At fifteen tracks, the album’s club-friendly repetitiveness can make it a bit of a stretch to get through, especially because a few tracks feel less essential than the rest. But overall, it’s still surprisingly exceptional as a front-to-back listen.

It's one of the rock albums of the year, and if it is the case--as is rumoured--that it's their last, then it's also a perfect swan song.

Seven Horses is an ambitious soundtrack experience which works perfectly and will leave you moved, inspired, cleansed and a little afraid.

Whether its hiding tragedy behind comedy for his own purpose, or simply making it easier for us to digest what Purdy preaches when he gets to the truth, either way, ISTHISFORREAL? is a special balance.

With this effort Shauf successfully portrays the complicated smogarsbord that is youth by capturing in its crudest form at a party, with its hedonism and heartbreak, and in doing so propels himself miles ahead of his singer-songwriter peers who have tried to do the same.

There really is a veritable deluge of ephemera attached to the deluxe editions of this release, so there is certainly plenty for fans and collectors to hunker down over. Be warned though, there is plenty of dross to wade through until you’re able to reveal anything of true value.

The album is thrillingly foreign yet familiar in its finest moments.

Unlike the majority of [posthumous releases], Faith speaks to Pop Smoke’s perpetuity in hip-hop’s current context, serving as less of a lament of what could have been and more as a memorial for what was and still is.

There’s something remarkable about Staples’ ability to display such emotional complexity within a relatively brief 35-minute runtime. It is an art he has mastered over the years, yet on this album he manages to pack an immense amount of content in that space – more so than ever before.

War & Leisure is an album with a generous helping of highlights, not least because of Miguel’s enviable vocal versatility and affinity for dramatic songcraft, an irresistible combo that sees him playing both hero and villain in his own fantasy.

Zauner is absolutely in her element here and it goes without question that while this is undeniably her year, she’s also just rebranded herself as one of today’s top-tier indie visionaries.

Two Hands is a great record, and a stunning artistic accomplishment – a reminder if you needed one that this is Lenker’s THIRD album in twelve months – but it’s also devilishly clever in that it isn’t a perfect album. If it was, they’d have nowhere to go on the next one.

Nastasia has turned her harrowing experiences into genuinely beautiful songs. At first, the bluntly matter-of-fact tone of the writing and simple melodies seem almost artless and first-draft rough. Over consecutive listens, the cumulative hypnotic pull and elemental, harsh beauty of the songs and especially their lyrics becomes evident.

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.

From its songwriting to production, its emotive lyrical content to considered vocal performance, it’s a home run of a project. Holly Humberstone is destined for great things, and this EP is just the beginning.

Allie X's debut, 2017's CollXtion II, was a fun, if simplistic outing, but Cape God is an album undeniably made by a woman truly forging her own path however she sees fit. Not to mention championing the wickedly bright future of avant-garde, ascendant music.

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.

With Your Wilderness Revisited, William Doyle hopes to bring you along on a magic carpet ride through suburban England, where you will find new ways of experiencing pathways, front gardens and parked cars as though they were entirely new concepts.

Granted, introspection is nothing new for the Newham MC, whose past works have tackled cancer, colourism and voting abstention—but here he lays bare his own story with disarming frankness.

A rich texture of sounds and concepts, masterfully weaved together by an artist at the top of their game. By rights, it will become essential modern listening - a thought-provoking and utterly compelling collection of tracks, delivered with understated yet captivating style.

Elwan is pure rock n’ roll. There is an undeniable swagger and an unfettered attitude of resistance here; no pretension or theater.

Precipice is that rare album that brings together vulnerability, self-reflection, and the trademarks of a mainstream milestone: super earworms, coolly cosmopolitan sonics, and a voice that grows more compelling with each track. Precipice is De Souza’s “arrival” album and a singular addition to the contemporary pop canon.

