A celebration and a middle finger as Banoffee reclaims her strength across tracks driven by wonky pop sensibilities and a drop of infectious playfulness.

Through a dizzying blend of experimentation, innovation and stylistic idiosyncrasy Everything Everything have created another peerless record with Raw Data Feel, one which proves once more that the horizons the band chases are theirs and theirs alone.

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.

For if you don’t get distracted by the constant temptations of modern contrivances and social connectivity, and buy into these simple but striking songs that Lewis is selling on Electric Slave, then he’s got the cure for the modern ills and then some.

The New Abnormal cements their continued relevance when many had been written them off, and as ever they don’t seem to care either way.

It’s light years ahead of anything Goodman turned out with Vivian Girls; she’ll never be the world’s most original songwriter, but the opportunity to let both her vocals and her guitar breathe is one that’s already paying dividends.

This is a wonderfully assured comeback record, but it’s also precisely more of the same.

It’s hard to find fault with Bashed Out; timeless and completely modern all at once, Stables might have taken a little bit of time to hit her stride with This Is The Kit but this combination of players has helped her realise a vision of sorts: it’s as lucid a record as you’ll hear all year.

There’s no doubt that Pianos Become The Teeth are fully aware of where they want to be; all that’s left is a little more refinement and consistency to get them to that point.

Reflection is a product for everyone; not just the music lover. Yes, the music alone can be easily appreciated for its virtuosity; however, the whole package assists people with their day-to-day lives and provokes mindfulness and interaction with the wider world.

Mourn is a hearty, eye-popping reminder just how far we have swayed from rock music’s embryo nowadays and how awfully contrived the revivalist stabs have been.

Parton did exactly as he set out to do, bridging a self-recognized gap in his songwriting habits to produce a melodically dense record packed with insatiable hooks with minimal sacrifice to the band's signature sense of nostalgia-infused momentum.

Weezer’s greatest misses may come from their frontman’s visceral desperation to stay relevant, but it’s a relief to hear them take chances and risk failure in such a new way. The album might just be OK, but it’s been a long time since Weezer have dared to be this human.

While the album has its forgettable moments, there are points where McVicar and Tweeddale really show what they’re made of--and that, if you piss them off, you’re going to know about it.

Though it has been sixteen years since their last studio album, not much is technically new here except a further tendency towards the mellow and ongoing hopeless romanticism.

Like with their lyrics, The Goon Sax are still working things out on the fly. Getting caught up in the feeling and riding the wave until they find some sort of conclusion. For the Brisbane trio, truly embracing that feeling, however messy, is what makes them so special.

There’s a pleasant sea-change at the mid-way point on “Togetherness Is All I’m After”, with the dropping tempo allowing some finer feeling and vocal range to return, but tracks like “Cell Phone Blues”, “Love Chant”, and “Marauders”, feel forced and lumpen.

While there’s a bit of a formula to be spotted, it’s one that works for them--given that it’s new to us, it’s easy to appreciate and doesn’t wear too thin over Weird Sister's duration.

The praise and adoration of 2021’s album Thirstier perhaps acts like a precursor to this newfound confidence and it genuinely feels like now is TORRES time after a decade of musically searching for this exact point in time.

While No Coast is more resurrection than reinvention, hearing new Braid now after 15 years without drums up the realization that nothing has sounded quite like it since.

This is ain't your average country record.

The LP is fourteen songs long, but never feels laboured. This is probably because in true indie pop tradition, most of the songs are under three minutes. With their jangling, sometimes-spiky guitar sounds and indie pop hooks; they wouldn’t sound out of place on the iconic C86 mix tape.

Ritter hasn’t just surrounded himself with some of the best musicians in the game for his milestone tenth album, but he’s found a way to reinvent himself while not forgetting where he’s come from. After twenty years, this pillar of Americana folk is as relevant as ever, and sounding better than ever too.

There are few albums that will make you experience so many emotions concurrently, and even fewer that will still give you chills hours later. Even though it may be tough to swallow some of the brutish feeling, it’s an exceptional record.

There’s a sense of exhaustion in Spectre, but it’s not an exhaustion with irony and a refuge in po-faced sloganeering. Rather, Laibach dramatise the exhausted nature of a political movement that seems unable to do anything other than follow the lines laid out for it by the social order it claims to oppose, or take refuge in a vague utopianism.

In Ferneaux is arguably Benjamin John Power’s most subdued effort under the Blanck Mass moniker. It’s a slower, more meditative affair which deviates significantly from its predecessors and whilst there are gleaming examples of Power’s sonic craftsmanship, they’re hindered by sections of profound aimlessness that move against the defined conceptual direction to be found elsewhere on the album.

Twin Peaks somehow manage to translate the last ten years of American guitar music into a 40 minute package that will help you remember why you fell in love with all of the bands which ‘changed your life’ in the first place.

Sometimes something comes along that seems to revel in nonchalant noisemaking; gives in to the din and just is. Effortlessly, thrillingly, brilliantly, Go Easy does that in spades.

Death Grips are at their best when they’re just being plain weird. Some of the attempts to fully reproduce various types of dance music fall a little flat – it’s a passable imitation, but the kind of people who like psytrance might not have much time for most of Government Plates.

