Time is Glass is both a pretty great Six Organs of Admittance album and a pretty great album full stop. Though its more committed embrace of British folk music is a double-edged sword – risking a smattering of beautiful but forgettable instrumental parts – the overall effect is mesmerizing, an album that allows its composer’s voice to shine through in new and often more elaborate ways.

Dirty Projectors is not quite that good [Primal Scream’s Screamadelica]--few records are--but it certainly drives a stake into the ground as to what guitar bands could deliver in 2017 if they would only open their ears and minds up a little.

Probably the last recording of Reid playing live, before his death in April 2010, it is a fittingly energetic and exuberant performance.

Cellophane Memories is harder to get a grip on. Chrystabell’s vocals, previously the unambiguous focus of every song, are here layered, cut-up, and reversed, often to the point where they become indecipherable. That’s in part due to the nature of its creation.

Their musical vision is one that's so obviously well-honed that they know exactly when to kick the music into overdrive before lulling the listener back into a state of sonic paralysis.

Blade of Love is a piece that takes the ideas and challenges of their debut even further without losing any of their focus or animal thump.

Their tracks rarely exceed the three-and-a-half minute mark and each indulgent no-wave-y/early Sonic Youth noise section is over before you can even begin to get bored by it, making way for the next freshly thrilling fragment of din.

It's Real is a beefier, buffed-up expansion of the debut's rough-hewn sound, but the added polish doesn't nerf Ex Hex's powers as much as it re-energises them.

From what one can hear on the new Dungen album, sobriety can be trippy. Perhaps, sonically the record is less cohesive than previous albums of the adventurous quartet. Still, it feels great to dig this album as it is not straightforward either.

Where some calls for more variety amongst the virtuosity here aren’t entirely without merit, the finesse of Dutch Uncles uniquely emboldened pop craft is arguably without comparison at present.

Ultimately Moonbuilding 2703 BC is an immersive, imaginative journey into the unknown that, unfortunately, won't end up being the space travel concept album of the year. Public Service Broadcasting have already locked that down. Top marks for effort though.

Devoid of the light and shade that had highlighted the many musical facets of the band, Led Zeppelin's seventh studio album remains a difficult album to take in a single sitting. For sure, it contains some incredible individual moments.... [Pod] A piano led instrumental dominated by the under-rated John Paul Jones and complete with some of Jimmy Page's most understated guitar playing, this is beautifully reflective music sharply at odds with what's contained on the parent album and worthy of investigation.

Missteps matter little on an album that proves a minimal tour de force, home to some of the most simply enjoyable music in Hood’s 20-plus-year production history.

To The Bone exposes and splinters insular communities and their ideas of elitism. But by observing the album through this prism alone, its real nature is obscured--that of a flawed and powerless homage.

1992 Deluxe is a powerful starting point from which the “New York aficionado” can further hone and refine her sound. For longtime Princess Nokia fans, is is also the climax of a five-year crescendo and satisfying evidence that she has retained her powerful sense of self.

Concise and ambitious, delivering its poisonous punch with characteristic sweetness, the track and the album it concludes are inarguable proof of Deerhoof’s unerring genius.

The net result is a lack of texture and the element of surprise that made this album's predecessor so wonderfully seductive.

Threace possesses a wholly immersive sense of itself, and a free floating kinetic energy that is out of step with most contemporary riff-based music. Its command of sonic hypnosis is all the more impressive considering its brevity.

There was always a worry that Gamel might be too self-consciously studious and challenging for its own arty sake, but as it transpires, it's an unnecessary and unfounded thought.

What really works in Dilate's favour is that this is very much an album, an experience that's designed through its pacing and mastering to be taken in a single sitting. That's a bold ask in a digital age of playlists and single track downloads but the rewards in acquiescing to their request are manifold.

A Short History Of Decay is raw, honest and painful: listening to its 10 songs feels like intruding on someone’s personal grief.

An album that takes us through the gamut of human experience. As I say, Um never feels like the tentative steps of a debutante.

