Triage is a spectrum of colour and abstract character, stained with a unique personality. Thanks to this approach, Triage is the finest work from Methyl Ethel yet.

This album makes you work, forces you to hit repeat not to relive sweet, instantly gratifying thrills, but to let it root into your brain to understand it better.

Toumani & Sidiki feels like an freshly unearthed artefact, steeped in the influence of centuries.

How Big How Blue How Beautiful is a cathartic, devastatingly honest personal diary set to music.

It’s that sense of balance--the epic and the intimate, the light and the shade, the coldness and the warmth--that puts Taiga in contention with Stridulum II as Zola Jesus’ best work, the purest distillation of an ever-searching soul.

A combination of new life experiences, that allow Hutchison to weave more vivid tales of mourning, nostalgia and, ultimately, triumph, and the shot in the arm that is Aaron Dessner giving the band that little bit more has helped to create an album that could rival Midnight Organ Fight.

Their progression has never been less than thrilling to watch, and--this is a compliment--Older Terrors feel like another step, not a destination. We have much to expect from this group yet.

This is a marked improvement on the density of their first effort, and sounds like a band who have grown very sure of themselves in the best way possible.

Slow Club are grander than ever, shimmering like disco balls, toting an LP that’ll break them into mainstream darlinghood; by the sounds of this bolshy confidence and tune-garlanded melange, they’re not only ready, but expecting it.

In Search of the Miraculous finds Desperate Journalist striving and challenging themselves, happily searching for that sense of the sublime in a world that will outlive us all.

Just as the sophomore Arc was, this feels like a transitional curve towards something even greater. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting and very cohesive addition to an increasingly sprawling back catalogue. It expands an overarching narrative that becomes clearer, angrier, and more relatable with each step.

What Kinda Music also features an unlikely collaboration with acclaimed MC Freddie Gibbs. Sonically, it fits perfectly: the Misch / Dayes project is not far off from Gibbs’ main production collaborator Madlib.

Feathers excluded, art abstracted from the man, Black Panties is one of the finest albums of the year.

Lament is testament to the power held in each new day, and the moments to be discovered within, delivered with crushing passion by a band worth standing behind.

There are few albums that will make you experience so many emotions concurrently, and even fewer that will still give you chills hours later. Even though it may be tough to swallow some of the brutish feeling, it’s an exceptional record.

Curve of Earth is sparse, but the trio make up for it with their relatable and confessional take on what their idea of a vast Americana is and how to simply survive within it.

The difficult second album never sounded so effortlessly good.

For all the tragedy that’s to be found within Singing Saw, it is a warm, welcoming album, every second of it informed by a knowledge of the transience of all things.

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

While you can identify his signature guitar looping motifs on the records, providing a subtle backdrop for Georgas’ expressive vocals, it's her willingness to open herself up on such a bare naked level that gifts All That Emotion its titular promise.

A Picture of Good Health addresses issues more personal. And though predicated on personal experience, it’s a record that looks inwardly while projecting outwards, all the while letting listeners know that however on your own you might feel, someone somewhere has been through the same, and that you’re not alone, no matter how much it might seem like it.

Traditional Techniques is an album completely out of time — a folk(ish) record about the present day that might be one of the most future-proof of his career.

Cymbals Eat Guitars certainly have done right with LOSE; it’s an impeccably beaten, teary-eyed but smiling document to a frighteningly exhilarating time of one’s life and beacon to march onward--momentous to anyone in their 20s, and even us still neurotic old guys.

Upside Down Mountain establishes the songwriter as a career-musician, one who probably won’t be forgotten for a while yet.

The result is an intelligent and thrilling collection of existential punk-rock that has so much more to offer than those two paltry words, “punk” or “rock” could ever suggest.

Vile had the opportunity, with the success of his previous solo album, to make something completely polished and aim for the stars to just see where he landed. Rather than dialling back the finesse, he could have aimed for his Rumours, his Full Moon Fever. Instead, his eyes seemly firmly fixed on the road, then at the beach and then at the gutter. And it’s a thrill to join him everywhere he goes.

Nikki Nack frantically succeeds on so many levels. Garbus ticks every box with aplomb and swagger, making a record that’s confrontational, boundary-bending, enigmatic, topical and sheer fun outside the usual channels.

[“Modern Loneliness”] is quietly anthemic; an ode to the contradictions of contemporary culture and the cognitive dissonance of wanting to feel better but not doing anything to get there. It’s the perfect conclusion to an album which speaks to the various anxieties of both its subject and its listeners.