It comes across as a record not made with a grand statement or goal, but rather a meticulous creation from a collective with nothing to hide or show off. Just raw talent and a willingness not to be too precious with their creations.

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

The angular flexes in style and wordplay tied together with Russell’s high wire deployment prove as duly consistent a formula as any of the standout entries in the duo’s crowded discography.

While Crooked Wing finds These New Puritans at their most refined and fractured, the album won’t be for everyone. Its refusal to deliver easy pleasures might leave some cold. And for all its inventiveness, there are moments where the almost academic precision threatens to override the emotional core. Yet, it’s exactly what it feels like, a requiem for the mechanical age, a love song to decay, and a stark reminder of the beauty that can be found in the shadow of ruins.

For a group so often criticised for the coldness and the metronomic aloofness of their catalogue, this is a record that sounds warm, tactile, and is evidently the outcome of five musicians spending six years on the road together.

On Hers, both the words and the music often make you stop in your tracks, raising a smile or prompting a gasp.

Metalhorse largely succeeds in conveying the pushing and pulling through life.

Furman’s upfront picture of Goodbye Small Head is perhaps clouded by jest: “orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples,” she writes. Yet, it’s a continued display of her marked empathy as a songwriter, trying to seize control against a rhetoric centred on exclusion. Her observational musings are even more: a sign to band together now more than ever.

Ever since 2009’s lo-fi debut Bird-Brains, every Tune-Yards album has offered raw excitement. Better Dreaming does too, and it may just be their most uplifting and inspiring work to boot. Give it a listen – you’ll be dreaming better.

The clarity heard on this album can be interpreted as a sharpened edge in Hval. She collapses the space of the album into a single sensory experience; she conveys something unsearchable but found.

As it stands, the more things change the more that stay the same. But, when you have a formula as egregiously glorious and cacophonous as PUP is no bad thing.

The album not only justifies its existence but also adds something vital to the band’s legacy. It’s messy, lean, sharp, and relentless. Not cleaned up. Just tuned up and turned loose.

Woods’ song begins with a view from a beach, watching as zombies staggering into the sea, except these bodies are actually just people, pushed from their home countries by corrupt governments and post-colonial extraction. “Universities empty, the troublemakers is drowned or drivin' Uber overseas”. Moments like these prove Woods to be one of rap’s best ever storytellers and, what’s even more remarkable, is that among this Golliwog remains a distinctly New York rap record too.

Tall Tales sees Pritchard and Yorke plug into the fragility of social structures built on sand, a subject that finds voice via a quasi-cryptic sidewind through vast digital and organic tracts – an at times menacing, evocative and hypnotically immersive statement on a freefalling societal state of play.

It appears they have landed on something magnificent; symphonies of aching, internalised nostalgia and frequent beauty, bookended by hate, despair and some of their finest sonic experiments ever.

I Said I Love You First barely even tries to entertain during its runtime. It’s fundamentally uninteresting music.

While its tunes are a little weaker than that of her previous albums, she emulates the “poetry without the words” she mentions on “Sacred”, snapshotting around a subject in order to construct a clear picture. But sometimes the resulting image is a little hazy.

This 33-minute introduction to the next evolution of Scowl answers a question posed on their debut: “I just wanna know, is this how flowers grow?” The answer is yes. They bloom and blossom into something wonderful that still has a heap of potential ready to sow.

While it’s a rich topic [unhealthy romantic relationships] to explore in song, a sense of repetitiveness does ultimately set in as Teitelbaum circles around the same themes of codependency and falling in love with questionable men against one’s own better judgement. .... When Teitelbaum looks elsewhere for subject matter, some of her strongest songwriting comes through.

Pirouette is an intriguing segue album. Even if it falls short of the cogency displayed on Dogsbody, Model/Actriz should be applauded for their creative restlessness, the risks they wholeheartedly take.

Prima Queen cement their emerging status with The Prize in a confident and unabashed manner.

The band’s singularity makes their music something of an acquired taste. Hex Key is not accessible to a wider public. Or rather, only bits of it are, such as the catchy choruses of “Take Me” and “Nothing Lasts Forever”.

There are only a handful of pop albums that can sustain epic run times through the power of really, really good songs alone (Car Seat Headrest’s Teens Of Denial is one of them). There’s a story for those who want it and some delightful songcraft for those who don’t. Not a bad compromise.