It shows a remarkable advancement in the band’s no-holds barred approach to making loud music. It may sound much more slick. And the mix is a lot less noisy and raw. But don’t be fooled – the tunes are just as brutal and punishing as ever, while that superior production allows the tunes to breathe in a novel way.

In all Galipolli is the sound of one of our most talented musicians rediscovering his love for what he was born to do. It’s Zach Condon’s career highlight so far and shows that he's at his best when he enjoys making music and cares less about what critics and fans might think of it.

The underlying intensity to their music on previous records is stripped away, leaving in its wake a bland and largely forgettable experience.

Mess is characteristically confident and brash, but humane and enduring. In short, it’s up there with the rest of their unerringly brilliant back-catalogue.

It’s packed with humour, drama, anger and sadness, all brought together by ALA.NI’s artistic direction. ACCA is a one-woman show that will have you glued to your seat – your toilet break will just have to wait.

These ten tracks are an arrestingly assured summary of who they are now, while fully embracing their former selves.

It’s one of the most complex pop albums of recent years, and like any great steamroller mind, she can’t quite contain herself.

The Skrillex moment aside, there are really no glaring missteps here.

This record is intelligent, succinct in its ambitions, and more than anything, it’s pretty bloody cool.

On first impression, in|FLUX is almost alienating, an unsettling listen that does all but invite you back for more. But with determination, passion, and survival instinct – the very feelings explored at such length – it yields excellence.

Cole’s most affecting statement to date.

As introductions go, We Are Nots is a sharp gut punch of a debut LP and certainly merits attention.

While Strange Little Birds might not be Garbage’s most immediate release, lyrically it’s certainly their bravest and 20 years into their career, it feels like they’ve entered a new era.

As much as this is a horrific and challenging listen at times, Coming Apart is also an utterly captivating and thrilling record and...whisper it...could end up being the best music she’s ever put her name to.

It’s such an confrontational piece of work that you need to mentally prepare prior to the needle hitting the groove. Once it does though, you are dragged into Bo Ningen’s world, a place where the fusion of rhythm fighting against musical aggression has never sounded so thrilling.

An album that feels spacious and cinematic, genuinely human and loaded with emotion. It’s one of the classiest and most refined listening experiences you’ll have all year.

Although SASAMI is a debut album, it feels more like the work of an artist whose craft is already honed--and that's because it is. You can hear the decades of refinement in Ashworth's songcraft, which makes for an absorbing collection of confessional songs both incredibly personal and widely relatable, on an incredibly self-assured debut.

Never has Kesha's music felt this inspiringly rich. It has all the potential of once again making her a staple on the music scene, and this time even beyond pop.

Dalliance is a brief half an hour expression of energy, without too much angst. It will never be considered a highly innovative venture, but the five-piece do manage to include some interesting twists on an old formula.

Subdued brass notes in the closer, “Left Handed Lover,” and the sludgy rock tempo shift in “Dogs” point to ambitions unrestrained by the genre confines of country and folk. Dozier does leave plenty of room to explore these ambitions more completely on a future project, but I Am The Prophet also remains dense and striking in its own right.

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.

Go to School is an artistic statement on a grand scale, and it cements their reputation as world-class songwriters. It’s a once-in-a-generation epic.

This release is not a cliched, sulky attempt to do something new fuelled by the frustrating necessity for a narrative to complement their art. Instead, Sunlit Youth sounds like music Local Natives want to make.

The album itself doesn’t quite reach the sharp, perfect coherence that Timberlake was clearly aiming for.

Equal parts Nuggets era-psych as it is The Cure and The Smiths, it is certainly an interesting avenue of songwriting they’ve chosen to explore. As with most exploration, however, there are missteps and wrong directions.

hubby and the Gang are what punk should be in 2021; heavy, fun, and unrepentantly honest.

It’s hardly a surprise that Big Wheel and Others is at its best when McCombs just keeps it simple with himself and his acoustic guitar, while the moments where he overreaches are the longer pieces without the focus found elsewhere.

There is as much tenderness as there is explosiveness on Pure Vida Conspiracy and the band once again demonstrate their depth, breadth and potential for excellent showmanship.

It’s concise and straight-to-the-point, with no signs of over-indulgence. In short, it’s the album fans of the New York rapper always knew he was capable of making.

While you could write off this album for not attempting to push any musical boundaries, there's an authenticity to their relatable lyricism that gives reason to their polarising popularity.

Present Tense stands as another stage in Yumi Zouma’s development in this sense, lapsing at times into dream-wrapped comfort zone while throwing enough curveballs to differentiate from preceding outings.

It’s an oddly assured debut, tender and strong at the same time – and its greatest strength is that Rapp is as good of a songwriter as a performer of her own emotions.

Glider is an album for all seasons, from star-gazing on a humid summer’s night to blanketed winter evenings beside the fire. And, come the short days and long nights later this year, we’ll look back on it as one of 2015’s best.

