This album is yet further proof that John Maus has no boundaries and relishes unearthing new patterns, sequences and progressions. He’s in his element when creating music quite unlike anything else.

As a whole it's a fine addition to the Foo Fighters catalogue – but that’s not the point of this album. .... This is a reminder that the Foo fighters are a band bigger than any individual member - including Grohl. They're a rock band that, even when the going gets tough, know that there's a job to do and there's no better way to deal with life than throwing together some ringing chords and belting the dark clouds away.

Touching on Northern European chamber, opera, and folk traditions as they steer through a minefield of club-ready moments, Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt have created a sonic topography that thrives on paradox - it’s a disorienting pleasure to navigate.

Prima Queen cement their emerging status with The Prize in a confident and unabashed manner.

Everything Maltese conveys feels like a direct connection to the mind that bore it. It feels filterless, and with the music playing its part perfectly, we're all privy to the cool, calm and collected, swooning and crooning, world that Matt Maltese sees. And we're all the better for it.

This is a varied, but still stylistically consistent and wonderfully accessible album. It’s a frequently wonderful and often fantastic album that demonstrates and exemplifies the joys of nostalgia.

Ultimately, First Taste exemplifies Ty Segall’s shape-shifting qualities. Here is a man who delights in trying on many a mask, restless and impulsive.

Smilewound’s gleeful, weird-pop eclecticism builds up the goodwill to cover any lull.

The phrase ‘modern psychedelia’ often feels like an oxymoron, but on Human Ceremony Sunflower Bean make perfect sense of it, rewardingly broadening their musical horizons in the process and as with the Nuggets compilations it’s as diverse as you like yet retains a marvellous cohesion at the same time.

This album was a joy to listen to, without a doubt.

On Autodrama the Kaplans stick with one sound. But it’s a confident one, strutting RnB that oozes beach house cool.

If I’m dinging anything, it’s the temptation to coat every chorus in frosting, but I guess that’s also what makes Man’s Best Friend so much fun to listen to. Even when Carpenter over-ices the cake, the bite underneath is her own – funny, flirty, occasionally feral, and unmistakably Sabrina.

Whilst the narrative of Rise Ye Sunken Ships is gone, there is still a mood arc that runs through Augustines.

While Crooked Wing finds These New Puritans at their most refined and fractured, the album won’t be for everyone. Its refusal to deliver easy pleasures might leave some cold. And for all its inventiveness, there are moments where the almost academic precision threatens to override the emotional core. Yet, it’s exactly what it feels like, a requiem for the mechanical age, a love song to decay, and a stark reminder of the beauty that can be found in the shadow of ruins.

Revel in the moods and noises, go with the ebb and flow of mood, pace and dynamic, conjure up your own tales to tell around its sounds: this is music with elastic boundaries, that will accommodate the interpretations that you choose to place on it, and bear them with a surprising lightness of touch.

In the end, what we have is a magnificent record, that looks likely to be sunk by the events surrounding it. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but what remains is a harsh disconnect, between the absolute joy of the record, and the crushing disappointment that surrounds it.

Its 11 tracks taking listeners on an rollercoaster of emotional peaks and troughs, and by the time the closing moments of final track "The Ocean Grew Hands To Hold Me" ring out, you can’t help but feel bruised, beaten and above all cleansed.

It’s an album that coheres more effectively than did the first, and it’s one that shows an adventurousness while staying within sight of the elemental spirit of its inspiration.

It’s nuanced, subtle and magnetically beautiful.

In ten aptly small songs Adrianne evokes our ability to vanish at the feet of nature, creating a black hole all of her own that’s both comforting and suffocating.

Like a well-oiled machine, the band’s constituent parts interlock with each other in punctual dexterity; supple musicianship that stands out more than ever on this robust sophomore affair.

It’s those little moments that best prove that Slow Pulp themselves have found that same type of sweetness, and with it they’ve delivered their best project thus far.

An album full of calming energy, with vibes to soothe the soul and the mind, and put a smile on your face.

The clarity heard on this album can be interpreted as a sharpened edge in Hval. She collapses the space of the album into a single sensory experience; she conveys something unsearchable but found.

Equal amounts tender and wild, Mitski places power in vulnerability. Validating every topsy turvy emotion, Puberty 2 is a soundtrack of self-awareness and self-acceptance at its most real.

Vulnerability is presented here as strength, where before it’s been masked in metaphor. It’s not that Welch isn’t scared any more; it’s that she’s made her peace with that, and in turn one of her strongest records to date.

Magus maneuvres its songs in such a fashion and that patience and allowance for their gradual build shows their skillset as a group with a revering quality, thus placing Magus in the running for one of this year’s most auspicious metal releases

Thanks to Rubin’s acoustic method, which encouraged Laus to play solely on an instrument before working on the production, most pieces have attained what may possibly be called “skeletal beauty”.