Whether acknowledging unfaithfulness, fretting over her advancing years or giddily professing undying love, Lewis creates songs and characters as compelling as they come. A couple of duds and some overzealous production aside, that is still very much the case on The Voyager.

It is, of course, a very good album from start to finish--but you would expect that from an elder statesman of American alt-pop and one of the brightest talents of the current NPR-approved indie-rock scene.

Glass Animals sound like they are on the cusp of everything. There's a gap between their vocabulary and their sound, their choruses and their intros, their obvious intelligence and what they've produced.

[On The Cherry Thing] the point in the middle where the two parties meet turns out to be a particularly sweet spot where jazz, punk, soul and even a hint of pop blend together beautifully in a dream come true.

In short, Watching Dead Empires In Decay is a wonderful enigma of an album.

The album is by no means horrible, just disappointing and repetitive, chock full of revamped old school rhythms that don’t have the gratifying content to match. A good handful of songs--‘When Cats Claw’, ‘Since C.A.Y.A’, ‘Fine Ass Hairdresser’, ‘Julian’s Dream’, ‘Moon Whip Quäz’ and ’30 Clip Extension’--deserve to be judged independently.

This is a vital debut that captures a dark, uncertain time, but counters displacement--in all its forms--with grace, nerve, and a spine-tingling call to arms, and perhaps just as importantly, a call to dance.

In Search Of The Miraculous is a new way of being for Desperate Journalist: a rangy and colourful artwork, less insular than what has come before, and testament to its creators' increasingly fearless outlook.

Silver Dollar Moment’s vibrancy is at odds with the current mood of the world, but it’s also a vital indication of where we’re at now in terms of indie music’s trajectory. It shakes off any negative connotations of modern indie, particularly in the ‘landfill’ sense of the word, and reclaims it.

Perhaps the finest distillation to date of the various elements that comprise the group's distinctive sound.

This album still contains some of the strongest pop songs of the past few years, plus evidence of a restless, experimental desire to keep moving on that makes you hungry to hear what they're going to do next.

With the soundtrack to Les Revenants, they have created a work of aural tension; a masterclass in how implied threat is far more effective than a million scary monsters.

The results are simply amazing, Ghil effectively standing as the premier noise album of 2013.

Tundra is a techno album as contemplation, not in in the sense that it is soft or gentle (it most certainly isn't), but in the way that it allows you to plug in with your surroundings, letting the earth and sky open up around you.

The album rolls at a constant low boil, the agitation poking and prodding under the skin, not unlike the lingering, uncertain love. The Far Field isn’t explosive in its emotion, nor is it wallowing; it’s just constantly rolling forward, the wheels propelling Future Islands onward to the horizon.

The latest iteration of Homme’s continuous project has come a long way since the epic jams of the late 90s, having evolved into more refined, and fully realised series of releases, never failing to inhabit the spirit of risk and adventure.

While seeing any bit of vulnerability in Friday’s work does make her more relatable, it’s the woman who titled her debut EP Bitchpunk that dominates Good Luck, and her attitude is a lot of fun. ... Friday attacked her debut like she was born ready, and it’s fully convincing that she was.

This thinly veiled sequel, 2t2, continues in much the same fertile vein as her post-Throbbing Gristle output. At the same time, it also appears a little more guarded, as if the candid moments in her early days have left her more cautious.

Sonic Citadel is Lightning Bolt at their most poppy and accessible.

It's a roiling, often tense, but just a little more calm and contemplative NIN, seemingly content to emerge and exist rather than to sweep all before it or punctuate a point.

Laid-back philosophies punctuate this album, which again suggests a kind of bemused contentedness with life. There's nothing too highfaluting or over-stretching, though musings are thought-provoking enough.

Dumb Flesh on the other hand feels like a direct continuation of the last superb Fuck Buttons album, Slow Focus, albeit a good deal warmer than its overpowering austere chilliness.

This is a record of infinite different energies, and as a result can be headspinning as it whirls from one to another, but beneath them all there is this deeper, more primal momentum at play - a hypnotic, looping repetition around which those myriad flourishes are wound.