There’s an underlying recognition here, particularly on the part of Miller: parties end. The most opulent train can go off the rails. It’s this juxtaposition – brashness and vulnerability, abandon and a recognition of impermanence – that makes No Hard Feelings an arresting sequence.

Williams has created something that exceeds even her finest, most vital work. In short: a masterpiece, then.

What’s so beautiful about The Passionate Ones is the simmering afterglow in every song, enhancing his mixture of chillwave, Arthur Russell, and SWV. Brown’s more spacious arrangements have helped him eloquently articulate his compelling words, catching your unsuspecting attention whenever the music lulls.

In embracing a formlessness, he may have found a new, truer form for his work. In making this album, he has in fact created a world; perhaps not one you would want to inhabit, but one inspiring awe and dread in equal measure.

By its end, Thrice Woven not only serves as one of this year’s most promising metal releases, but it also stands as something purely monolithic and even transcendental--a collection of songs, showcasing a band’s evolution that leaves you in full levitation, locked in paralysis, and at a moment’s notice, you dissipate completely wondering how you made it home.

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.

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.

A work of breathtaking beauty capable of connecting us more deeply to our truest selves and to the world around us.

A Walk With Love and Death re-frames the Melvins’ legacy with newfound aplomb. Whilst perhaps unlikely to win over anyone sitting on the fence up until now this is not merely their most impressively realised effort in many a moon, but also one of the most rewarding listens of the year thus far.

Whereas the sound of Skying suffered at times due to a muggy recording, Luminous is given a full pop sheen, an approach that’s resulted in a much wider sound.

It boasts some of her strongest singles ever, and, coming at the end of a four year break and a two year pandemic, it’s not the theatrical Welch who shows up here; this is a woman and a songwriter, no forest-sprite.

Total Strife Forever is breathtaking. It might get tough sometimes, lonely and desolate even, but Doyle’s catharsis will hoist you by the bootstraps into lusher pastures.

Hawk writes like a poet, and as such you often have to dig harder to find his meaning, or even better apply your own. But these are everyday tales dressed up in finery that will embed them into your mind.

An electrifying and utterly unexpected treat, it’s packed with the kind of nourishing and warm music we would do well to turn to for sustenance and uplift when times get tough.

Alvvays’ record is a hard-hitting, multi-faceted anthology of awesome, and sits pretty as one of 2014’s brightest debuts.

This longform escapade is the real McCoy, and where the magic happens. The honeymoon period is over.

Peggy Gou has always yielded her talents to the complete advantage of the listener. On I Hear You, she pays homage to these talents, laying a path that is singularly hers to embark on, one on which she carries the future of dance-music, and all of it’s fun.

Like Francis Bacon, Young Fathers borrow inspiration to create gloriously realised works of unique art, which arouse debate, revulsion and awe in varying measures.

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.

Like Chris’ persona, the album is lean, unashamedly self-aggrandising and thrillingly audacious. Here, pop is a transformative power. Subverting male privilege to her own advantage, Chris has built an album of tunes that could not only top charts, but also change worlds.

to hell with it feels genuine. A genuine talent creating music that is genuine to her and by showing the wide spectrum of her talent, PinkPantheress adds an extra sensation to her ‘viral sensation’ tag. Nestling perfectly within the current climate whilst also carrying its own charm, this is the start of something big.

An album rich in darkness and in texture, finding Low in experimental sublimity, further reminding us that their range has only gotten exceptionally larger and better over time.

With Great Spans of Muddy Time William Doyle has now become his own man, capable of producing work on an equal level to those who have come before. It’s exciting to think of what might come next.

While Emperor of Sand is amongst their heaviest, proggiest material to date, it’s also the quartet at their most emotionally bare. Mastodon have dug deep into their darkest moments and have surfaced with one of the best albums of their career.

With Phantom Brickworks Bibio has not only created a record that stands apart from his other Warp albums to date, but has cemented his mastery of the atmospheric; creating an album that can imprint on a listeners’ surroundings like few others.

