It’s a collection of songs, yes, but a demonstration of excellence and restraint. ... It’s evidently, demonstrably and obviously a flawless work of genius, and may just be one of the best albums this writer has heard this decade.

A a bright example of both authenticity and creativity. ... Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is tactical, theatrical, and is the product of 100,000 hours spent honing her craft resulting in a body of work with heart, and its head firmly on its shoulders.

There's no doubt that the five-piece have created something incredibly special, and they’re already working on a tour to showcase yet more new music for later in the year – nothing can keep them still. The world is truly Squid's oyster.

Like all great works of art, Illmatic isn’t just about the story it tells; it provides us with a fully-fledged character study of the genius behind it.

Extensive, charming and compelling--Savage Young Dü is one of the best archival compilations of the year.

These unreleased tracks are a nice glimpse behind Prince’s purple curtain, and provide a tantalizing hint at the potential treasures that await us within his Vault. But a discerning ear will easily identify why these songs didn’t quite make the cut for the soundtrack and remained locked away for so long. ... The original Purple Rain soundtrack, however, still sounds fresh, vital, and impassioned.

The now-classic title track to Born In The USA features twice on the uncommonly strong extras included on this five-disc deluxe reissue of Nebraska. ....The set of Springsteen's solo demos from the Nebraska sessions is startlingly strong, especially the four previously unreleased songs. .... Then there's the original album. Brought into sharper focus via remastering without losing any of its essential murkiness, Nebraska remains the gold standard for modern solo troubadour records.

This is an exceptionally compelling, absorbing, rich, and genuinely human piece of work.

From its overall sound down to its finer details, Gavin, Maskin and McPherson have hit the mark completely. It’s amazing to see a band that are so unapologetically queer excel at their craft and create an album that is quite possibly, if not certainly, their masterpiece.

Aside from being a near-perfect collection of belting pop, Sucker Punch also carries a message of triumphant grace: if you can try to be your own best friend and love yourself a little more, wonderful things will happen.

3.15.20 is as spell-binding, illuminating and honest as any of the great albums in recent history. Aspects hold themselves as hard and brutal as Kanye West's Yeezus, yet these moments are tempered by ones of beauty and elegance as enthralling as anything you’d find on Solange’s recent records, or Tame Impala’s for that.

The actual content of OKNOTOK, in terms of what’s new, is hardly justification for any casual listener to pick it up, but the excuse to revisit the record itself would absolutely vindicate the purchase.

We’re All Alone In This Together truly lives up to the quality expected of Dave’s sophomore album and cements him in time as a fallible but even more forthright voice of UK culture.

EHAO is about as good a compilation of modern rock songs as you’re likely to find, but one can’t help but wish they’d had the devilish urge to include some of their most adventurous cuts in the place of their already well-known and mildly overexposed tracks. ... The only new track included here is the rather wonderful “No Bullets Spent”.

There aren’t any synthetic contrivances to be found on this focused, intensely revealing record, for there are far too many of those glitzy baubles around us at all times.

Rough and Rowdy Ways is long, intricately woven and illuminating as a medieval tapestry, and just as precious. It’ll make you cry, it’ll make you tear your hair out, it’ll make you gasp with awe.

For now, what we do have is an incredible record from a band, mid-flight, delivering sweeping abstractions of Gen-Z anxiety that only this group, as a seven-piece led by Isaac Wood, could create.

This is a record you need to keep listening to and finding new nuances. The sheer scope of material here will keep you entertained, thrilled and occasionally a little bit freaked out for years to come.

She gives you everything, expecting nothing in return, lavishing you with luxurious, gothic glamour and saturnine pleasure. A modern masterpiece.

Petals For Armor is a display of the multifaceted truth that is ‘femininity’; Williams’ rage is complex yet simple, primal yet now more discrete.

The 25th anniversary reissue offers a disc of live tracks, and a full set of demos and early versions--interesting historical documents for the completest. But the real joy of the reissue is how it prompts those of us who have moulded ourselves around it, or had it play for years almost subconsciously in the distance, to reconsider its place in our lives: to hold it up to the light and see that it is miraculous.

A deeply personal, Earth-moving masterpiece exploring relationship tensions with the gravitas of an apocalypse and the simplicity of a melody passed down through generations.

The narrative of Five Leaves Left is long and complex. Now that it has been told, in words and music, the record’s greatness is surely only enhanced. This release is the culmination of a remarkable project for which we should all be grateful to Gabrielle Drake and the archival team.