Land of Sleeper is unlikely to win over anyone who doesn’t already enjoy Pigs’ (etc.) particular brand of stoner rock, but then, I doubt it’s really trying to. A steadfastly unsubtle affair.

Complex and sophisticated, if i could make it go quiet is one of the most enticing new albums I have heard in a long time.

Konono No. 1 Meets Batida isn't quite the sustained and magical dialogue it might have been, but it's an intriguing cultural experiment with moments of real alchemy.

In Detached From The Rest Of You, James refuses to offer the listener neat resolutions. Instead, she provides a profoundly honest documentation of her own frayed edges, translating the noise in her head into some of the most compelling electronic music of the decade.

It's both texturally ravishing and textually fascinating.

In Standing At The Sky's Edge Richard Hawley has forged his most fully realised and heartfelt collection of music to date. This requires your urgent attention.

The result is no sucker punch, but a knockout blow.

Behind The Sun could easily lose a couple of tracks and increase its impact, but Motorpsycho conspicuously always want to provide a fully immersive, all-or-nothing headtrip to the listener--and in this day and age, for that we should be very grateful indeed.

Though it's not masterpiece by any means, the fifth installment in Slipknot career is praiseworthy overall, especially given the circumstances surrounding its creation.

Here the instruments muddle together foggily and somewhat awkwardly. Fortunately, the songs themselves are strong enough to be of great comfort to those who felt lost twenty years ago and found some degree of solace in Troublegum.

There is a shadowy enigma within Esker that verges on the blissful, thanks to its peculiar melodic turns and idiosyncratic use of sonic effects.

Despite the fact that listening to one of their albums in full feels like a 40-minute bludgeoning, there’s something oddly heart-warming at play here. Unsane are not chameleons or shapeshifters but rather stoic veterans unashamed to continue honing a sound many would argue they perfected decades ago.

The whole experience is charmingly woah-dude in a way that never feels caricatured or insincere. Great pleasure is taken in employing the familiar apparatus and codes of psychedelia and, well, making them psychedelic again.

Their 2018 debut, Not With That Attitude, was a winning combination of bile, big hooks, and a great sense of humor and, although they didn’t need to, the band has expanded their palette on Contender and it’s paid off handsomely.

This album is too much of a piece to be picking out favourites, yet it is also one whose subtleties really reveal themselves on subsequent listens. Go on, dive in. Soak up the heat, discover what’s hidden underneath the overgrown foliage. You know you want to.

The eleven tracks here are life-affirming and motivational, from the evocative mother and daughter scaling a mountainous landscape on the cover, to the big beats that pervade This Is What We Do. The problem with the album as a listening experience is that it lacks a change of pace.

Full Moon is a distinctive and exuberant snapshot of an exceptional journey. It offers yet more proof that Moonchild Sanelly is a singular artist whose colourful aesthetic is not only discernible via her trademark blue mop of braids but in the joyous, sexy and defiant nature of her sound.

After the insular mood of Quaranta, with its themes of addiction and depression, it’s refreshing to hear Brown having unabashed neon-lit fun.

Saputjiji is a profoundly uncomfortable and rigid listen, stripped of easy melodies and devoid of false hope. .... She has built a towering work out of static, grief and unyielding resistance, proving once again that she is one of the most vital, terrifyingly brilliant artists operating in Canada today.

With its huge, graceful scope, FIBS smirks slyly at any presumptions or hopes listeners may harbour. These fibs are alive – a thriving, amoebic album consuming the petri dish in which it was formed.

Mantras build and collapse on themselves, choruses rise and fall, and enveloping you with a rich seam of guitar pop.

Whilst the album sounds confident and assured, its lyrical themes are built around questions, without ever proposing answers.

With Furfour the duo has altogether eschewed contemporary psychedelia’s hackneyed reliance on drones and heaviosity, and in doing so have made a powerful case for catchy tunes as a vehicle for mind-expanding music.

Atomic is a conceptual artwork that is overshadowed and at times overburdened by its subject matter. Yet taken in this context it holds a brutalist, otherworldly thrall all its own.

