With art this bold and ambitious, Halsey doesn’t really have to choose between love and power: they deserve both.

The Thin Black Duke isn’t their finest album--for my money, that’d have to be 1995’s Steve Albini-produced Let Me Be A Woman--but it’s still one of the most thrilling, galvanising records I’ve heard in recent months.

It’s not derivative, it’s devotional.

Though dark times have inspired and shaped this work, there is light and hope in its message of communication, achieving a real sense of togetherness.

Beast Epic may well sound too tame and house-trained to sustain interest. Keep at it, however, and the album is soon likely to cast a subtle spell.

Georgia is an album that speaks of youth in urban landscapes, and scenarios familiar to anyone who has hung around South London long enough. It's an area that's culturally thriving, and it might have a new hero.

Scalping’s world-creation on Void is engaging and welcoming while being both ecstatic and unnerving. What gives this record cohesion is its ability to freely blend sounds and be bold while maintaining its heart as a rhythmic electronic record that’s audibly bursting to be let loose on a live audience.

In giving his compositions a little more leeway to spin and pirouette with maximum emotional force, Son Lux has made his best album to date and proven the wisdom of waving goodbye to restraint once in a while.

Tough Baby demands your attention; it's a dizzying array of vibrant innovation and determination to be counterintuitive.

Neil Davidge takes full advantage of his big opportunity to finally show off his textured sonic mastery on a full-length that is entirely his own, and Slo Light only enhances his reputation as one of the greatest sound alchemists of his time.

While it’s pretty impossible to sit through more than a couple of hours of this box in one go, the importance of this body of work is undeniable. Music simply hasn’t caught up--this still sounds futuristic, enigmatic, distant and complicated.

Mourn is clearly a band developing at a rapid pace while continuing to play with an ability, set of musical touchpoints and a belly full of fire that belies their youth.

On his third album, he continues crafting his inimitable blend of pop, R&B, and electronica, ferociously cementing his place amongst the very best at work today.

On You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To, Knocked Loose expand in all directions while staying true to their core.

When it comes to Israel Nash's Silver Season, it's impossible to get tired of it. Try it--it won't let you down, either.

Last Man Dancing is a party to escape to when life gets a little bit too much, and it delivers on its mission statement with abundance.

It achieves the toughest task for a soundtrack--to maintain interest independent of the images it was built to accompany and accentuate--with impressive ease.

Disco Volador feels like a journey into a world undiscovered, without ever feeling too alien.

Between analyzing her own recent past with the empathy and allowances of an emotional anthropologist and the lazy precision of the grooves, Woods pairs harmony with righteousness like the inextricable twins they are.

At its finest, The Waterfall balances between mad and magnificent.

Stately, solemn, slow-burning and seriously beautiful, most of The Two Worlds isn’t far removed from its predecessor’s intimate templates.

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.

Braindrops is as cerebral and gut-level as its name implies, high-minded and high volume, a grand mess that isn’t really a mess at all.

Sorry remain excitingly unfileable with their third and likely best album to date. Simultaneously, though, they’re fast becoming one of the most reliably exciting pop-indie-rock-whatever bands in the UK today.

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 distant rumble of the crashing sea and the odd squelch of moog provide a thrilling climax to a superb album.

It’s 17 near-perfect minutes that whisk you from sparkling seas across soft, white sands to smoky late-night bars beneath torrential rain, full of soul notes that lift the rafters. It’s a tiny, little, beautiful adventure.

Bloodsports is such an assured return, as welcome as it is unforeseen, that Suede have succeeded in rewriting what might be deemed acceptable for a band preparing to enter middle age.

Blood serves as evidence that the band’s decision to take their time has paid serious dividends; there’s real intelligence in the restraint that they’ve shown on the likes of “Medium Rare”, and by the time you reach closer “Golden Monument”, you realise that the entire album’s been planned with that level of conscientiousness.

Over Natural Brown Prom Queen’s 53 minutes and 18 tracks, the Cincinnati-born Parks displays her compositional skills, penchant for winning melodies, and versatility as a performer. Most strikingly, the set documents Parks as she integrates myriad approaches, balancing discipline and the hedonistic impulse.

Despite the eclectic genre-hopping, all of Résistance ends up sounding unmistakably and thrillingly like Songhoy Blues.

Unrestricted to any interpretation, the record leaves enormous space for thought experiments and imagination (the closer “Out of Time” suggests just as much). Step back a few paces to look at it in full, and you’ll find something that celebrates freedom of opinion and individualism.

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.

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.

72 Seasons is certainly a triumph. It's Metallica by the books, the experimentation and curiosity pushed aside for brutality and sheer force. How much of this you can handle is debatable, but therein lies the trick of 72 Seasons.

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 wonder here is that Bernholz manages to combine the contrasting elements of modern technology and Old England in a way which is both meaningful and new.

Where similarly grandiose songwriters like Chris Martin and Bono flail at balancing the huge and intimate, the personal and mass appeal, Anderson strikes the perfect balance on Night Thoughts.

Young Fathers have not so much captured their sound as they have chiselled it afresh from the Earth’s core.

