Edge of The Horizon rarely moves away from the mid-tempo switch which does make you scream out for a euphoric ‘Paper Romance’ or ‘Cards To Your Heart’ moment, so effective on their last album.

The bold ambition doesn’t go unnoticed.

There is much joy to be found here, amidst many a question mark, but the compiling of a 49 track album with seven themes and this ratio of hit>miss is an achievement in itself - which says a lot for Cook’s skillset.

This record certainly makes things no clearer, but like standing and observing any great work of art, it’s true intentions and artistic merit might not become immediately clear. Only upon repeat experience may the true extent of its merit reveal itself.

While it might take a few listens to make sense of the album's seemingly muddled introduction, one thing is clear: by the end of this hour-long journey, Cudi has reached his destination.

As well as sounding incredible as a whole (not all of Swift’s previous albums have hung together as well as this one) these songs also have the air of a victory lap about them, as though Taylor’s basking in the glow of this new cottagecore indie-pop hybrid she’s found(ed).

Viewed on its own, the often captivating Black Stallion is an effective electronic record.

It’s a charming listen, rich in intricacies and possessing a deep warmth and reverence for the original material. Musically, it’s not going to change the world.

Driven by the same melancholy curiosity that has epitomised the band’s trajectory to date, it instead makes for a wonderfully apt ending to this particular Kinsella adventure. At least for now.

On the surface this band is whimsical and experimental but delve into the depths of their lyrics and the inner darkness becomes apparent. Adventurous and often enchanting, Burrows is one of the more intriguing debuts of the year.

Hauntingly atmospheric and staggering in its scope, it’s well worth spending an hour of your time with. Though perhaps not one to put on at a party.

While 2019's Anger Management showed her off as a maleficent talent with a taste for blood, Nightmare Vacation is Rico at her nastiest.

As Brun has demonstrated over these last two records, whether experimenting or sticking closer to home, she remains essential listening.

With Plastic Hearts, comes a wonderful album about life as a fiercely independent woman. Cyrus has found the perfect balance of pushing her own musical boundaries whilst proving she’s one of the strongest and bravest names in the constant celebrity whirlwind.

Complete with contributions from a star-studded cohort of guests including Stormzy, Aitch and Popcaan, the LP serves as Loski’s most accessible project to date, but he takes care to spotlight his less well-known Harlem Spartans colleagues Blanco and MizOrMac.

Overall, it’s clear that King Gizz’s tireless effort over the past 8 years still has no end in sight as they release yet another radical and innovative album which doesn’t fall short of the endless inspiration that King Gizzard continue to shine.

“Kyoto” is one of the more effective here; stripped of the insistent indie-rock embellishments which made it a single, the rawness of Bridgers’ lyrics is exposed. ... Elsewhere, some versions are less illuminating. ... These songs are still some of the most charming and psychologically nuanced in indie rock’s recent memory.

In a scene over-stuffed with ‘80s-throwback melancholia, it is Byczkowski’s ambition, scope, and keen sense of melodrama that set Something to Lose apart.

The melding of beats, instrumentation and vocals congeal to form a silky smooth palate of R&B, old school hip-hop beats, and the tang of straight-up restrained pop rich in life and vulnerability.

This album is fun to listen to. The songs breeze by. It’s a 20 track album which feels half the length and the Dirty Projectors are now resolutely a band, and a band reborn.

She is flourishing and basking in the creative control, which shines through both her songs and the visuals that accompany them.

Three Mile Ditch is raw and absorbing, and it deserves our full attention.

Lacking in the upbeat indie of his debut Dear, or the powerful emotional outbursts clustered in Birthdays, Monument is a heavy, but truly worthwhile, listen.

This is a tight, focused, powerful effort by one of the most underrated bands in the world – and certainly one of the finest bands to come from these shores in the past twenty years. Night Network is a minor masterpiece.

This slight quirkiness is part of the appeal of hey u x, along with the 19-year old’s ability to blend relatable and intimate content. Personal themes of loneliness and loss twist their way like a fibre into the very heart of the album.

This universal notion of affecting societal change, whatever your age, is the lifeblood of Book Of Curses and it’s deeply refreshing to hear an older generation of punks who are as committed as the current one to creating a better world for all of us, even if it’s only in a small way.

A record rich in sentiments of togetherness and compassion, it’s one that will make you want to throw your arms around those you love and tell them everything will be alright.

