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 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.

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.

he Basement Tapes are an integral part of music history. Here they are, warts and all, the reality for once a near-match for the bloated myth.

When compared to the mixing and progression of the original, it presents the same odd feeling for the same old record: you can see one of the greatest records of the 70s held captive by a spare mistake here and there. Held together, the original and its remixes could be pieced into Band on the Run’s finest hour.

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.

There’s a wealth of delicious treats held within this set to more than sate your curious appetite.

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.

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 a tumultious mixing pot of important issues, personal emotion, raw refrains, and cotagious hooks that makes their words hammer straight home.

KID A MNESIA (including Kid A and Amnesiac in full, alongside a disc of rarities and off-cuts, which includes many pleasant discoveries, such as an uncomplicatedly majestic alternative version of “Like Spinning Plates”) suggests that Radiohead got there first, most boldly (in the context of the music that had built their ‘brand’), and arguably with the most significant creative gain.

If you want to find a remaster that’s worth your time and money, then Suede is the gem to look into at this very moment.

The result is a really excellent album: uncompromising, thoughtful, and with enough buried complexities to keep people arguing for years to come.

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

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.

The remastering work across the whole album is more subtle than might have been feared in that it does not draw attention to itself, but simply and effectively brings out more clearly than before the (positive) group dynamics and the sonic range. .... The three records are in an attractive tri-fold sleeve, though it would have been good, for such a lavish and correspondingly expensive product, to have the paper inner sleeves for both the studio album and the live one poly-lined.

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.

Yes, fourteen years is a long time to wait between records. But, when the end product is this good, it might just be worth the wait.

It’s impossible to consider this release outside of its original context. With no other albums to compare this to at the time, it sounded life affirming, with its promise of white lines, gin and tonics and taking us away.

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.

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.

With A Comforting Notion, Orme moves between dejection and expostulations of lyrical and musical outrage, one moment wallowing in nihilism, the next celebrating the mysteries of birth, sex, death, and creativity. She has clearly absorbed many of popular music’s important templates, asserting a multifaceted voice that captures life’s highs, lows, and in-betweens.

Death and loss have always been topics mined by Cave, but this may be the most visceral and powerful portrait of those feelings he’s ever painted.

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.

Motomami is the sound of an incredible voice indulging in her pop fantasy and excelling at it, but she makes sure to remind us as often as she can that really, she can do it all.

The desire she sought to turn into on the title track is fully realised in these mesmerising and wholly unique soundscapes.

On this Deluxe Edition, remixes fill out the majority of the extra material.... Yet in a way, it points to the downside of the album, and the fact that sometimes the Compass Point All Stars can steer away from Jones’ dynamic connection between an audience and herself.

One Foot in Front of the Other is joyful and unpretentious – Griff seems to have indeed found her footing in the industry and it doesn’t look like she’ll be leaving anytime soon.

This is The Cure’s finest work since Thatcher was in power.

What emerges from Cinema is an image of a musician who remained resistant to such categorisations to the end: experimental, curious and explorative, Czukay clearly didn't want to master just one style of music. He preferred to have a go at them all. Even when the results are messy (some of the light-hearted late 80's material hasn't dated well), Cinema proves the wisdom of this open-eared approach.

This lovingly and lavishly packaged reissue is a timely reminder of what a supremely focused and satisfying record Soul Mining is.

A handful of the album’s later tracks, including “Sleep Paralysis” and the restless “Choose Your Fighter”, do perhaps fall short of other songs’ ‘absolute banger’ status, but nowhere is there an outright miss.

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.

This is a record that is highly sonically ambitious, and even the moments that don’t quite come together are carried by Beyoncé’s vocal talents and sheer star power.

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.

They inject even their most aggressive tunes with so much joy it becomes something incredibly hard to resist. Even after endless listens, not one chorus, riff, meditation or croon falls flat and none of it feels like it could've come from any band other than this one.

Without losing the sense of comfortable familiarity, and the nostalgia that comes along with it, Alexisonfire have signposted a new era for themselves as a band – and in doing so have let us know that they’re ready to roll with the times and the fast-evolving post-hardcore scene as it is right now.

Rolo Tomassi are a band still looking to push themselves further forward creatively, while remaining just as focused on retaining the dramatic core of their sound that has long set them apart from any contemporaries.