This is a thrilling conclusion to an incredible, peerless career, and it just so happens to be one of the greatest posthumous albums of all time.

It’s not just that all seven albums are of serious musical worth; together, as the Sleater-Kinney back catalogue, they feel like they have some genuine historical value, too.

RTJ4 is Killer Mike & El-P’s masterstroke. This is musical evolution for moral, social and political revolution, the group now creating anthems in the pursuit of tolerance, respect and unity.

This is Sunn O))) at their most playful, and Scott at his most enjoyable.

It is an impressive, exciting and moving album with slick production, accompanied by thought-provoking art (the interpretative dance performance in the “Black Swan” video, the CONNECT BTS art exhibitions), but it is so much more than a shiny pop album. It is a love letter to pain, to the shadows that live within us.

This album not only heralds the return of a singular talent in contemporary popular music, it’s the demonstration of art actioning change in real-time.

Skinty Fia is a rich, full-bodied third entry, with Fontaines DC proving they’re not only here to stay, but here to dominate.

It being one so vulnerable and exposing (including using his family for the artwork), stripping the skin down to the bone, is bold, beautiful, but most importantly, a reminder that an artist like Kendrick Lamar is once in a generation.

On Melodrama, Lorde invites all of us to join in her anguished party of the damned, convincing her believers that if we just keep on dancing the ills of the world won’t be able to catch up to us. And for now, that is a faith promising enough to get totally lost in.

It’s a most welcome and inevitably stunning missing chapter from one of jazz’s finest quartet.

A record that has surpassed all of the greatness her previous efforts entailed. Exceeding the status of a collection of songs, instead star-crossed takes us on a journey from beginning to end with bound-to-be hits like “Justified” and “Cherry Blossom” along for the ride whilst perfectly conveying a story that yet has to find its ending.

A rich, shifting tapestry of grief, beauty, tailspinning disorientation, and illuminating snatches of lucidity.

Coherent despite a refusal to adhere to genre-based constraints, Emotional Education is heartbreaking yet hopeful, relatable yet precise. ... As complex and multi-faceted as any woman in her early twenties, IDER’s debut LP is an album made for people like those who wrote it, and is all the stronger for it.

It might be the most accessible Swans album yet. The long stretches of abstract noise are draped over some surprisingly catchy hooks. A few moments might even qualify as singalong road trip anthems.

In 1996, The Fugees set the whole urban blues thing in motion with The Score. With a work of such stark emotional beauty, Blake has picked up the torch once again with Overgrown.

Boy King punches more like Nine Inch Nails when Trent Reznor was still sexy, synths strafing and drums pounding like the outro to “Closer” teased out for forty minutes.

They’ve pulled off possibly the most intelligent, involving and profound record since OK Computer.

It is nothing short of iconic.

Jah Wobble’s reggae influenced sub-bass lines were the perfect foil to the ice cold (let’s not say angular) riffs of Keith Levene, which gave rhythm to Lydon’s musings of death and boredom perfectly, making Metal Box a true a milestone in British rock music.

He worked tirelessly to perfect these songs. And it’s a revelation to hear just how he got there, and the compelling missteps and musical frustrations he experienced along the way.

Hidden History of the Human Race isn’t just one of the best death metal albums of the year, it’s one of the best metal albums of the entire decade. Stripped of its reductive metal assignations, it’s also one of the finest psychedelic albums of the decade.

Some albums are worthy of such electric apprehension, and the chains leashing this poetic, wit-filled, ramshackle beauty should be broken. Fuck it. Fetch the bolt cutters. This feels special.

It’s going to be hard for Albini, Weston and Trainer to ever top what we find on Dude Incredible. Worthy of filing alongside and above At Action Park and 1000 Hurts, it’s the sound of one of the great bands at the height of their powers.

Anyone actively looking for flaws in Lost In The Dream, the exquisite new album from The War On Drugs, is quite frankly listening to the album wrong. And at any rate, they simply won’t find any, no matter how hard they search.

Commanding, assertive, and powerful, Prioritise Pleasure is everything pop music should be. Wholly unafraid to tackle difficult subjects with ease, in Rebecca Taylor we also have the makings of a serious pop behemoth.

From start to finish, CTRL os nothing less than outstanding - the late arrival of a very important artist.

