Hurts Like Hell may feel unremarkable to some, but for those who are constantly contemplative of where one used to be, its subtle yet deeply personal storytelling will be much more touching than expected.

Keepsake has an inexplicable familiarity even as it bursts with new ideas. It is a document capable of throwing us into our own pasts, the perfect score for the movies we make in our minds.

They didn’t quite manage to move past The Seldom Seen Kid on Build a Rocket Boys!, but with Take Off, they’ve both cemented their place as a British institution and hinted that their best might yet be to come.

Pretty Years is one of the best guitar albums of the year.

Charli is almost there. Ultimately she’s too gloriously messy and multitudinous to produce such a thing. Although she could often benefit from an editor, her process and vision doesn’t adhere to the music industry’s prioritisation of the album format – which feels right for an artist whose music could be read as an attempt to dissolve time itself.

Timber Timbre, in crafting Hot Dreams, have cultivated an immensely strong record and an alternate sonic dimension you can spend a lifetime exploring.

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.

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

Thanks to Rubin’s acoustic method, which encouraged Laus to play solely on an instrument before working on the production, most pieces have attained what may possibly be called “skeletal beauty”.

Throughout this record, a steady vocal belies a complex layering of acoustic and electronic sounds. So many of these selected covers deconstruct into quirky, experimental instrumentals.

Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not is more than just a routine 8/10 Dinosaur Jr album, it’s their most satisfying and realized post-reunion album yet.

There’s a balanced mix of wistful folk, and rockier, more radio-friendly offerings which lure in the casual listener, ensuring an enduring record that warms the cockles in these frosty fledgling weeks of 2013.

Uncomplicated, doing precisely what it says on the tin, Retrash might not be an album of the year contender or a game-changer; but for pure unadulterated fun Oozing Wound are pretty hard to beat.

This is a Pere Ubu album. It is exactly what you expect and exactly what you don’t. The variety and subtlety and diversity and ferocity of this collection defies belief, much like their last, fantastic record.

In its own way, Quietly Blowing It is great just like how the first few Paul McCartney solo records are great, or Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and Bob Dylan’s New Morning are great, or even albums by contemporaries like Laura Marling and Waxahatchee are great – it’s just pure, no bullshit emotional sincerity made for folks who need to feel a little connection to the wider world, to a greater consciousness. Best enjoyed often and amongst friends.

As well as succeeding in being both a culturally appropriate expression of catharsis, Care also pushes the band further in their musical development.

C’est La Vie once again finds Houck creating sumptuous soundscapes of scorched Americana that range from slow burning laments to tipsy waltzes, but this time around with a renewed flow and finesse.

One of the most infectious collections of pop songs written on an electric guitar this year.

There are a few outright duds on the record.... Hopefully the next NxWorries LP sees .Paak challenging himself a bit more, because the duo have the talent to put out a truly transcendent record.

Pale Horses stands as a testament that it will be a good while before brothers Weiss and co. are long gone.

Stylistically, this record is a strikingly bold step for the band and it is impossible not to feel Clark’s influence.

EMA is talking to us in Exile in the Outer Ring, and we ought to listen.

With skills and interests cemented across various styles, he’s figuring out in real time exactly what he does best – providing floor fillers to club crowds or elevating his performances through complex production. Perhaps when he sings, “Where are my wings? / they’re loading”, the artist is acknowledging that he’s still to assume his most resolute form yet.

Life Under The Gun is a flawed but enjoyable debut album.

Rewind the Film seems immediately poised for lost-classic status-- for all its clumsiness and flaws, it’s the kind of album that wants you to let it sink in, or even gather dust, until you remember it’s there.

It’s certainly the sound of the band taking a step forward and trying to find its feet, sliding a little on the frozen ground but still heading towards the sun.

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

It is flawed--a few too many diversions and distractions, and one or two experiments that don’t really work--but the best thing about Monkey Mind In The Devil’s Mind is the simple way it frequently reminds you how good a songwriter Mason is.

