In confronting their own personal heartbreaks and terrors, she and her bandmates have created their most engaging and universal album to date.

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.

What Short Movie does do is remind us of the poise with which Marling carries her prodigious ability as a songwriter, and reaffirm that she’s genuinely ambitious, too; she sounds excited again, and so should we be.

Their fresh, invigorated sound arrives like cascading droplets of water from a waterfall whose source you’ve yet to locate through the mist. And with Lease Of Life, the effervescent Scottish crew has once again served up a vibrant collection of gems that will still sound polished long after the glimmer of this era begins to show signs of fading.

LoneLady has reimagined herself as the star of a glitter laden dancefloor, the lasers excitedly pinging from the mirror balls hanging from above. By doing this, she’s gone and made the finest pop record of 2015 so far.

The Ark Work pays tribute to Hunt-Hendrix’s dogged desire to push listeners’ buttons. Sure, this could all be a massive wind-up, but to these ears Liturgy seem to have melted down the traditional ingredients of black metal and crafted it into something unyielding, unique and ultimately engrossing.

The complexity in the arrangements of some of the harmonies on this record show them off individually and their obvious synergy as sisters.

Same As You isn’t going to be the most exciting release from Polar Bear you’ll hear, but it is a solid and entirely welcomd release from a band who rarely put a foot wrong.

In other words, Cortar Todo is yet another outstanding release from one of the most original musical acts today.

Had Primrose Green been recorded in the era it's influenced by, it could well be among the records Ryley Walker would now be drawing inspiration from; high praise indeed.

Many of these songs have been in the band’s live repertoire for years. But after recording them on lo-fi equipment and scrapping the results, it turns out to be a great pleasure that the band decided to embrace the opportunities of a new studio environment and produced the fantastical and empiricist take on their trademark noise rock sound.

Despite the odd misstep, it deserves to be lauded as the band’s finest hour as well as a genuinely bold adventure into the cosmos of heavy rock.

The difficult second album never sounded so effortlessly good.

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

There is no chance of someone walking away from Eat, Pray, Thug similarly un-enlightened; the political suite, as mentioned above, is far too direct for that. What makes it unique, however, and uniquely Hima; to be specific, it's that it manages to be both obstinate and intelligent, outspoken but sly; one could not imagine anything but that rubber-and-sandpaper voice being as such.

He may be pretentious, narcissistic and borderline offensive, but you have to hand it to Chilly--what he is doing here is pretty damned clever.

In word and sound Little Neon Limelight is an unashamedly backward-looking record, and it's all the better for it.

Sometimes is the work of probably the best lyricist writing today, and roundly deserves to be an album for the ages. If it’s not, that’s only because she’ll have found a way to top it next time around.

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.

For All My Sisters is a thoroughly enjoyable record even if taken only at face value, but more importantly, it’s a potent reminder of just how crucial The Cribs really are.

This isn’t quite that fantastic album we wanted and we know--at least hope we know--Brock and company have in them; however, it’s enough to prompt the hope that the axles are greased well enough now to deliver it next time around.

Some of the exhaustion on Goon is a lack of emotional range. The continued packaging and shrinking of love and misery for commercial consumption, something Jesso Jr. doesn't do cynically, but he does it so well and so often.

Taken as a whole though, Waxing Romantic is a warm, enjoyable listen; one that suggests Bretzer has a voice worth hearing and all of his own.

In short, they’ve honed their craft and matured without eschewing their admirably innate pop sensibility.

Rebel Heart is chaotic. It’s often amazing, and occasionally crap. If she deleted half of its tracks, it’d be the comeback record she was hoping for.

The artistry is unquestionable, but ultimately the indulgence of the album’s creation seems to have fogged Invention’s original vision.

What follows is a highlight in an album of standouts.