By interrogating the strategies we employ to keep on living in an impossible world, this astonishing album has become one.

What makes Pussycat an unqualified success is how Hatfield has constructed it with multiple dimensions and, no matter the mood or approach a given song takes, she continually scores with material among the finest of her career.

Not a single moment is out of place. Everything is crafted to induce a reaction. ... Ada Lea has a musical mind that pushes so much further than just some melodies and words.

Their second full-length may be short, but it expertly treads the line between fantasy and realism, between pretension and honesty, and wraps it all up before you’ve had time to raise an eyebrow.

An uncommonly diverse yet still seamlessly unified album that is audibly conscious of traditions without ever becoming beholden to them, Odyssey seems destined to be counted amongst the landmarks of the ongoing creatively fertile Brit-Jazz resurgence.

This is a damn heavy record, but with it, there's faith and optimism of equal measure.

An ouroboros-like reawakening that finds them at their acerbic and celebratory best.

These are world-class songs, thoughtfully sequenced into an endlessly replayable record. DEACON is, quite clearly, a complex, rich and elegant collection that points at one very simple truth: love is central to a life well lived.

With strident chords, spiralling melodies, and a shiver inducing delivery, No Shape might spend a lot of its time searching, but in being open about that the record presents Perfume Genius at his most realised.

It may make you feel many things but crucially Finn, the most human of story tellers, has created a record and a world within which you will never feel ashamed or alone.

Reflektor acts as a vehicle through which the band’s established flair can be refracted into a new polarising, pulverising shape.

Rather than coming across as naïve, Shura has created something hopeful and delightfully light in this record, setting it apart from much of pop’s current offerings. It is the perfect soundtrack to the end of summer, and all the months after spent remembering it.

Owusu’s debut offering not only manages to deftly balance style with substance, but does so with a jubilance that gives as much reason to curl up your own most toothy grin. More importantly, it also offers moments of reflection.

Two Parts Together could be used to reference both dualities present here, that of the physical/metaphysical and the loud/quiet dynamic to Big Ups’ sound. Regardless of which one you choose, the band balance both almost to perfection, presenting both a musical and thematic journey that comes together to create a singular exhilarating experience.

From the folk twang of “First Time” to the torrential clapping on “Anything But,” this is a Hozier album to the hilt: considered, earnest, and moving.

The Night Chancers is Dury’s most accomplished work, its self awareness and innate understanding of genre and language shows the songwriter to be in the prime of his creativity.

With Loom, Fear of Men have proven to be just as brilliantly complex as that natural wonder they so often invoke--deep, refreshing, mysterious, life-affirming.

She subverts expectations and embraces contradiction, creating fascinating sonic concoctions with familiar ingredients, all brought together by her twisting melodic sensibility.

It’s not as instantly accessible an album as the band’s relatively recent classics Majesty Shredding (2010) and I Hate Music (2013), but in many ways it’s a more important one. It’s the sound of an essentially middle-aged band firing out a clutch of missile missives directed at the dark heart of modern America (in the absence of many younger bands fulfilling that role) and carrying it off majestically.

[An] intelligently-crafted album that repays repeated playing to appreciate its numerous qualities.

Super Furry world is a weird place, and the gift of hindsight simply tells us that the Welsh quintet were simply inviting us in the easy way. It also doesn't take much scratching at the surface of Fuzzy Logic to realise how insidiously bizarre it is. ... As with any reissue, the accompanying bonus disc of demos are a mixed bag; mainly straightforward runs of album tracks are interspersed with some genuinely interesting alternative takes of familiar material.

It’s futile to pick highlights from an album that is so uniformly inspired that even the one far-out diversion from the heartfelt script (“…And The Sea…”, a woozy instrumental featuring Michael Head reciting from James Joyce’s Ulysses) works perfectly.