The album both expands on the now expected lyrical themes (tackling corruption and injustice both generally and more specifically in the context of ever-messy Nigerian politics), and injects fresh energy, economy and verve into afrobeat’s typically unhurried, generously portioned polyrhythmic splendor.

Mortal Primetime sees the rebirth of the New York trio; emerging from the shadows of winter to tilt their heads towards the brighter, more fruitful pastures of spring.

The album as a whole is a safer affair than Taylor’s previous releases, but for the most part it’s very good, and its cohesion isn’t necessarily a weakness. Still, it’s hard not to approach a new Self Esteem album expecting some kind of life-changing revelation, six months of therapy condensed into an hour-long speedrun.

Bruised yet defiant, fierce yet elegiac, Wasteland deserves to be counted amongst the genuine masterpieces to have emerged from the ongoing folk renaissance.

At 19 tracks, Weirdo presents a potentially overwhelming spread of sound, but it’s impossible to identify any flab or superfluous moments here: musically eclectically inspired, thematically deep and profound, Weirdo is a total triumph.

With Time Indefinite, William Tyler offers a fresh and uniquely compelling way to affirm that it’s OK not to be OK: these are humbly majestic anthems for our anxious age.

Listening to this record is equivalent to being on a moving sidewalk at the airport with a rocket-powered wheelchair; there are G-forces propelling this tracklist astronauts could not withstand.

Even though Thee Black Boltz may fall short in comparison with the band’s best records, it still offers flashes of brilliance and maybe even some comfort if you’re going through a difficult patch.

On Send A Prayer My Way they apply tasteful country renovations and marry humour, melancholy and joy with timely themes in a way that will only delight fans of either artist.

SABLE, fABLE’s slog in the middle wouldn’t have been as hollow had that seeped into the central concept more. For now, the record shows signs that Bon Iver’s discography runs in duologies, much like Mitski’s.

It remains to be seen whether Song of the Earth is just another curious left-turn in a discography full of them, or whether it signals a new Dirty Projectors epoch. What is certain though is that Song of the Earth is a thematically singular album.

It showcases a love of jazz and world music, bringing these sounds into their existing sound in an exciting and offbeat fashion. It acts as a bridge to their next full release, something for fans to pour over and get lost in with a huge amount of variety and talent on display.

What lets the record dive into her usual realm of staggering emotional depth is, again, her emotive core relentlessly shooting out UV rays of hesitant optimism.

Those who invest in their fave singers’ personal lives will no doubt enjoy digging deep into the lyrics. Those who fell in love with the epics and wigouts of 2018’s Historian may find engaging moments on an album too cohesive for its own good.

Complex yet surprisingly accessible, Dan’s Boogie doesn’t necessarily break a huge amount of new ground. It does however, see Bejar successfully refining his craft even further with superb results.

It’s not a hilarious disaster, it’s not a tabloid tell-all or, you know, actually good. It’s Smith’s late career in a nutshell, just about getting over the line thanks to his star wattage, and all the weirder for its smoothed-out polish.

Jellywish includes some of her most intimate work. As a listener, it’s as if you’re being privately serenaded during an exquisite chemical sunset.

At a dozen tracks long, with The Crux, Djo is proving himself as a multi-faceted artist, being equally talented as both a performer and songwriter.

This album, as different as it is from the band’s other output, is simultaneously the most distinct Black Country, New Road has ever been.

It’s a record that thrives on trust, experimentation, and the sheer joy of making a glorious, deafening racket together. It also respects its audience enough to be honest, to be fearless, and to deliver something unfiltered and real, bursting with personality. Pigsx7 have never sounded more essential.

Friedman and Weingarten’s friendship remains an ever-constant reference point in their most confessionally open offering yet, the core chemistry between the two leads pulling the disparate and shared pasts together in a unified voice.

Oceanside Countryside provides a snapshot of Young in the middle of his 1970s winning streak, possibly the most creatively fertile run that any songwriter has ever had the good fortune to find themselves in.

God only knows if Great Grandpa will ever top Patience, Moonbeam. For now, let's cherish it. After all, with this album, they've proven you can't rush greatness.

This album is an artistic triumph. It blends the strongest elements of a “metal” album like New Bermuda with the strongest elements of a “shoegaze” album like Infinite Granite, and features the band playing both metal and shoegaze better than they did on either album.

Glory welcomes everything whether ecstatic or low-spirited, knowing that time, the inescapable spectre, will take it away and leave behind a masterpiece of memory such as this record itself.

The record is certainly sparkly, but its hollowness is glaring. SALVATION is so desperate for someone to call it iconic that it neglects what makes an icon anyway – personality.