Whether Potty Mouth are achieving anything new is besides the point--the important thing is that they feel fresh and relevant, whereas the punk of today has seemingly had its time, growing increasingly redundant and stale

The blistering sounds are as sabre-toothed as ever.

Even in moving away from indie rock for the time being, Bird keeps his literary flair with him in reappropriating the songs that he is covering. That is the one aspect that makes the whole album subtly magical in its own way even if it might not break as much ground as one would have hoped for.

Bobby’s Motel is a big, bold slap in the face right from the start. Manic Bobby greets you at the door, takes you by the hand, and leads you straight to the dancefloor.

Even more consistently inspired than Eitzel's previous two, excellent solo albums (2009's Klamath and Don't Be A Stranger from 2012), Hey Mr Ferryman demands that Eitzel is at last granted at least as much attention and acclaim as his fellow songwriting Mark, former Red House Painters-leader Kozelek.

It’s haughtier, humbler, more powerful, more delicate; it’s like Anna Calvi was dipping a toe in the sea, and now that she knows that the world rather quite approves of her, she’s ripped the ripcord and is delivering the beast within.

It stands as both a fascinating new direction, and a heartbreaking memoir of a period now sinking into the past.

Tin Star doesn’t play around with the formula, but it’s much better off rollicking through a hot-blooded, swinging set than it is attempting to be some kind of self-conscious alt-indie crossover.

This is immediate, incredible folk pop that pays homage to the godfathers, performed amid the disco balls of a train hurtling through time, by kids who love alternative guitar bands.

Whether you read the title as a refusal to die or a foolish attempt to cling on, it doesn’t matter; both are just as relevant, and Martha have gone some way to capturing as much of it as possible.

With The End, So Far, Slipknot haven’t reinvented themselves, but returned to their roots with an older, wiser and more concise outlook, resulting in a record that chews its listeners up almost instantly, and spits them out an hour later feeling beaten, battered and ultimately, cleansed.

It’s a stylish swerve dipping into luxurious large-scale arrangements with woodwind flourishes, haunting lullabies and even “20% adult contemporary”, showcasing their breadth of influence and genre play across ten tracks with more scope than ever.

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.

At times, despite the fact that this is his 12th collection of compositions, it’s often as if Lazaretto is Jack White at his most vulnerable.

Music for People in Trouble perhaps doesn’t have the crossover appeal that Ten Love Songs had, and its head-on engagement with contemporary struggles will certainly not be for everyone. But for those who are done with escapism, at least for an hour or so, its sustained mood brings rich rewards.

What he does well here, and has always done well, is to embody traditional music; its harmony, its lyrical themes, and at the same time imbue the music with a vitality that never feels forced or disrespectful of its roots.

City Music is, without fail, one of the most quintessential albums of the year so far.

T2 doesn’t really incorporate much in terms of dance-friendly music, and it suffers, despite being a relatively strong collection overall.

If destruction is more your appetite, then Ghosts VI: Locusts provides an aural embodiment of the uncertainty and discourse.

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

SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound is great fun if you don’t think about it too much. It uses some brilliant inspiration taken from '60s psych and prog rock and even some hints of '90s grunge. However, it’s difficult to not take notice of the sameness featured throughout the record that makes it that little bit duller than it could have potentially been.

The accompanying music speaks for itself, filling every inch of Second Line’s constructed microcosm with the metallic hue of fuzzy synthesizers, reverberating chimes, and booming bass. Richard’s voice floats through it all, shepherding newcomers with an intoxicating haze.

The instrumentals of Ooh Rap I Ya are a feat of surrealism in songcraft, ebbing waves of synths and overblown drums soundtrack much of the run time, but in increasingly more abstract ways. It isn’t long until the mastery of the pop form displayed in the first half of the record devolves into the spare parts of a song: 90s hits deconstructed and remade in the most obtuse yet enjoyable ways.

