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.

A record that uses choral, electronic and orchestral features to embellish Stromae’s creativity, Multitude is crafted to be enjoyed again and again.

This debut shows a woman free to make the music she wants to, and boy does she do it well.

It's a no-frills sound, but dynamically expressive enough to make a potent virtue of the live feel ethos that characterises Total Dive.

Stumpwork is an essential album, and one of the very best of 2022.

I don’t know who needs to hear this… finds Tomberlin firmly stood in the language of her own making. She redefines song structure, alluding to the intrinsically mirrored fashion in which life pans out; like life, far beyond the close, these songs continue to spin.

You don’t have to be a fan of punk music or emo to be a fan of The Hotelier, you simply have to appreciate genuine, earnest emotion.

If Cape God felt like Hughes beginning to create her own universe, Girl with No Face marks her apotheosis as her deity. Still sleeping on Allie X? It’s time to wake up: her spaceship has truly landed.

The Price of Life’s relentless delivery of its agenda is a tiring but invigorating shot in the arm. Will time show this to be their best album? Maybe not, is this an album by an act quickly becoming one of the most important acts in the UK whose message demands to be heard? Absolutely.

AI could never replicate the unique balance between deranged imagination and supreme sanity that is the mark of a great Sparks record like this.

Of all albums this year, Elaenia is one that could be--probably will be--discussed for some time. It’s as impressive and rewarding as you want to be.

Apart from a few exceptions, Yeule had yet to offer a multitude of songs as successful as on this opus. The whole of The Glitch Princess is a continuous demonstration, while being rich and varied.

Between analyzing her own recent past with the empathy and allowances of an emotional anthropologist and the lazy precision of the grooves, Woods pairs harmony with righteousness like the inextricable twins they are.

Hell-On is one of Case's moodiest solo records to date.

For now Pure Comedy is another elongated and extensive example of Misty’s intense outlook on cliché, contradictory and conceived contemporary life. If misunderstood, it’s easy to believe that the signified still signifies the signifier, but call Pure Comedy boring at your peril.

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.

Indeed for the most part, the sparser these tracks are, the more enjoyable. The album hits a real stride after the halfway mark with perhaps its three best songs, “Cura”, “Fácil”, and “Sucia”.

The music on Big Inner is so wondrous that it seems entirely obvious that we’ll always find that peace, joy and contentment in music rather than anywhere else.

Its grief is visceral, and most disconcerting of all, most listeners will find themselves identifying with some ogre held within these tracks. Listening hangs you upside-down, bat-like, to cling to the darkness with them, which is in turns deeply uncomfortable and oddly cathartic. A brilliant and awful trip.

Overall, that combination of conversational, vulnerable lyricism mixed with impeccable baroque pop arrangements makes Older as unique for the pop world as it is beautiful. All in all, it’s a deeply honest album, both in its exploration of aging and in its rejection of pop cliches.

It’s a very buoyant creation - perhaps her most levitous release since Debut - that concerns itself with ancestry and legacy.

This is an album that has developed from careful study of, and attention to, how sacred music could define time and enrapture the spirit in past ages; and how it still offers up its potential to a twenty-first century sensibility when treated with technology and with reverential respect.

With Multitudes Feist has entered a new era in her artistry, one in which she makes space for reverie. Her grand realizations are beautifully stated.

Beautifully-measured collaboration between two venerable avant garde artists.

Imaginal Disk is a testament to good old-fashioned artistry – it’s the product of a band intensely honing what they want to sound like and ending up with a style so unique that it’s barely possible to describe. It’s dorky and strange and dramatic, like the duo themselves. And it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard.

This album is an artistic triumph. It blends the strongest elements of a “metal” album like New Bermuda with the strongest elements of a “shoegaze” album like Infinite Granite, and features the band playing both metal and shoegaze better than they did on either album.

On This Stupid World, Yo La Tengo proves they are still relevant arbiters of rock.

Though very few of the songs themselves outstay their welcome, Tomorrow’s Harvest as a whole can feel overly long, and it’s the short songs that are the problem--they feel like unnecessary padding in a record whose triumphs should have been allowed to stand tall and proud by themselves.