Where Shall We Begin is a must listen. It takes your hand from the offset, guiding you over each obstacle found on the album and gently lifts you down onto a bed of understanding at its end. Truly beautiful stuff.

An Inbuilt Fault transcends emotion in favour of exploration.

As with the best pop albums, it sounds like a greatest hits record. The songs flow into each other seamlessly as well as standing on their two own feet, which is an astonishing achievement.

Despite each track standing incredibly strong on its own, it sometimes feels as though Ashworth is taking on more than the album can handle. A more decisive sound and Squeeze could be one of the best albums of the year, however, Ashworth’s indecision pulls the listener from one emotion to the next without ample time for digestion.

Not everything on Peacers works, but when it does, it’s the sonic equivalent of driving along a beach with a summer breeze rushing right through you.

So Much (For) Stardust’s main takeaway is the palpable, radiating carefree joy.

This is an album that sits somewhere between Lynch and Lucifer, ethereal in its softer moments and utterly savage at its loudest.

Put simply, Alternative Light Source manages to sound both fresh and exciting, and like old Leftfield all at once.

Lighthearted and wild in places, intimate and revealing in others, Ugly Cherries is whatever you want it to be.

Spooky Action is as dense and detailed as his former band’s best known work, but song for song he picks one mode and more or less sticks to it, setting up a more reasonable barrier to entry.

What Farao does so well on Pure-O is to create something nuanced and interesting. With an extra bit of reverb here, a pitch shift there, she ensures that the stands out from other synthpop, which can feel clinical: too clean and polished.

It’d be easy for Tracing Back to follow down the paths of say, GAS, or the somber mirk of Kyle Bobby Dunn, but thoughtfully, Cantu-Ledesma never verges over that line even though he may hint at it. Instead, by staying in line, Tracing Back serves as one of this year’s most angelically-bright collections of ambient music.

The results are musically elegant, emotionally eloquent, and absolutely vital.

In a scene over-stuffed with ‘80s-throwback melancholia, it is Byczkowski’s ambition, scope, and keen sense of melodrama that set Something to Lose apart.

Ugly Season confirms Hadreas’s commitment to discovery and resistance to reiteration.

Formentera II more than succeeds in claiming its own place in the world, less a sequel more a very satisfying entity in its own right – on this evidence Metric’s continuing existence seems entirely justified.

It’s a celebration of what Maribou State does best: creating music that feels timeless and deeply personal. And while we might continue to wait for the moment when they push their boundaries and fully realize their potential, this journey toward that horizon is just as compelling.

The beats prove slick with how they are able to further express his feelings, the lyrics are solid with bits of metaphors sprinkled for impact, and the production itself enlivens the whole experience. It wouldn’t be out of place for Joseph to come back in the next few years with a bigger masterpiece.

We’re left with an album that hides behind the idea of specificity--the title and the lyrical content certainly want you to believe as such--but that ultimately provides a ferocious observation of our lopsided society. It’s also the best out-and-out rock record that Harvey’s made since Uh Huh Her.

It’s ultimately futile to fight the album’s considerable charms, culminating in “When It Rains”, a low-lit, minimalist beauty that eventually curdles into a storm of fiercely shrieking guitar feedback and electronic dissonance.

The album’s sonic homogeneity lends it an air of sameness at first blush, but the details burrow their way out on subsequent listens; the guitar work, in particular, offers fleeting doses of delightfully understated melodicism to counterpoint the slow industrial grind beneath.

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.

What’s most striking about Bandwagonesque, though, is how tenderly Gibbard’s treated it; this is undoubtedly the sound of somebody very much in love with the source material.

Within its nine tracks, Gunn addresses matters of death, acceptance, and expectations, all of which round his music with serenity and credence, thus positioning him on the forefront not only as a quintessential narrator for our time, but a faithful guide who gently directs us revitalized and untroubled.

The truth is that they are both thoughtful, sometimes sentimental musicians, with voices that can sing of love and hurt just as much as eating croissants (“Continental Breakfast”) or friendly girls who insist on touching your face (“Untogether”)--and this is delightful.

Every Country’s Sun is an intent-drenched return to form from a band who, thank Christ, have never once abandoned it.

Hoodies All Summer is an exceptional achievement, proving once again that Kano is one of the UK’s most versatile, thoughtful and talented voices.

Mercy shows woods and Elucid delving more deeply into surrealism, their lyrical flows, brimming with uninhibited leaps, often bordering on stream-of-consciousness. The Alchemist’s approach is lighter, his treatments perhaps more precisely wielded than on Haram. With Mercy, Armand Hammer continue to radicalize and aestheticize rap, pushing language beyond the conventional – all while reflecting the savage world we live in.