Goat Girl push the boat out while maintaining, for the most part, a considered and deliberate mood across the 48 minute run time, and the few pitfalls are due to ideas that didn’t quite coalesce more than anything. The finest tracks can feel familiar only to grab you and hold you in entirely surprising ways.

For better or worse, it always celebrates the thrill of what’s to come, capturing the frailty of a mind wrought with anticipation and bewilderment in the face of the unpredictable trials of a world away from home.

Manic revels in the explorative genre-pop bombast, letting the delicates twinkle, and the snarls bare their teeth; yet it's the soul that shines dominantly. It's her most complete work to date.

This is an album that you can feel as well as experience, perhaps the most complete Bon Iver album to date. Justin Vernon’s emotive approach to the album balances the individual and the communal with perfect precision. With a firmer grasp on reality and a new and brighter perspective, a unique mix of creativity and bewilderment remains at the core of Bon Iver.

Miya Folick orbits and sometimes grasps something transcendent about living through unprecedented times on ROACH.

There’s a shagginess to some of the tracks here, and a producer without skin in the game might have taken a pair of shears to the record, but that would be tantamount to criminal damage. The Hard Quartet is like four suburban dads starting a garage band on a whim, only with prime beef musicians and a huge label behind them, and if that’s not charming in this day and age, nothing is.

It’s not polished, but it's chromatic, jagged, yet it jangles. It’s the sort of record that skates across a pond, leaving no marks, but the ice collapses moments after it graces it.

RTXIV was a superb, full-throttle rock ‘n’ roll record, but Electric Brick Wall is a next-level release.

The best album of their career thus far.

If their previous albums were the sound of cataclysmic blasts--of unhewn matter rebounding through the cosmos trying to manifest--then Corsicana Lemonade is the sound of their universe finally taking shape.

[An] intelligently-crafted album that repays repeated playing to appreciate its numerous qualities.

DS2 is a uniformly awesome album, remarkable for the singularity of its vision, and it comes at absolutely the right time, when all eyes are on Future.

Somehow, With Trampled with Turtles combines the emotional heaviness and wounded introspection seamlessly with the palpable, communal joy of playing and singing music in good company.

It is all bark, all bite and Power’s greatest and most consistent release under the Blanck Mass alias, bearing a message that is as crucial as it is necessary.

Exai operates within a comfort zone--one that’s dazzling, but given the sheer length of this thing, also far from easy to stomach as a whole.

While there’s nothing in anyway groundbreaking here, what makes it so interesting is the fact that TOPS don’t just recycle familiar pop tropes, but somehow manage to re-articulate the musical landscape of one decade and revitalise sounds that feel all too familiar. And that makes it an album worth talking about.

For the most part The Curse of Love doesn’t offer any of the pop hooks that made early Coral albums so enjoyable.

Georgia is an album that speaks of youth in urban landscapes, and scenarios familiar to anyone who has hung around South London long enough. It's an area that's culturally thriving, and it might have a new hero.

Beyond Belief is somewhat less guitar-centric than Along the Way, but otherwise it is more in most every other way.

Fearless is releasing the best material of his career.

Clearly five CDs is way too much musical despondency to take in on one sitting, but this compilation does comprehensively show that for a genre known for an insular outlook, there was a surprising amount of scope musically from the bands involved.

There are a few moments that miss their mark--recent single “Someone” has a forced keychange that belies its soaring effortlessness--but for the most part, Lovers is a slick, listenable debut with a strong sense of direction and poise.

Funny, raging, unpredictable and electric, this is a record that feels alive.

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.

Since the very beginning of his debut, From Here We Go Sublime, Willner has remained a top-tier stalwart and in one grand, sweeping gesture secures the reality of being one of the very few who continually sound like no one else while expertly giving little in return.

Rich in texture and enveloping atmosphere, Any Random Kindness unfortunately lets its lyrical content fall to the wayside. While this gives more space to let the incredible soundscapes breathe, it also feels like the real emotional punch to back them up is lacking.

Incorporating a sense of scale and sounds that highlight the ingenuity and curiosity that sits are the heart of the trio, Horizon is a celebration of the trio’s vision and collective experiences. Wherever it takes them next, let’s hope it continues to be as enthralling as this.

It’s safe to say Wilson is feeling a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll on Dixie Blur, and as with his other albums, the stylistic tweaks fit him like a glove.