Guilt Mirror’s musical confusion overall is shattering, there are moments of violence, others of beautiful fragility, and it’s a great big mess of ideas all thrown against a wall until they’re smashed into tiny pieces... lucky wall.

Some of the unexpected and as such extra-fresh thrill of the new of encountering Davis’s debut with the Roadhouse Band may now have eased into an instantly recognisable house style, but New Threats from the Soul provides another compelling flowering of a unique and idiosyncratic songwriting talent.

To put it simply, Death Grips have never been afraid of pushing ever boundary around them, and Year Of The Snitch is no different.

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

This is the sound of releasing a lifetime’s worth of strife and unease. That sounds, it turns out, is pretty damn excellent.

Never Let Me Go feels like an astute observation of our current post-pandemic social climate, as if the current global narrative has finally caught up to that of Placebo's internal monologue. And though the realities of that are pretty bloody bleak, at least we've got an excellent album out of it.

This debut shows a woman free to make the music she wants to, and boy does she do it well.

The difference on Trouble Will Find Me is that everything feels clarified through a decade of wisdom, with volatility frequently superseded by sensibility.

While Tove Lo is confident in her music, she reveals a lot about how she feels and how she deals with problems. There is a level of vulnerability that leaves the listeners feeling like they are experiencing the highs and lows of a party lifestyle right along with her.

Toil and Trouble excels in emerging from imagination with a realistic moral of the story; it accepts that peace comes from within – that even if the world’s been set aflame, one can learn to achieve tranquillity amidst the fire. Debatable, of course, but practical all the same.

The beats prove slick with how they are able to further express his feelings, the lyrics are solid with bits of metaphors sprinkled for impact, and the production itself enlivens the whole experience. It wouldn’t be out of place for Joseph to come back in the next few years with a bigger masterpiece.

While those individual songs are great, they generate the urge to listen to the whole record in its entirety which, in the end, may not be as healthy and carefree as the title and arrangements would have us believe.

'We Make Pop Music’ adds another to their storied catalogue of press-aware music about music and similarly sounds like the band as they stand in a nutshell. Then there’s the second disc of B-sides, the original versions of the first two singles, more reined-in versions of songs from It’s A Bit Complicated left over from an aborted session with Pulp‘s Russell Senior, covers (the Beatles, the Cure, We Are Scientists) and assorted offcuts, none of which are essential but which add more layers to Argos’ wracked character.

Sometimes weighty and serious, sometimes dissolute and light, Grimes’ interaction with the piano on The Clearing is the sound of a musician who knows how to extract every emotion and feeling from what they are playing.

It’s one that will thrill fans of inventive, guitar-driven alternative rock.

Like the best of Amos’ work over the past 20 years, what makes Native Invader exceptional is its complexity: songs are laid out like puzzles, ready for the subjectivity of the listener, with no obvious interpretations.

The results are expectedly bonkers, with some of Ling’s tales ushered into songs and others scored by improvisations, the collection bound by a deeply English eccentricity and a shared love of pop music's spikier edges.

Young Narrator in the Breakers isn’t shackled with deference or reverence. It balances musical intelligence with elegance, orchestrated chamber music with disco and in doing so shows a band in possession of not only a brilliant record collection, but the imagination to transcend it.

Tomb is a record of heartbreak that never wallows, a reflection on loss that does not allow itself to become stuck in the past, and resolutely optimistic at its core. What we find here, on what is arguably the pinnacle of his output to date, is De Augustine achieving the beautiful balance between introspection and grandeur; straddling the place where pain and hope intersect.

Like clear ancestral forefathers Faith, Hex Enduction Hour or The Downward Spiral, this is best enjoyed in small doses and every so often. It’s too good at what it does to be listened to daily. Handle with care and approach with caution.

Serfs Up! is almost certainly their most accessible, most coherent collection to date.

Hej! marks an evolution for felicita and, by extension, PC Music. It is a big twist away from tongue in cheek nature for which they are at times dismissed.

It’s a journey through their journey, and of influences and styles we’ve all known and loved. But it has all the joy of something completely new, pulled together at the seams lovingly and beautifully into a patchwork that, at first, may feel like clash or confusion but in time feels full of strength.

Banks has a universal appeal that’ll see her soar to the tops of charts, into high-profile festival spots, and slide into awards season like she’s covered in butter.

This is perhaps the most hypnotic GOAT has ever sounded, once again reinventing themselves, delivering an album that’s not as musically challenging, for willing ears, but it is immensely rewarding, a perfect soundtrack for losing yourself in the wilderness of sound.

At a time of uncharted fear and oppression that finds the world holding its breath as to what happens next, Mia Gargaret sounds like a vital exhalation. It may be There's Always Glimmer’s quiet sibling, but it still has plenty to say.

Overall, Paradise is another thrilling entry into White Lung’s catalogue that proves the band still has plenty of exciting new ground to crush beneath their heel.

Call the Comet finds Marr in his element, making articulate, direct rock ‘n’ roll with an ultimately optimistic sense of purpose.

While Margolin still leads with a raggedy blend of indignation and yearning, she also seems more resolved in facing long-standing grief and/or lingering PTSD. There’s fury here, floods of it, but also sorrow.