With this album, they’ve crafted something that is still powerful, vital and confrontational, but balanced between fury and finesse. Constant Noise is more enveloping, mesmeric and, at times, beautiful in its mannered rage.

It’s consistently propulsive, passionately performed, and paced with euphoric enthusiasm to the point where even its still moments are pushing themselves forward. No faith has to be placed on Holley’s songwriting ability like on previous releases, and no climax must be waited for; each track cedes itself into moment after moment like sifting grains.

Night Life is a dark synth album from a band turning away from the big expansive sounds of the past to explore both the desolation and pleasures when light turns to dark, and their best album since Skying.

Albeit diverging in duration from its predecessors at a mere eight-tracks, Lust for Life remains sufficient in scale to carry such a taste for semi-encrypted post-punk wisecracks.

Like every great record, For Melancholy Brunettes fits well in its release’s social sphere. These poignant songs are as relevant as ever in the United States, now equipped with an insatiable leading figure who has become a patron saint of noxious male authority for the impressionables. It’s only a shame that the music, albeit beautifully composed, doesn’t feel as forceful as the subject.

Without appearing arcane, Earth-Sized Worlds snapshots the group in their element, continuing to breathe new life into the remnants of often overlooked sub-genres in a brain-frying madcap patchwork.

Off With Her Head is both focused and commanding. Her varied approach to songwriting and crafting results in some of her most unrelenting work yet, and its messiness is charming rather than trying.

Microtonic is the sound of a band faithfully heeding their muses.

This is everything you could want in a debut record, a distillation of a confident and coherent sound with plenty of room to develop, and plenty of time in which to do so.

The album does well as a high-octane rock record, so much so it makes you wonder why some tracks feel ever so slightly diluted.

MAYHEM is more like an inspired album rather than one that inspires, and where Gaga usually flips the game on its head, she’s stuck to the rules this time. LG7 feels like it’s come and gone, and where we’re usually saying ‘wow she’s amazing’, it’s more like a resounding ‘wasn’t that nice’ – not bad, not life changing, but a record I’ll be playing for a while I’m sure.

Drive to Goldenhammer sees the quartet plant strong roots and demonstrates that their combination of talent, originality, and introspection has the potential to journey anywhere they wish.

Textured, emotionally rich, and transportive, it’s a soothing balm for uncertain times. If you’re looking for an opportunity to get away from the noise, you could do a lot worse than Panda Bear’s latest escape into the ethereal.

There is a poetry to the mundanity that serves as Dawson’s subject matter, which he draws out in its best moments. At others, however, his writing gets mired in merely setting down dutifully that which lies before us.

This is a collection both provocative and vigorous, covered in a sleek wrapper that hides the introspective side lurking beneath. So Close To What is hit after hit – it’s her most convincing argument of superstardom yet.

His third outing feels more introspective, without losing any of that gargantuan shine or him feeling like a stranger.

The album captures the band at their most independent, revelling in high-energy performances while embracing a broad eclecticism.

The product of constant playing and musical experimentation between tour duties, Armageddon In A Summer Dress marks the point where the nominally folkie Ward goes electric. The effect is frequently electrifying.

Horsegirl’s songwriting isn’t distinct enough to imply any hidden tension though, and back to back sweetness becomes a little sickly. It’s no surprise that the best songs here are the meaner ones.

The album does peter out somewhat. “Smugglers” is a languid rockier offering that only picks up in the last cacophonous couple of minutes and the final song, and album title track, “Glutton For Punishment” is a sweeter sounding, ironic take on maybe attracting the barrage of chaos life can bring. But when viewed in its entirety the album feels like a momentous leap.

Strange’s open attitude towards collaboration benefits his music while he maintains a unique sound, an amalgamation of clear references into an entirely new shape. Horror seems to ask the listener to face themselves in the way Strange has on this record, and not everyone will be ready.

Ultimately, Everyone Says Hi is the sound of a multi-platinum songwriter with a fresh fire under him – someone who has turned the page yet can’t help but pack these tunes with the kind of melodic heft that lands them squarely on your repeat playlist.

Not all of it works. .... But the ease the band have in each other’s presence is infectious. Balbi’s propulsive drumming drives the record but never overpoweringly so. Letting those atmospheric synths have their moment in the spotlight, or allowing Hoff’s agile basslines to bring their own mood.