Despite the level of fastidiousness that’s standard to Daft Punk, Random Access Memories still sounds loose. The album doesn’t feel synthetic or disingenuous, as it perhaps should. So perhaps these two are cooler than anyone you know.

Kinder Versions is one of those precious pieces of art that is brand new but feels like it was always here, dragged from the beginnings of the world and rooted in elemental truth.

It holds the best batch of Waxahatchee songs yet, with Crutchfield at her most candid, raw and clear-eyed. This is the work of someone who’s begun to write a bold new chapter in her life, and it’s special stuff.

Obviously seven CDs need a major investment of time, but the investment is certainly rewarded.

Hadreas may be uncompromising but stubbornness has its rewards: few albums feel as distinct or as complete as his.

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

Hoodies All Summer is an exceptional achievement, proving once again that Kano is one of the UK’s most versatile, thoughtful and talented voices.

There’s simply not a wasted second on the record; all fourteen songs are simple and direct, immediately recorded in inglorious mono with nothing--save the cheap Casio autochord presets on ‘Blues in Dallas’--but voice, guitar and the album’s secret third instrument--the insistent hum of an increasingly-broken boombox.... The main draw of this reissue for hardened Mountain Goats fans, an obsessive breed at the best of times, are Darnielle’s new liner notes and a selection of seven bonus tracks from the same era.

This is a world-class band seemingly ending a chapter, clearing the board and resetting the clocks. This is the sound of a world-class artist, with his world-class band, at once unifying and annihilating his own history, putting a concept on a fire and letting us hear it burn.

Images Du Futur is exciting in a way that few albums manage to be, dangerous and compelling like a first cigarette or fumbled sexual encounter, and nothing here quite seems real.

The last memory of How To Be A Human Being is pure brilliance, and you're forced to revisit the record every chance you get. Each listen reveals more, scrapes back another layer. You'll get more and feel more each time you hit play.

Embodying that impervious inner spirit that Kafka called the Indestructible, where the possibility of perfect happiness exists in spite of everything else, its calm resignation defines what A Moon Shaped Pool strives for. In honing that potential from start to finish, Radiohead have excavated their most accomplished album in at least 15 years.

Titanic Rising is a new thing, her own stamp on the world. Like all the best musicians and songwriters before her, she’s plumbed the depths of her imagination and brought forth a masterpiece from the depths.

If You Leave is staggeringly beautiful from beginning to close, a catharsis that’s both bracing and woozily amniotic.

The Talkies is a devastating and jaw-dropping record that provokes awe and anxiety in equal measure. Although there are elements throughout the record that are ‘quintessentially’ Girl Band, The Talkies builds upon these elements and makes a vast leap sonically and narratively with the aid of unrestrained experimentation. There is a definitive artistic expression found on The Talkies and frankly it should be a late contender for any albums of the decade list.

It Won/t Be Like This All the Time (IWBLTATT) is another dauntless step forward, unflinchingly embracing the core aspects of their sound, while boldly incorporating loftier ideas. It is not some grandiose attempt at a knockout punch or some cheap leap at the mainstream; you cannot fake sentiment, or force people to feel something. IWBLTATT is a laser guided arrow to the heart; an enveloping noise that chips away at you over time.

Somebody’s Knocking represents the point of no return – he's finally surpassed his past achievements, forgotten his past lives, cast off his old names and fully solidified his position as the pre-eminent ruler of the dark kingdom of gothic rock.

Never a note wasted, nothing done without a reason, they were, and will always be Bedhead as good a guitar band as you’ll ever hear.

Ultimately, MASSEDUCTION defies explanation and critique, rendering the critic a dead weight in the dust of its ever-accelerating sucker-punch of ideas.

It’s the songs themselves that should guarantee the album’s global success. Throughout the mini-album are references to BTS’ past and reflections on their growth as artists and individuals.

This box set is a treasure trove for people who’ve never heard any of Iggy Pop’s various bootlegged and semi-official releases over the years, especially the releases pertaining to this era. The quality of these albums – and Bowie’s entire Berlin period – is so high because the sessions were so economical, and no ideas were abandoned along the way.

Experimental yet built on superb songwriting, fresh and surprising but still somehow recognisably a Bad Seeds record, the amount of innovation and inspiration found on Push The Sky Away proves that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds must still care an awful lot about this rock ‘n’ roll stuff.