These songs have the funereal grace of David Bowie’s elegant final goodbyes (The Next Day and Blackstar), as well as Bob Dylan’s trio of reflective, mournful albums that helped usher in--and bring some clarity to--the fractious start of the 21st Century (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times).

While it’s pretty impossible to sit through more than a couple of hours of this box in one go, the importance of this body of work is undeniable. Music simply hasn’t caught up--this still sounds futuristic, enigmatic, distant and complicated.

The fuzz caked like dust onto Ellis’ demo mixtape has been cleaned off on Blizzard thanks to its proper mix and production job, allowing his extraordinary flirtations with folk music to shine.

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.

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.

Despite the uncertainty of what is to come, Patterns in Repeat is so assured in its sound. Marling is the captain of her own ship, off on another adventure with one more crew member on board.

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.

The Greater Wings joins Sufjan Stevens's Carrie & Lowell and Ghosteen by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the ranks of minimalist yet multi-layered, masterfully realised albums that are unmistakably rooted in loss and grief but ultimately transcend their painfully personal origins by blooming into life-affirming, universal beauty and resonance.

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

In anyone else’s hands, 30 tracks might feel bloated and indulgent, but Swift tempers length with careful curation, sequencing and a respect for what made the original Red such a superb pop record.

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

All told, The Island Years contains an embarrassment of riches and must rank as amongst the most exhaustive and impressive undertakings of its kind; it’s the kind of towering tribute Martyn’s talents richly deserve. However, it’s hard to figure out who it’s intended for exactly.

Dense and immaculately detailed, nothing about Act II is accidental, and no one could begrudge Beyoncé her moment in the centre of the rodeo ring. There’s no question that Cowboy Carter is a landmark record. Arguably, an inevitable one. But once the dust of its audacity settles, it misses the mark of a classic.

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.

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.

Renaissance is one of Beyoncé’s best albums to date: it doesn’t walk in the footsteps of its predecessors but instead makes its own path, going to places we didn’t think Beyoncé would go. The six years since her last effort have well and truly been worth the wait.

It's brave but vulnerable, energetic but reflective and youthful but wise. If you listen to any Little Simz track, you'll know instantly she's a great MC, but with this project she has stepped beyond that to become a uniquely gifted artist. An incredible album.

"Born Cold" sounds like HIM, though with a slight pop-punk tinge to the chorus as Gould almost whines “do I look so good that you wanna treat me bad?” ‘Thorns of Love’ immediately feels like an old Gaslight Anthem track, and "Napalm Girls" – along with much of the record – has Alkaline Trio written all over it. This is no bad thing – Gould’s delivery of each line is fantastic, and the lyrics are lofty in multiple different ways. It’s exciting and feels fresh set against the current scene, but it feels just a little too all over the place.

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.

Truly establishing themselves as the bright possibilites of guitar music, and blurring lines along with setting new ones out, ultimately with Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice continue to be the very essence of what is to be a band while also remaining - more importantly - human.

The result is a raw, confessional album more interested in telling Rodrigo’s story than conforming to the standards of popular music.

Unlike with previous records, there is no overarching theme to We Got It From Here, and it can often leave the album feeling a little chaotic. But in the end, A Tribe Called Quest were all about beats, rhymes and life, and this album has that in spades.

It’s something self-indulgent that few could get away with, but every song finds its place effortlessly. So, rather than feeling too self-indulgent, it feels far more like we’re the lucky ones SZA has chosen to share so much with.

Still, despite its light-handed approach, Carrie & Lowell strikes with a sort of urgency unparalleled across the composer's 15-year career. Each song feels like a demon Sufjan simply had to face sooner than later.

By trying to escape the constraints of the tradition-bound folk orthodoxy, Lal and Mike Waterson managed to craft an album of songs that sound like long-lost standards.

No Cities to Love confirms that whatever alchemy seems to occur whenever the three sit down to make music together remains untouched by the passage of time. To put it simply, Sleater-Kinney have now made eight records, and they are all very, very good

Punisher triumphs in the joy and pathos that’s to be found in returning to its stories, where like Donna Tartt’s A Secret History, there’s always new depths, clues and answers that make you want to dive right back in.

