe. So far out from the frenesis of KicK iii and ii, the fourth installment’s driving force is a “bloodlust for beauty” (“Whoresong”).

KicK iii is a more turbulent entry in the Arca universe: its relentless ability to generate movement out of stillness makes it one of her most accomplished works to date.

The glitchy deconstructed club of her past oeuvre permeates the entirety of KiCK ii, particularly in “Tiro” and “Araña”. The former goes full throttle as pop sensibilities crash into a nightmarish broken down metallic reggaeton surcharge. “Araña”, while much more tame in volume, draws from the same well, contorting left and right in a dynamic play of touch-and-go that defies all expectations set by the tracklist leading up to it.

The more deeply you dig in, the more compelling depths Fleuves De l’Ame reveals.

The female/male synth fused with rock duo is a saturated market but on Unity The KVB showcase why they’re worthy of attention.

Just as Dawson clearly relishes being able to record with Circle, so too does the album feel like a treat imparted to the listener in the lead up to Christmas. There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a sprawling work, the shortest song being six minutes, the longest being over twelve. Lyrically, Dawson is on fine form.

Despite its nostalgia-centric title, Time Flies is very much grounded in the present in respect to Brown’s approach to catharsis in her personal life, juxtaposed with escapism in a celebration of surviving adversity – a symbolic, innocuously upbeat chapter in Ladyhawke’s discography.

We are never out of surprises on Windflowers, as it has that gift to reconnect you to the essential, with the help of sweet pop as contagious, varied and comfortable.

A weighty 25 tracks of fresh faces and wrinkled battle-worn ones makes for a push and pull of swaggering persona and modern ideas, but it manages to exclude itself from being an indulgent mess.

While some of the record seems monotonous or lays flat while the track brings up certain elements, it’s a stew of comforting sounds and the songs which hold their own are a far cry from boring.

There is not a whiff of a cynical retread of old tricks during Raise the Roof, which manages the trick of coming across both sophisticatedly polished and winningly raw and in-the-moment.

30 sees Adele settle into the maturity and wisdom that the album presents, and truly is a coming of age. It is a well-considered progression for her, and while there are some missteps along the way, it is so good to see her moving forward.

They have now added a new level of maturity to their already-impressive output. No longer raw and promising, they have returned as a band truly at the top of their game.

Neither bad, nor excellent, this is an album which sounds like a promise.

In anyone else’s hands, 30 tracks might feel bloated and indulgent, but Swift tempers length with careful curation, sequencing and a respect for what made the original Red such a superb pop record.

Once again, the band finds healing and beauty in their own chaotic vortex, and once again they invite everyone listening to do the same, joining them on their most exploratory and cathartic ride yet.

Welcome Break is an album that asks listeners not to scour for small faults, but to devote themselves fully to the ambiance of this simultaneously retro-sounding, yet forward-looking album.

While lockdown may have forced Albarn and many others through a dark period, it’s produced some of his most awe-inspiring work.

Littered with a variety of appearances from A-listers like Cardi B, SZA and Ciara over the course of its twenty tracks, it still finds Walker front and centre, with her characteristically introspective lyrics feeling more gripping than ever.

Diana Ross simply has no right to produce music this engaging, this vital, at this point in her life - and this devil may care attitude has enabled her to produce one of the most definitive bodies of work in her entire career.

Whilst being worlds away from debut Sometimes I Sit And Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett’s latest sonic venture marks a new era for the Aussie musician, and one we’re all the better for.

This is purposefully difficult music with very little in the way of hand-holding via melody or catchy riffs. Yet, in the end the potential reward is revealed: if you’re willing to brave the torment (of PoG’s music or of life, or both), perhaps you’ll achieve something like catharsis and be better for it on the other side.

Boisterous closer “Love Don’t” leaves no doubt that the Night Sweats are revelling in being a unit once again, after having spent the past few years apart, and they’re all the better for it. Their bluesy soul is being delivered with newfound heart, spirit and zeal, one that makes The Future jubilantly bright.

Unfortunately though, as a solidified body of work, it’s lacking. It can be likened to the Star Wars sequels: nostalgic, fun and thrilling, yet relies on sentimentality to entertain. It fails to offer anything particularly new, and feels completely thrown together disregarding the potential greatness that could’ve been.

KID A MNESIA (including Kid A and Amnesiac in full, alongside a disc of rarities and off-cuts, which includes many pleasant discoveries, such as an uncomplicatedly majestic alternative version of “Like Spinning Plates”) suggests that Radiohead got there first, most boldly (in the context of the music that had built their ‘brand’), and arguably with the most significant creative gain.

