It’s impossible to listen to Sticky Wickets without amusement, but on occasion the procession of guests and parade of pastiches threaten to encroach into “novelty” territory.

While some of the artists brought onto the project feel more tactical than functional, when Ora is placed in the spotlight she tends to deliver.

It scrambles the brain, leaves the heart feeling empty, but compels the body to move. Woof scratches that primal itch. It's the sound of a society unraveling, and Fat Dog has captured it.

Pure baroque 'n' roll goodness.

The record works perfectly as a coda to what sounded like an unusually comfortable period in Spencer’s life. It’s not quite as unadorned, not quite as intimate, as Julia--opener “The Fog” has its title represented by jarring clouds of synths which break through the eight note motif that underpins the entire song--but you can still tell that all fifteen of Piano Man Spencer’s songs came from the same place.

Dean Wareham is an album that sees both of its key players growing in stature as it progresses; I could take or leave the first half, but the second is a delight.

Frankly, a rap space opera shouldn't work this well, and it's a testament to the trio's vision that it does, even if Splendor & Misery can be a pretty turbulent voyage.

Juice B Crypts is an uncompromised, multi-faceted assault course for the brain, but one you won’t regret taking.

Despite the writing on several songs being undercooked, coupled with production that’s overbaked, Yours Dreamily has its charms, but the onus is on the listener to find them and given the clutter in the styles and songs here, that’s not an easy thing to do.

There's evolution with purpose in every fibre of 1989, and far from jettisoning her integrity in this drastic lunge, she's proved in her bold, risky decision that she's got courage in her convictions to pull it off and faith in her fans to accept the new direction.

This is an album of hard-staring shoegaze, of richness and discomfort mixed, drawing you into a strange and beautiful otherworld, and ends up being compelling in the luminescent moonlit beauty that emerges from the introspective sound.

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

Lung Bread For Daddy’s inauspicious genesis plunged Beth Jeans Houghton deep into an artistic quagmire, yet she has escaped with another outstanding record.

Going from strength to strength, the road that The Best of Luck Club brings will undoubtedly be filled with Lahey's sounds making people move, proof that she is indeed doing it right.

For all the thrills that Pixx’s precocious ambition offers on Small Mercies, it’s Hannah Rodgers’ vulnerability and restless search for comfort within herself that drives it.

On the whole, the album is excellent. It’s a return to what Squarepusher is known most prominently for but his style has developed since the '90s.

Three Dimensions Deep is an album that has helped Amber Mark to recover and find peace within herself. Yet somehow, it has potential to lend itself to anyone’s personal challenges, defining Mark as a force to be reckoned with.

You Still Here, Ho? offers a snapshot circa 2022, reminding us that, at least when it comes to the competitive side of human nature and the fallouts of capitalism, the 2020s may not be that different from the 2010s, 2000s, 1990s, and so on. Different trappings, same dynamic.

From the folk twang of “First Time” to the torrential clapping on “Anything But,” this is a Hozier album to the hilt: considered, earnest, and moving.

On Abomination there’s a more cohesive sense of vulnerability even contemplation that the attention-seeking initial EP songs clamoured for so brazenly.

It is crisply clear and gritty, with a lovely bout of emo-tinged lyricism. It is surely to be considered the strongest body of work of their career, only to be outdone with whatever may come next. Smitten is the sound of a band infatuated with their art, ready for the future, and excited to be a part of it.

Location Lost is what I imagine floating endlessly through space feels like, rotating as the natural force of casting yourself away with the intention of relinquishing all grounding takes hold as reverb disappears into the unknown horizon. The buffering and battering of space debris through the majesty, akin to the twists and turns each track takes, add to the momentum.

Holy Fire is Foals’ masterpiece because it ties in the rhythmic nature of their debut, the soul of the second album, producing finally the rhythmic soul of its own.

We are treated to a collection of refreshingly care-free and up-tempo punk; well-crafted and not at all pretentious.

It’s an uneven soundtrack to some early morning hotel lobby fever dream where the house-band drown in tight-collared Paul Smith suits and over-wrought orchestral-pop mimicry.

It’s a record with a few winners, a few losers and some fillers. However, it is by no means a poor record. There’s plenty here that most modern electro artists would die to produce, but it’s a shame that there’s just so much here that falls far short of the work Dear has done in the past.

They are definitely a marketable band (it’s no wonder Katy Perry ripped them off) and Lost Time is Tacocat’s biggest accomplishment to date--27 minutes of bubblegum pop that doesn’t lose its taste.

It’s fun, it’s weird, and like nothing you’ve ever really heard before.