Where some vault tracks felt like they muddled the existing story in past rerecordings, the vault tracks on 1989 (Taylor’s Version) give it more colour – a kaleidoscope of stories and feelings that mirror the sounds heard and explored throughout.

On their tenth record, they’re back once again to thwack their guitars really hard while also putting together some of the lushest soundscapes and most rousing choruses you’ll hear all year. The band’s greatest strength is an ability to cover multiple bases while always sounding unmistakably Deftones.

It contains both her gentlest, most fantastical production and her saddest, most miserable lyrics. The commendable combination, as well as the new musical directions, reestablishes her artistic identity the same way Bury Me at Makeout Creek and Be the Cowboy did.

The fact that GLUE isn’t just another album in Boston Manor’s discography rings out. It's a portrayal of moral depravity, a reflection of modern society and a call to arms for change. A bold and brazen album that will joyously haunt you.

It's a bravura performance from all concerned; for all the album's unquestionable strengths, you may wish for a drop more of the same raw sawdust-kicking passion and bite during some of the more restrained proceedings that follow.

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.

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.

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.

Pratt has long been a consummate texturalist; mining the pop playbook in resourceful ways, she’s now an exemplary tunesmith as well – the result is sublime.

From the descending, soulful lines on “Backwards” with its urgent pulse to the glassy textures of “Vera (Judah Speaks)" with a club energy always moments away from being revisited, refreshingly, Yesterday Is Heavy never lets you veer too far from the present tense.

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

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 sleek and luxurious Through The Wall, doubles down and delivers the purest distillation of her vision so far, and on top of that, it’s one of the best pop albums of the 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.

Their debut album – aptly titled the record – is here in all its poetic, cutting glory; and it’s been entirely worth the wait.

Jansch's future Pentangle bandmate John Renbourn guests on second guitar and the guitarists' mainly instrumental, jazz- and blues-influenced duo album Bert & John (also from 1966) closes this hugely impressive set on another high note.

Woods presents a complicated dynamic but a contented one. He’s a man ill-at-ease with his profession, his place in the industry and within society, but at least he’s another great album closer to being comfortable with himself.

If you’ve heard a previous Moctar record and pieced together the best bits, you’ll have an imitation of Funeral for Justice’s righteous glory, but if you haven’t, use this record as a roadmap in discovering the previous odd-decade of Moctar’s talent.

There is a vitality and clarity of spirit present here that is at once immediate, intimate and irresistible.

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

Those who never warmed to the sharp-elbowed vibe won’t find themselves wooed by a new angle, but for everyone else St. Vincent is close to definitive.

The Dusk in Us continues to show the depth that Converge can hold below the abrasive sounds. They don’t create chunks of music to be instantly digested, they create art which is meant to take you prisoner in a darkness that will ultimately show you more than you ever realised.

Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, Travis Barker, Diane Coffee, the filthy-mouthed Gangsta Boo...they all contribute to the depth of RTJ2 but never outshine the stars of Render and Meline, despite all giving the best performances of their careers in some time.

On first listen, the absence of a nihilistic mantra to grasp onto may disappoint fans, but the deceptively simple pleasures of Honey open up with each listen. Robyn is trusting her instincts; finding care and wonder in the spaces she once went for punishment.

The mystery of James Scythe, Room 309, and The Callous Heart that unfolded on the run up to this release acted as a rabbit hole gateway into rock and roll at its most theatrical. Eternity, In Your Arms loses none of that sense of spectacle.

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

That! Feels Good! isn’t as lyrically vibrant or extraordinary as What’s Your Pleasure? but holds its own with slinky grooves and a lane where Ware feels most comfortable.

At 25, Hartzman’s old enough to romanticize her youth but world-weary enough not to try recapturing it. The space between the two – reckless childhood and cynical maturity – is where Wednesday resides, but they manage to find beauty in it all.

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.

Ultimately, this deftly intelligent record takes personal and musical themes, and presents them in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s ever been done before. Rina Sawayama is one-of-a-kind, and her debut album certainly isn’t going to be quiet about that.

Wild God is a markedly widescreen offering: the album very literally features both bells and whistles. However, maximalist palette is applied with rare subtlety and appreciation for the alluring spaces between notes, and The Bad Seeds rhythm section (including the inimitable drumming of Thomas Wydler, back in the fold following health problems) infuse the proceedings with an earthy, robust pulse.

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