Jenny from Thebes, depending on one’s fascination with The Mountain Goats’ 30-odd years of winding lore, may either have the connotation of your dad and his group of friends finally getting around to making that album they always talked about, or, where charity applies, stay just high enough above passability that it can be recommended by fans with the asterisk, ‘one of the better ones.’

Though Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? is a magpie-mix of familiar genres and influences, from Indian-raga-inspired psychedelia to tripped-out electronica, it is also clearly the product of someone freely expanding their sound in multiple directions, and that sense of exploration and fun is infectious.

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.

How Do You Burn? ups the ante on its two predecessors going deeper in a richly assured display of Dulli and the band’s abilities.

Not only is King of Cowards Pigs’ best release, the promise of their previous work fulfilled; in a year of hip hop and R&B dominating charts and critics’ minds alike, it’s probably also the best time you’re likely to have with a rock album in 2018.

It’s precise where MASSEDUCTION was deliciously sloppy. But in real terms, they’re both as near to perfect as a pop record is going to get these days--incredibly perceptive, personal and inviting with clever lyrics sitting on beautifully inventive melodies. Both albums are great. Both albums deserve all the awards.

Man Forever harnesses the power of repetitive drumbeat-drills and the misdirection of some innocuous silence and droning vocals to create a sort of synesthesia, blurring the lines between each piece’s individual components with clarity as yet unheard within Man Forever’s canon.

Suuns makes a point of honor to make the sounds as an absolute priority, the only small thorn lies in the melodies and vocals, sometimes too shy or idealistic to sublimate the whole.

He is a rare talent that we must cherish and allow to scratch what ever creative itch he wishes to. With I Tell a Fly, Clementine proves he is indeed an artist of extraordinary ability.

On The Invisible Way Sparhawk has managed the rare trick of rendering that language not only intelligible but lustrous and attractive to even the staunchest naysayer while simultaneously steering his band around a fresh and perhaps uncharted musical turn.

All Of Us Flames reveals a perhaps more humble and equanimous Furman, an empathetic artist still committed to truth-telling, still railing against the injustices of the world.

Here is your soundtrack to that world, perhaps unsurprisingly it rocks righteously.

It all makes for a pretty giant leap forward, with the weighty, emotional subject punctured by a Willy Wonka factory of discombobulated guitar pop that has the tUnE-yArDs’ finger print all over it.

Here, finally, is some of the ebb and flow, some of the emotion that’s been lacking on the album up to this point. What a shame that it comes so close to Slow Focus’ end.

Since bursting on to scene with “Young Blood” all those years ago, The Naked and Famous have proven themselves to be more than well-deserved mainstays in the indie bop world.

This record has that waltzing, wispy quality which makes you want to stand on the top of a hill and have a good cry. It's far from the first album to do that in this style, and even further from being the most experimental, but it really nails what it’s going for.

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

Delicate and crystalline in sound & execution, what we have here is brave, innovative, unexpected, and brilliant.

Golden Sings That Have Been Sung manages to catch the restlessly churning, improvisatory lightning of Walker's live shows in the studio, whilst wisely cutting out any idling that could grate in home listening.

Foxing have crafted an album that expertly balances what drew in old fans in the first place – the borderline-unhinged emotional highs of their early math sound – with fresh, indie rock that is very likely to perk up the ears of new listeners.

Making mischief of one kind and another in a world gone wrong is what Osees do, and Abomination Revealed at Last is a solid rumpus.

Vulnicura Strings sees Björk restructuring an already phenomenal work of art and creating an even more desolate mood than the phenomenal Vulnicura, where time is frozen but also somewhere to move on from. It’s not a place to visit every day, but whenever you need a reminder about what great art looks and feels like here’s where to go to.

Her new found confidence comes through in spades here and the end product is a record that shines with a captivating vibrancy.

The arty fusion of cabaret, baroque and psychedelia somehow places it between Beach House and more recent Fleet Foxes, but does not always make for the easiest of listening.