Even with the online version trimmed to his ex-label's liking, LP! is a riveting display of hip-hop steeped in its future while also embracing all the music Peggy has consumed up until this point.

She’s delivered an album full of unrepentant honesty, decadent instrumental highs, and an unguarded emotional core. Few other artists can so perfectly capture the dizzying life-or-death stakes of those who love too young and too hard.

Ocean to Ocean ends up being Amos’s best album in recent memory for the way it manages to combine the strengths of her early music while incorporating newfound restraint and perspective.

Always Inside Your Head is a dizzying blend of the old, balanced artfully with the achingly new.

A modern classic, from a band who’ve made a career off the back of modern classics.

Nothing here seems out of place, which is a stark contrast to their last record A Deeper Understanding. ... The highlights and key tracks are in plentiful supply.

On Fast Idol, Stewart once again offers a perfectly poignant distillation of danceable, downbeat synth music.

If you’re a longtime fan of the band, you might be concerned about all this talk of simplification - you might even wonder if you’ll be able to detect the kind of madcap playfulness and mind-bending experimentation that brought you to the band in the first place. You’ll find out that actually, you can.

Geist pulls off the impressive feat of nodding openly towards vintage inspirations whilst also sounding resoundingly distinctive, simultaneously timelessly classic and very now, ethereal yet intense.

Ultimately, while her opus may lie elsewhere in her discography, Blue Banisters achieves precisely what it set out to - free from distractions, it’s a welcome insight into some of her most warm and introspective moments.

While Shade certainly holds no surprise, it’s an album that brims with substance and Harris’ longtime base won’t skip a beat in welcoming these tracks.

Punk will likely not be remembered as a great Young Thug album, but we should appreciate that we get to hear him tinker with his sound for when he finally puts it all together again.

While there are undoubtedly highlights on Sympathy For Life, it seems like fans will have to keep waiting to see the band fully commit to their dancefloor ambitions.

She didn’t make a record expected of her even by fans of her last LP and, in doing so, has produced something which is strange, chaotic and utterly her own.

Consistency may still be a struggle, but when they get it right, Audiobooks’ unsettling brand of musical chaos makes for an impressive sophomore album that is every bit as effervescent as their debut.

Commanding, assertive, and powerful, Prioritise Pleasure is everything pop music should be. Wholly unafraid to tackle difficult subjects with ease, in Rebecca Taylor we also have the makings of a serious pop behemoth.

My Morning Jacket – their first album in six years - finds a supremely engaging, often blissfully beautiful halfway point between the glossy eccentricities of more recent MMJ albums and those old slow-burn yet highly combustible 'jam band' dynamics.

Optimist is unlike any other debut, as this is not an introduction but rather a fateful reckoning.

Moondust For My Diamond is another essential album from a man who couldn't make a bad one if he tried. Realistically, it's not quite as powerful as its direct predecessor, but the fact is that very few albums are.

The album is delivered as a mishmash of ideas that misfire from the get-go, missing out on the potential it built in the lead-up to its release.

to hell with it feels genuine. A genuine talent creating music that is genuine to her and by showing the wide spectrum of her talent, PinkPantheress adds an extra sensation to her ‘viral sensation’ tag. Nestling perfectly within the current climate whilst also carrying its own charm, this is the start of something big.

Tackling societal issues and delving into the depths of mental health, the band hold no boundaries when fronted with ‘taboos’ in their most honest, and sonically mature offering to date.

Charistmatically stepping onto the scene with an unmistakable presence in an era of reclaiming confidence is not an easy feat but Remi Wolf has delivered a debut that is powered by a true liveliness to be fun and real.

Talk Memory excels as an advertisement for prodigious jazz technique, but it just doesn't excel as a BADBADNOTGOOD record.

Certainly, there is first-rate academic-historical awareness at work (Davachi is a PhD Musicology candidate), but this fine album succeeds through its ability to convey something beyond any time-defined notions of delicate beauty.

Golden Hour imagines a world much sweeter than the one we’re living in; and for 45 minutes, it can just about take you there. Kacey Musgraves’ golden hour is far from over.

Blake’s a master at making heartbreak sound beautiful. Now, on Friends That Break Your Heart, he makes it sound like something in service of the best version of yourself.

The record is truly a fine piece of artistry that has the power to hypnotise the listener into questioning their inner demons.