It may not be the best album this year and it certainly won’t be one of the most influential or contemporary--there are slews of reviews here for those well-deserved albums--but it may rank among the most important.

Rather than rushing into something, Inji is a complex compilation of his finest material.

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.

With sonics so extraordinarily ornate and a soul-stirring sentiment to match, three men and their producer have successfully taken the listening world to church, and left it there waiting for its next sermon.

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.

Overall, this is an album that makes so much of the distant past and the present through intelligent working with and against classical music conventions. Recommended to anyone wanting to experience a beautiful and evocative soundscape created out of a highly original sensibility.

Satan’s Graffiti or God’s art? shows that while other bands may find themselves naturally winding down when several albums in, Black Lips are still going from strength to strength.

Charistmatically stepping onto the scene with an unmistakable presence in an era of reclaiming confidence is not an easy feat but Remi Wolf has delivered a debut that is powered by a true liveliness to be fun and real.

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

Blømi leaves solutions for our current problems back in the times where they could have been useful. This can only be music as morphine: a painkiller mixed with transcendental meditation.

The Wants debut is bold, daring and incredibly effective. Separating itself from the regular indie noise, Container is an album that tells a compound narrative while experimenting cleverly with fine attention to detail.

May You Marry Rich is something all of its own; it has a sense of danger and a distorted outlook that is extremely alluring. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Her striking lyrical flow has become more relentless but comes off more like a constant drip of honey than an imposing assault, at least sonically. On the other hand, the subject matter of the lyrics is rife with Socratic lines of moral questioning and political comedy. Every track excels in a topical focus that will not be spoiled or summarized by the deadline-watching eyes of a critic.

With Tigers Blood, Crutchfield continues to perfect her songcraft and elevate the Americana genre – asserting a panoramic vision, radiating wisdom.

This is a stunning record, principally because of its narrative arc and complete cohesion--it's easy to see why they're leaving the traditional format if they've perfected it.

This second album is less of a record than an experience. You truly get a sense of cosmic alignment here.

Despite Hypercaffium Spazzinate feeling as referential as it does, it's surprising that there's nothing obviously referencing ALL, the attitude and mantra that populated some of their earlier records. The sentiment is there however, it's rooted in the record, its sheer energy, and the attention which has gone in to making it.

Just as Dawson clearly relishes being able to record with Circle, so too does the album feel like a treat imparted to the listener in the lead up to Christmas. There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a sprawling work, the shortest song being six minutes, the longest being over twelve. Lyrically, Dawson is on fine form.

A celebration of lightness, of fun, and of growing, learning, healing, High Road confidently and comfortably reconciles the different sides of Kesha which previously felt separate.

Cements them as no longer excellent imitators of the bands they once tipped their hats to, but worthy equals.

Scaring often feels more like a mixtape showcasing Peggy's inimitable skills as a producer, but its the addition of Brown's frenetic flow that elevates the patchwork quilt. It's his spiky wit and tonation which delivers a cargo-load of personality needed to spark the frenzy.

A Humdrum Star is a stunning piece of music making, and almost certainly GoGo Penguin’s best work.

There’s no doubt that we’ll look back on this album as an essential sound of the unparalleled social climate of 2020.

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.

Live at The Troxy is still a gem of a record that acts as affirmation for those who were there that the show was as spectacular as they remember, and as a legitimate teaser for those who want to catch Fever Ray live next time she’s in town.

Gigi's Recovery is an excellent record, and The Murder Capital have laid the first real claim to Album of the Year.

The Past Is Still Alive is a remarkable album, one which achieves the impossible trick of capturing the mood of a nation and a vivid portrait of a single fascinating person – all within one gorgeous stew.

There is a feeling of higher power, an all encompassing truth or consciousness that pervades the album, and provides the thread to link their myriad sounds. Rather than an end, this feels like a reincarnation.

This is rich, idiosyncratic music that’s too wild and strange to copy.