It builds dread with slight but sudden stabs, scrapes, and bubbling bass, and rarely gives you the pleasure of a cathartic release. It’s a long way from the funky chaos of “Houseplants”, and it’s all the more interesting for it.

It’s a celebration of what Maribou State does best: creating music that feels timeless and deeply personal. And while we might continue to wait for the moment when they push their boundaries and fully realize their potential, this journey toward that horizon is just as compelling.

Executed with palpable warmth and affection for the musical heritage that hovers behind these songs, what could have been an unconvincingly superficial genre exercise emerges as another winningly inviting Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album.

It definitely helps that You and I are Earth sparkles with Savage’s most direct, open and unabashedly beautiful music to date.

For all its fury and fragmentation, Never Exhale is remarkably cohesive, a testament to DITZ’s ability to harness chaos into something purposeful.

They sometimes leave an uncatered desire for more lyrical depth. In several cases, however, the electrifying music makes up for what’s unfulfilled.

With Love You All Over Again, Tunng reassert their distinct MO while experimenting with their sonic and lyrical reach. Hooky melodies, layered textures, quirkily poetic lyricism. Romanticism meets meta-modernism.

The constant more-is-more approach is no doubt a blast for the pickers in the studio, and it’ll probably sound cool live, but on the record, there’s an airlessness to it all. This isn’t always the case - the classy “String Theory” stands out for its delicate instrumentation built around subtle lap steel and sturdy stand up bass. This does however serve to bring Starr’s vocals to the fore.

Just as Cruickshank has put her body and soul into the writing of her debut, the boys’ production perfectly complements its dynamics and sentiment.

Balloonerism is an emotive and plaintive testament to Miller’s lasting legacy and firmly establishes the profound impact he’s had on shaping rap.

Humanhood spotlights a restless artist as she strives to reconcile minimalism and maximalism, all the while addressing the mysteries of self, other, and the world.

Whereas White Denim’s output has occasionally in the past brought to mind a musical polymath trying on different outfits to see which one will fit, 12 feels like White Denim’s most direct, emotionally honest and cohesive (not to mention unabashedly catchy) album.

It’s music made by a human being, intended for human beings, about losing one’s humanity in order to transcend it. By nature, that makes it immensely incomprehensible, scary and challenging, even difficult to get through for the uninitiated. But if you meet Anhedönia's creation on her terms, ready to plunge into the depths and emerge semi-alive, Perverts will open up to you – at least, it did for me.

The album often also throws song structures open to unexpected twists and diversions: more than half the tracks on The Neon Gate unfurl at their own sweet pace over six minutes or more. The results can be revelatory

Petrichor lingers long after the final note. This is not just Shake’s best work – it’s a classic in the making.

And while some songs on this album get drowned out by the grandiosity of its goals, the project – and the man behind it – are as strong as ever. GNX is the blueprint for a new rap zeitgeist, and all we can do is hope that everyone gets the cue.

In Nobody Loves You More, Kim Deal delivers an album that stands both as a tribute to her past and a reassertion of her relevance, it’s an emotional and moving experience.

This is a record of patient, sojourning hope, so leave your adolescence at the door.

Bouquet is fine as a first country album – there’s a relaxed sheen over the whole thing, and she sounds great as ever – it’s just disappointing for what we know Stefani to be capable of.

Taken together, it’s a sprawling, surprising album that proves a heavier sound looks good on her.

Many bands would be overjoyed to have accomplished an album as solidly satisfying as this collection of offcuts. Where the vault-clearing exercise of Cutouts leaves The Smile is unclear, however.

The Cleansing’s bounteous treasure trove delivers his most ambitious and potentially most rewarding collection of songs.

As they did with the fiftieth anniversary edition of All Things Must Pass, Paul Hicks and the Harrison family have delivered an excellent reminder of the greatness of George Harrison after and, in certain instances, the equal of his musicianship in The Beatles.

Access All Areas is a place where retro influences merge with contemporary thematics, additionally bestriding the border between nostalgia-evoking sampling and entirely fresh production techniques. From top to bottom, this record exhibits toned melodies, striking harmonies, and impressive vocal chemistry.

There’s a nice blend of folk, country, and while it’s a step in the direction for Mendes the Artist (and the Human), there’s a line between performance and genuineness. Mendes slightly oversteps it with an ill-fitting cowboy boot.

Small Changes manages the rare feat of being a beautifully crafted singer-songwriter album in the classic mould without paying audible tribute to any of its classic inspirations, or succumbing to mere tasteful politeness: an album that's informed by the past while sounding unmistakably now.