Toward the song’s end, “Mad About You” takes a left turn into a blurry coda unlike anything else on Hollow Ground. It is a sign of stronger connections to the present that Clarke can turn to, having proven here beyond a doubt his prowess with the past.

It isn’t often that metal is as direct and exhilarating as it is on Viscerals, and despite a series of songs concerned with the more unsavoury facets of life, there is a furious energy at the heart of the record it’s hard not to get swept up in.

Throughout the highs and lows, the album ultimately invites listeners to join in Berrin’s cathartic journey and embrace their own complexities, searching for solace in a chaotic world.

First Demo reinforces the impression that this particular band never really set a foot wrong; they sound more assured here, with just ten performances under their collective belt, than many bands longer in the tooth do in a lifetime.

While a lot of the mood is pretty solemn of Sleeper, there are some sun-kissed moments, that despite still being lyrically dark, remain blissed-out chunks of acoustic summer-pop.

Fleeting is, in sum, an art in the sweet and wholesome worship of nature, it's comforting highs and dark, confusing depths encompassing all the brief human relationships it gives birth to and provides a stage for.

If Neo was hyperpop’s answer to Squarepusher, Lei is our Autechre. IGLOOGHOST has managed to create sounds that feel completely organic and naturalistic yet hyper-digital at the same time - anchored on occasion by violin embellishments, dutifully adding a tragic grit to the songs, stopping them from drifting away. There's a real variety too

Field recordings, earthly elements, human murmurs and heavy breathing mix seamlessly with synthesizers, drums and keyboards to produce a meditative enlightenment, with Jaar and Harrington creating an album based on opposites, successfully uniting the natural with the unnatural.

Every aspect of A Black Mile to the Surface is ambitious and rarely, if ever, does it falter.

It’s a real pleasure listening to the group traverse a new obstacle in working more with external artists. And while this album may lean on them too heavily, this is undoubtedly the same BROCKHAMPTON.

Musically incredible and conceptually spot on.

This is a collection that displays consistently and rigorously the undervalued, underexposed talent of one of the country’s best post-Ray Davies songwriters and one that, despite its length and sometimes haphazard nature is a fitting milestone to this prolific, profound and playful master of the songwriting form.

The album confidently moves between playfulness, tenderness, and grit – often all in one song, as with stand-out tracks “Lose Our Heads” and “Wake Up”. The combination of Jarvis’ gorgeous, versatile vocals, clever lyricism, and the killer beats provided by drummer Robert Mason creates something unwaveringly epic.

As carefree as it is frustrated, as playful as it is temperamental, WILLOW’s lately I feel EVERYTHING is a straight up lively hit of jaded emo bangers that will have a new generation of listeners whipping their hair back and forth.

Pratt sings of trying to trust in love once more, and with On Your Own Love Again we need not look far for proof that her music is a sign of a wonderful, maturing talent that we can believe in.

As with every Neon Indian album, VEGA INTL Night School can feel chaotic, effusive, even overwhelming at times. But, much like the proverbial “bright lights” of the city which provide the inspiration for this LP, it's dazzling, too.

This is a record that moves and moves.

It’s not just Album Time, it’s crazy psychedelic hoo-ha time, and it sounds pretty damn fine.

It combines Molina’s hardcore background with jangling melody perfectly at times, and I wish each song was longer.

To its credit, a lot of the tracks on Physical get to the point at a much earlier stage in their development than they would have done on a FF record, but the creeping intensity of tracks like “Two Different Ways” or “Dial Me In” is missed as a result.

The group sit deeper than ever in their grooves on their third outing, and the moments of tranquillity are even more zen. Mordechai offers a rich, meditative escape from the world, something more welcomed than ever in the current climate.

There’s not much on Alpha that does surprise or show us a new side of Charlotte Day Wilson, but the side she shows us is now so masterfully presented and emotionally rich its not hard to be taken by it.

On The Ship he has managed once again to take listeners somewhere thrilling and new, while rising to the challenge of adding another dimension to a distinctive career filled with innovation and originality.