Though bleak on the surface, through Jonny, Pierce finds himself embracing the chaos of life, reclaiming his childhood years in a cathartic and self-soothing project that aptly marks fifteen years of The Drums.

I'm In Your Mind Fuzz is a peculiar delight; one which you should indulge in at least once, if only just to try it. It may just leave you wanting another taste.

While touching briefly on new ground, The Long Walk is generally what you’d expect it to be, but with minor variations alongside the engrossing quality that make Uniform so distinct to begin with. It’s nothing too far off from Uniform’s standard layout, but right now it shows them precisely where they should be as a young band.

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.

By coalescing a number of everyday influences – from Television to John Cale--and adding her own distinctive formula, Crab Day doesn’t really sound like anything else out there.

A tippy, interstellar journey all the more worthwhile taking.

Although most probably disappointing expectant fans; a long EP would have held together the worthier ideas more artistically.

Pe-Ahi, despite being entertaining, cries out for something we haven’t heard from them before.

He found himself in a rut, did what many of us would be too scared to do, and spent time with just his thoughts, for weeks on end. He waded through them, and came out the other side with his best batch of songs in years.

Before We Forgot How To Dream is subtly uplifting, astute and speaks in the diction of a youth that may be tired of being talked at, rather than to.

Songs For The General Public is a landmark album, unlike any other, that draws from the past, churns it up, modernises it and chucks it into our present with sonic-like energy through sheer effervescing talent.

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.

Every track here is distinct and complex. The Way and Color is not an album designed to blend into the background noise of your day. It really demands your time. It demands to be listened to.

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.

Mohawk is an album that feels great, imparts wisdom, drops sweet details and encourages both fandom and participation. If there’s fault to be found it’s in the record’s brevity.

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.

On the whole, Careless People could do with a bit more weirdness.

It's a beautiful piece of work from an artist who is destined to walk among Canada's elite singer/songwriters.

For ultimately, in true Almond fashion, this musical nod to 1960’s Italian cinema is as much tragedy as comedy. The real tragedy however would be not to check it out.

During its most striking moments, Weather is yet another example of Scott Hansen’s musical craftsmanship and excitingly it clearly illustrates the validity of his collaborative efforts with other musical artists. However the weighting on Weather is at times off-kilter and inconsistent, if Hansen can rectify and master this in future projects, he will likely be making the best music of his career.

In experimenting with various sonic tapestries paired with a conceptual thematic essence, she ends up hitting effective compositions in some moments and awkwardly stumbling on others. It’s a dream that might gradually fade in and out of the mind, but when it does clear out the misty blur, some moments end up potent.

Despite the interminably silly nature of Black Moon Spell, there are moments when these retro-rockers get it right.

Despite Daughter of Everything’s brief runtime, its sheer number of tracks and subgenre bending lend it a sprawling quality, not unlike Robert Pollard.

With the experiments being so hit and miss you’re left looking for familiar thrills, but even when delivering these, the band sound so much like there are motions to be gone through that you just aren’t inclined to feel engaged.

BTR best functions as a way to experience every mode that Grace has to offer as both songwriter and vocalist. It’s also the closest that Grace has come to letting others in and having a direct dialogue with the outside world.

Consistently intriguing and occasionally glorious, Not Real feels like a genuine step forward.

Care is as close to a perfect example of modern music as you're likely to find--it’s self-reliant, self-assured and packed with more hooks than a cloakroom.

Pink continues down his path of willful eccentricity on pom pom, then, with little more to add to his reputation (which sadly now appears to be growing more for his haphazard attempts to be an internet-famous ‘figure’ than his musical output), yet there are moments of atmospheric and emotive brilliance that will make you wonder what kind of excellence he could achieve if he weren’t quite so in debt to the R Stevie Moore’s legend.

The heartache-on-sleeve lyricism occasionally veers into the melodramatic (“Passed you on a side street / Brushed across your wrist like a razor blade”), but it’s forgiven because of the sheer honesty offered.

Hardly euphoric but with some real mastery in the guitar, not dissimilar to Body/Head, this is dark swell of analog experimentation will no doubt intrigue guitar geeks globally.

Close to the Glass is a record bookended with perfectly executed experiments, so gentle on the ears. Beautiful and perfect, they make the whole record seem round, and right.

Courting the Squall is a collection of songs from a musician unencumbered by expectation or industry pressure, just Guy Garvey recording a bunch of tunes with his friends and seeing where his muse leads them. That free spirit gives his poignant solo material a fresh buoyancy that still sounds intimate, due to his estimable songwriting gifts and the band’s ability to not overthink these compositions and just let the musical magic happen naturally.

Shine A Light is by turns sombre and playful.

State of Ruin is as successful in embracing the genre's menace as it is subverting it, revelling in the fist-pounding and neck-snapping as much as dream-like and beatless. All in all, a solid debut.

Everything explores anguish from loss but consequently finds gaiety within it. One thing that’s certain about Bnny’s progressive project is that its one to balance a surge of emotions,

Smile is messy – but so is the existence that Robinson writes about. At times, that makes the album feel unguided. But mostly, this is the first Porter Robinson album that feels entirely like him. That makes for one of the most compelling pieces of art he has ever released.