If you're looking for choice picks that suit your current standing (single / taken / stuck in lockdown lusting) then you'll find what you need - a relatable nature is served up on a silver platter - but a greater understanding of anything other than the above shall not be found.

On Some Kind Of Peace, Arnalds has once again crafted an genre-defining album that serves as a much needed moment of reflection.

Ghostemane’s ANTI-ICON is a feverish collection of voices pitted against a genre-blending backdrop of visceral noise. Taking heavy music to a whole new level is something only an anti-icon could do, and Ghostemane’s firecracker of a new record achieves just that.

Although it’s not as vital as his early work, it’s a fun and confident return from one of the kings of grime. Long may he reign.

After The Great Storm is an emphatic record, conjuring up moments of hope and reassurance for difficult times, but also unafraid to reveal flashes of vulnerability and insecurity, all conveyed through an unfiltered and organic new style for Brun.

Bring Me The Horizon is a band that you can rely on for a constantly evolving output and whilst, POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR doesn’t exactly diverge away from what the band were developing on last year’s amo, it does capture the bewildering phenomenon that is living through a worldwide pandemic. It is as fun as it is bleak.

If you're a fan of Frusciante's work in the California funk outfit, then there's not much here you'll enjoy, but if you are into electronic, drum and bass then you'll be right at home.

The Great Dismal, thankfully, is everything it promised to be – it sounds huge, and it sounds miserable.

It emits a level of depth that leaves you sometimes not really able to pinpoint what’s what, and other times feeling yourself being drawn in.

While thank u, next is probably her best work – and it will probably remain that way forever – Positions is Grande’s most carefree, most playful, most mature work to date.

Whilst Love Goes could have been an album containing only Smith’s newer dance sound, the album does offer something for all Sam Smith fans, to mixed results.

For listeners who have a penchant for darker, glossier rock in the vein of Portishead, Jane Weaver or even Radiohead, this is an essential listen. For everyone else, it might prove to be an acquired taste, but one that lingers long after the dessert has been served.

Visions of Bodies Being Burned, like its predecessor, is macabre and monstrous in all of the ways that your leering curiousity would have it. It’s a taut exploration of hatred and hostility, one which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its demonic older brother.

It sits balances between a '70s and '80s sound, yet is somehow incredibly modern in tone. This is something IDKHOW do remarkably well.

Somewhere in the combination of the album’s dramatic, heavy riffs and revealing lyrics, there’s a depth to the artistry that depicts both the political criticisms that sit at its crux, as well as the band’s trademark alt-rock sound.

Producer Josh Kaufman - New York-based musician, Hold Steady collaborator and member of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz - has elevated the album, finding the perfect mix of chaotic and smooth.

Its maximalist aesthetics and musical creativity combine to make something intensely addictive and satisfying, but it’s still inherently hard to put your finger on what exactly it is.

Instrumentals is an album which is both easy to understate and overstate. ... By ingeniously pairing this music with the straightforward Songs, Lenker paints them as two pieces of a whole, two completely different recordings of the same state of mind.

The eclecticism yields some misses along, like the paper-thin reggae of “Cliff Hanger”, and the Bronson’s one mode just about outstays it’s welcome by the album’s final moments, but he remains colourful, deeply entertaining and stubbornly unchanging.

Mama’s Boy proves that standing still isn’t an option as LANY honour their humble beginnings as their most authentic selves. It may not be the iridescent sunset we’re used to, but LANY are home.

On their debut, Delmer Darion present an album that can be enjoyed studiously through exploring its depth and archival references, but more importantly they have simply created 44 minutes of music that sounds like it is from a new world as beautiful as it is strange.

If this sounds heavy then the album’s crowning achievement is that it often doesn’t feel that way, buoyed by percussive production from Black Milk, Gold Panda, Frank Leone and others, and Mike’s dark humour.

Someone New has a presence that lingers long after it’s finished. This is an album that demands your full attention, sucking all the air out of the room and leaving you to drift in the grey matter of Deland’s mind. After the last notes fade to black, the ghost of Someone New continues to haunt you — it’s an utterly unforgettable record.

Bea is a beacon of nostalgia for '90s kids who wished they were born a decade or two earlier, donning their Walkman, listening to cassettes, swapping out one grunge gem for the next. Bea provides a much-needed trip down memory lane, but not so much that it’s a pastiche to the era, rather an ardent nod, an ode to.