Hutson continues his startling ability to generate a world of his creation, and our making. It’s the little things that gift Hutson’s songs with a penetrable honesty, balanced between the softly plucked strings - beauty and realism.

When he’s crooning swoon-heavy gut-punches, he’s unstoppable. When he guns for swaggering electro-pop or soul-infused dance bangers, there’s almost nothing than can get in the way--this is the best pop music in the U.K. right now.

Vulnicura is humanity at its most volatilely sublime.

Combining the spirit of Britpop with the attitude of modern day post punk, tracks like “Going Soft” , “Here It Comes Again” and the familiar cries of “Camel Crew” and “Kutcher”, swell, expand and know just when to pull the pin into an eruption of chaos.

With a formidable knack for telling an engaging story in the space of a song, Divers is further proof that, as a lyricist, Newsom is second to none.

Guarded and beautifully measured, At Weddings has an absorbingly intimate quality.

Incredibly enduring and undeniably influential, Anthology is a culmination of everything that prevails from this often omitted, golden era of music.

Someone New has a presence that lingers long after it’s finished. This is an album that demands your full attention, sucking all the air out of the room and leaving you to drift in the grey matter of Deland’s mind. After the last notes fade to black, the ghost of Someone New continues to haunt you — it’s an utterly unforgettable record.

It’s an incredibly tight record packed with stellar performances, production and presence throughout. The blood, sweat and tears of hip-hop run through the album, but Gibbs has once again redefined what that means.

Its significance, its profundity, its sheer exhilarating force will stay with you for far longer than just about anything else you’re likely to hear this year.

Brief moments give breathing space in a record that’s suffocatingly intense. PSYCHODRAMA isn’t an album to stand up and rejoice to. It’s a sit-down-and-consume, a listen-and-learn. In doing that, you appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the prose. It’s an overwhelmingly powerful 51 minutes of music unlike anything released this year.

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.

A messy, extravagant, astonishing, beguiling and honest experience: that’s love, and that’s also what I Love You, Honeybear is. Just magnificent.

Foals manage to delight with invigorating innovation while simultaneously keeping their unique identity deeply engrained in a style that is as fresh as it is warm.

Forget everything you thought you knew about St. Vincent, because this is Annie Clark 2.0, beamed in from an alternate reality, ready to blow your mind. Daddy’s home, and she’s sounding better than ever.

Crampton packs a world of sound into her albums, and to listen is to undertake a journey of sorts.

That the new stuff doesn’t make you pine for the comforting certainties of early solo classics à la ‘Naked as We Came’ at all is a sign of just what a successful evolution Ghost on Ghost is.

The versatility of Collapsed In Sunbeams is beyond comendable. Parks seemingly effortless lyricism and laidback melodies make her songs cosy in winter, and chilled in summer - always to be uplifting and comforting. Every track can mould around different settings and this level of versatility in a debut album is a rarity. Collapsed In Sunbeams is timeless.

The sharp craft of Tension II confirms that this is Kylie Minogue’s world, we’re just fortunate enough to live in it.

Much like Hunter, Remind Me Tomorrow is brutal, but it’s honest and open and true about how grim life is sometimes. By not pulling her punches, Van Etten has seemingly done the impossible--reinvented herself by doubling down on her own artistic tendencies.

Aside from the constant stream of new sounds and instruments ("Revolution" may be the first song to utilise a steel drum for its big drop), the other joy of the record is its themes of self-affirmation and courage.

Whether Poison Season is approached as an exhibition of those many individual pieces, or as an ensemble affair weaved subconsciously together, that conflicted point of view leads the listener to treat the whole LP as an exploration.

This isn’t dewy eyed nostalgia all weighed down with rose tinted reverence, though: he makes a respectful nod to the past by rifling through jungle and garage and so on, but each track feels like a poignant and yet propulsive reflection of Jamie’s personality and experiences.

The Districts have evolved into something bigger and brighter with their fifth release. Turns out Great American Painting is pretty great.

Cool World is instrumentally gripping, vocally enthralling, and lyrically calls out the horrors of late-stage capitalism.

On Song For Our Daughter Marling intimately portrays her subconscious, the one that’s paved the way for her to survive to this point years before these songs were recorded, in its brutal glory.

Much like Black Messiah, a slightly more heralded return of another long-absent polymath, it rewards repeated listens, even if they’ll barely bring you closer to actually understanding it.