Erupting out of the soil quicker than daffodils in spring, Sigrid’s growth is nothing short of remarkable on How To Let Go.

Ugly Season confirms Hadreas’s commitment to discovery and resistance to reiteration.

Like My Bloody Valentine with m b v, they’ve listened and they’ve learnt and they’ve adapted their sound for a new generation without losing what made them names in the first place. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, sure, but Slowdive have walked it deftly and returned with an album that doesn’t disappoint.

Its mood is all over the place, but that suits it.

What emerges from Cinema is an image of a musician who remained resistant to such categorisations to the end: experimental, curious and explorative, Czukay clearly didn't want to master just one style of music. He preferred to have a go at them all. Even when the results are messy (some of the light-hearted late 80's material hasn't dated well), Cinema proves the wisdom of this open-eared approach.

This is NIN revitalised with Reznor’s thirst for chaos truly quenched.

It's a potent start, but Allbarone gets better, deeper, more engaging and – crucially – stranger with each track, with Dury’s half-muttered speak-song voice mutating into more and more enticingly contorted shapes with each successive track.

One of Grant’s richest & most satisfying sounding albums thus far.

On Radical Romantics, Dreijer wears their heart on their sleeve and delivers their stories of love and lust with classic Fever Ray conviction.

Where previously her voice could feel hampered by heavy instrumentation, Charm’s arrangements carve just enough space for it to flourish, allowing her words to speak for themselves behind refined, never overbearing, production.

Ehrlich’s resplendent falsetto is still at the centre of everything, but there’s a serious depth here in the writing that elevates the material above the group’s previous two albums.

PACKS take the listener on an adventure of love, lust, pain, and dreams that’s beautifully melodic and instrumentally fascinating - it’s certainly one hell of a ride.

There’s Always Glimmer isn’t perfect, but that's appropriate really: trying to sort out your feelings in trauma's wake never is.

With Woman on the Internet, she doesn’t sound lost at all. It’s been clear for a while, but this album will smother any doubt: Gartland herself is no longer just a woman on the internet. She’s a glistening popstar; a proficient musician; a scrupulous producer.

It’s a foot-tappingly bundle of disco-pop that is not ashamed of its influences and refuses to bore for even the shortest of moments.

Esoteric Warfare won’t be seen as Mayhem’s best album--there was never any chance of that. However, it’s as good as its predecessor, and every bit as vile and crushing as you’d expect.

With Ali Chant on production duties, Cloth seem to have found the fullest version of themselves. There is an added intent to tracks such as “Lido”, as Rachael and Paul bring their most interesting ideas to the fore, instead of burying them in the mix.

It may be a hard record to get a finger on, particularly compared to her last decade or so of releases, but I Inside The Old Year Dying, is another strong record in a discography already stacked with classics.

he Basement Tapes are an integral part of music history. Here they are, warts and all, the reality for once a near-match for the bloated myth.

If this really is the end, You Can’t Go Back... is more than a worthy addition to the story of a band who leave behind one of the--if not the--richest catalogues in sunny-side-down American songwriting; only a few slightly stale rehashes of familiar templates towards the end keep this from achieving the lofty standards of, say, 2009's We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like The River.

Oh Death is another chapter in the book, another highway, another impressive set of songs. If only all bands were this consistent.

There is far more variety on Hit Reset than you suspect the casual ear is going to give it credit for. The biggest talking point on Hit Reset, though, is that it finds Hanna on the lyrical form of her life--and that’s saying something.

If the album’s mind is fixed on a future world, it is an open-ended one. The tendency at this point might be to assume that all imagined futures are dystopian, but the spirit of Don’t Look Away and the sum of the pictures and story fragments Tucker has strung together in the record are reflected in its title: the good, the bad, the beauty, the fear...don’t look away from any of it.

So Much (For) Stardust’s main takeaway is the palpable, radiating carefree joy.

This is a songwriter who has mastered his craft and now has applied a frivolity to his record and the outcome is the most essential release to date.

Sundara Karma have grown both personally and musically with this album and they have delivered a follow-up that is confident and utterly fearless. With more direction than their previous entry, Oscar Pollock’s weird and wonderful mind becomes the main spectacle and something to truly admire.

Music For Listening To Music To is a record that sounds simultaneously old-fashioned and modern, a delightful reminder of ‘that’s how it used to be done’ but ultimately a modern country album charged with electric guitars, a love of jangle and a showcase of Goodman’s glorious singing. But most importantly, it’s a gorgeous collection of timeless songs.

Is it jazz? Electronica? Improvised music? Who cares. Far, far removed from the briefly interesting novelty or vanity project that the prospect of this record might suggest, Holy Spring is an intoxicating gem.

Despite occasional lyrical obtuseness, it’s a joy to hear Callahan back over thick, syrupy instrumentation, and there’s an abundance of riches here.

Nonetheless feels airy and welcoming, qualities that have sometimes eluded its more recent predecessors, it resonates emotionally in ways that befit elder statesmen who can look to the future while comfortably acknowledging the past.