While Dark Hearts hits an exceptional stride in its beginning, we find quickly that its other tracks don’t necessarily live up to their fullest potential.

The echoes of his home band are clear, but there’s also an underlying feeling of something greater at play - the proof that he can cut it as a name as much as he can a band, and Serpentine Prison is Matt Berninger’s artistic truth and joy.

Despite tracks such as “I Pray” and “Save The Day” re-treading the Disney dewiness and naïve optimism of Carey’s earlier ballads, the hardening of the singer’s artistry is palpable across the record.

Collectively, it’s certainly Moss’s strongest work to date - a thoughtful, mature album, which delivers plenty of food for thought and a range of sounds, emotions and lyrical quirks to keep most listeners happy.

Flowing effortlessly between melodious vocals and blistering guitars, between reflecting on past feelings and accepting new eventualities, the majority of the album feels weightless.

Underpinned by sharper melodies and, shock horror, notions of hope, they sit comfortably as among the best songs Metz have written so far. If they’re a nod to how the band intend on developing their sound further, we may well soon end up with a record that truly feels like serious change has occurred.

An album that delivers on all fronts, from the ratatat of drill or the swinging hip-hop beats, EDNA explores as much as it uncovers more sides to its voice. Throughout, the littered guest posts each represent a facet of Headie’s journey perfectly.

Lament is testament to the power held in each new day, and the moments to be discovered within, delivered with crushing passion by a band worth standing behind.

Burnished with all the hallmarks that have moulded the band into such a robust songwriting entity, As Long As You Are is a portrait of Herring and co at the top of their game - a collection of taught electro-pop numbers graced with poetic flair.

Death Valley Girls’ music is, for better or worse, calculatedly disposable, and the band make no real attempts to secure lasting hooks or forge undeniable melodies. What they do, they do well, and that’s more than enough reason to give Under the Spell of Joy a spin.

Each song a little burst (nothing over 2:30), the rough ’n’ ready charm to Stay Alive is where it shines like a diamond plucked from the depths of blackened coal. It feels like Grace is in the room, life unfurling from her mind and straight into music.

By the time the record reaches it’s 12-minute close “Angel”, it feels like a great release. You’ve been put through the ringer with the abrasive “Cook A Coffee” (with plenty of shots at a certain, now former, Politics Live pundit) and “Be My Guest” and made it out the other side. Sweatier and ready to take on the world.

The band started with a really strong debut album, but Midnight Manor somehow takes this to new heights. You’ll hear the Stones, you’ll hear Lou Reed, you’ll even hear a bit of Alice Cooper in there - and you’ll come away having connected with a new, intensely fulfilling sense of cool.

Less antagonistic than Gore and wandering down considerably fewer stylistic avenues than Koi No Yokan, Ohms plays instead like a spiritual successor to Diamond Eyes. Like that record, the production is polished enough to see your face in, and like that record, there’s a sense that the arrangements are being granted plenty of room to breathe.

Sylvan Esso have always made albums that demand to be listened to at the expense of everything else in your record collection. Free Love is no exception. It’s the pair’s most cohesive body of work yet, and despite its more left-field moments, possibly their most accessible.

On this form she’s Bianca on horseback, a new Moroder drop in ’77, bootlegged Larry Levan DJ sets on cassette, the nocturnal delights of the Studio 54 VIP room, casually leaving her contemporaries trying to negotiate guestlist entry at the nightclub entrance

Ultra Mono is an enjoyable but ideologically confused record and one in which some of IDLES best material must compensate for some of their worst.

Alicia offers its listeners with the ultimate microcosm of the singer’s discography thus far, re-positioning Keys as a force to be reckoned in today’s musical landscape.

The result isn’t just Moore’s finest solo album: this is some of the most remarkable music he’s ever been involved in.

This combination of stripped-back lyricism and expansive musicality contributes to the sense of The Ascension as Stevens’ most plainly spiritual record to date.

Though it is by no means a flawless album, it is exactly the kind of thing you should be using to set your mind at ease. Fleet Foxes have always been inherently hopeful and thankfully they’ve not lost sight of that, roll on 2021.

Dapperton, by inviting listeners so openly into his feelings and experiences is where Dapperton will find his footing for the next step up. It really is hard to predict just where Gus Dapperton will go after this.

Songwriting of this quality, with powers of suggestion and intimations of doubt, deserves an audience well beyond the historically-inclined.

Find The Sun is an unsurprisingly great album from a curiously underappreciated artist, and an unassuming one at that. Deradoorian and her collaborators have made an album that fits the times, without knowing just how pertinent it would be.

Apple is barely a whisper in the breeze by comparison at ten tracks long, and in the way that 7G meticulously unpicked Cook’s innards so fans could see the master’s mind at work, Apple weighs out the specifics and pours them into the meting pot.

A.Swayze & The Ghosts prove that songs with substantial lyrical content don’t have to be preachy at all, and Paid Salvation is a confident debut from one of the more impassioned and exhilarating bands around.

Overall, it can be said that Tea for the Tillerman² is a strong throwback that boomerangs and turns in on itself ; it’s not the perfect path to Yusuf / Cat Stevens music for new listeners, but it undeniably succeeds in touching nostalgic hearts.

It’s a raw, cathartic, but incredibly gentle record that pushes through personal boundaries, and wonderfully reiterates the fact that it’s okay to be alone (even if you’re sleeping with your “key in the door.”)

Wailing down the hallowed halls of memory and experience, Chithambo feels the resonation of these moments and channels the hurt through extraordinary delicate songs where harmonies wrap around each other with a spectral quality, and the dripping rain of picked guitar strings decorate the walls taking leaves from the book of Sufjan Stevens.

Zeros is a cross-generational demi masterpiece. It’s also wholly modern though, not simply relying on nostalgia. McKenna displays an incredibly mature understanding and absorption of his inspirations, rather than just referencing or rehashing them.

As a group, Everything Everything has always worn that indie art pop weirdness on its sleeve and its still refreshingly intact here, Re-animator is yet another flamboyant feather in the cap of a band that refuses to phone it in.

Familiarity isn’t a bad thing when it’s done well, if we refer back to the four cycles of reformation, Doves land firmly in the bands who have their fire relit by a break category, The Universal Want is Doves in essential form.

American Head is a rare concept album that actually coheres as a narrative, but can just as easily (but less rewardingly, perhaps) be enjoyed as simply a set of the band’s most potent and moving tunes since the early '00s.

His best, most vital album in a long time.

Faith is a very, very good album – most likely their best since their debut.

What fans will appreciate most about this collection is how Del Rey's poetry seems to give us a much clearer understanding of her than than her songs are able to.

This is a story-album: each track is its own world and, like any novel, it demands attention. ... Gold Record feels self-consciously like a classic country album, something The Bellamy Brothers might have put their names to.

She possesses a rare aptitude for packing in the same amount of emotional clarity into songs that last five minutes, as well as songs that barely meet the minute mark. It is the sign of an artist whose being is overflowing - completely bursting with life.

While you can identify his signature guitar looping motifs on the records, providing a subtle backdrop for Georgas’ expressive vocals, it's her willingness to open herself up on such a bare naked level that gifts All That Emotion its titular promise.

The Baby is an incredibly self-aware pop record that proves Samia’s not a baby anymore.

On Death Of The Party the four-piece adds a dash of Northern Soul to the mix, and it’s a perfect complement to their Beach Boys harmonies.

Energy is something of a misfire for Disclosure, it is an album that opts to play things safe and the consequence is an unremarkable album that feels at once overthought and simultaneously underdeveloped.

Smile feels like it’s just kind of there. It just sits at the table surrounded by Perry’s past, which has some of the aforementioned biggest tracks of the ‘00s, and a couple of toe-dips into new territory which were at least commendable, but Smile just walks the line of enjoyable.

Undoubtedly, Duckwrth knows how to pen a beat, and to keep the party going, especially when the lights seem determined to come on. It can’t be recommended enough to shut the world out and to let SuperGood carry you away on its positivity, love-lorn and big-dream current.

The album in question is worth the wait though, a collection of polished alt-pop tracks with the band's consistently sparkling production, this time helmed by JT Daly with considerable input from vocalist Lynn Gunn.

Dream Nails are their best when their lyrics feel like an arm around your shoulder.

With these two albums [All Mirrors and Whole New Mess] she’s proven the vast range of her songwriting, and that she could go just about anywhere with what she does next.