Unrepentant Geraldines has an irresistible lightness of touch about it: its charms initially seem modest next to the towers of ambition Amos has previously created, but the generosity of melody and sheer prettiness of the sound wins through in the end.

Some of Collins' finest work can be found here.

With The Gradual Progression, one definitely gets the sense that Fox is making an unselfconscious attempt to forge forward with music, an unabashed statement for progression. Though it’s not entirely successful, one has to admire this kind of ambition. He’s made an album that’s hard to describe in both generic and theoretical terms.

It’s a wonderfully dexterous and developed body of work that gives more of itself with each listen.

Whether by accident or design, Wooden Head is a charming record. It oozes gentle optimism--evoking, in its quiet euphoria, some halcyon aural safe place of lush hazy sunshine.

Everything Ever Written is a welcome return for a band that's long been held in high regard.

The detail is wonderful, ghostly and rich, but the whole would have benefited from a clearer, less meandering navigator.

In the case of Serpent Music, its magpie aesthetic can leave certain areas feeling improperly unearthed. This instinctual approach could have resulted in an uneven work, but works far more often than not.

Eleven great tracks out of twelves is a handsome return though, and the listener must surely delight in the fact that Harvey isn’t done with Gainsbourg just yet.

While the record as a whole rewards revisit, the excitement concerning its many idiosyncrasies inevitably levels off. And yet, that initial pang of shock never fully subsides.

While at times Flat White Moon struggles to match the awe-striking levels of the album’s opening track, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

Its [Daydream Repeat’s] arrival as fourth track brings a welcome levity to proceedings and you sort of wish there was more of it. Nevertheless, if Three is predictable in its lack of surprises, in Hebden’s case, that can only mean what’s on offer is sturdy and assured.

What's changed here is that the Weavers are now more than just writers of music; they are now enablers of specific atmospheres, able to handhold a listener through incredibly dense forest in very low light.

Silver/Lead is an exhibition in restraint whose brilliant corners and burrowing phrases reward both the keen ear and repeated listen.

Whatever tack they take Boo’s tracks are solid, heavyweight constructions that work as well as home listening as they would in a club

There’s a few too many repeated melodies, and too few differing musical moods. Still, this is a reliably impressive package from a man who knows his business, and crucially still has something to say. It’s Prime Numan in his prime.

Escapology is eccentric, full of twists and turns, screechy, glitchy and ambitious – undoubtedly a rare breed. After you complete the final mission, you are finally immersed in the artificial soundscape of closer ‘T-Divine’. The closing credits roll in. You have managed to escape and survive. Ultimately though, the listening experience does not transport me into a hyperstitional future. I feel more catapulted into an alternative past, which was polluted with fragments and ideas from the future we are inhabiting at the moment.

Gliss Riffer is a magnifying glass held to that opening in one hand and an opium pill twirling between his index and ring fingers in the other, egging on the impending lucid dream that's been in the works for years. He's only now offering an audacious embrace.

Prurient's Through The Window, a three-cut techno tour-de-force released this month on the Blackest Ever Black imprint, is at once limiting and liberating.

In A Dream is certainly not going to alienate those who adored The Future Will Come, yet it should be said there are notable points of evolution--most importantly Whang's prominence and the diversity of Maclean's songwriting. But it is difficult to place this above The Future Will Come, as despite the brilliance that Whang radiates throughout, there are up to three songs that sap momentum with their lack of vim.

Despite the high quality of the arrangements, the orchestration and the recording as a whole, it is a bit too much at once. A case of less would have been more.

An album that ought to be regarded as a creative peak for Suede, easily reaching the heights of their 90s best.

Those who had their hearts set on another batch of coy, cloudy electro-pop from the Swedish singer/songwriter might consider the song [Gunshot!] a bummer, but for the rest of us, it and the other eight tracks that comprise I Never Learn make for a stirring, pristinely rendered expression of heartache.

Pain: the quintessential Deaf Wish family album.

The Don Of Diamond Dreams feels imbued with a sense that alternative realities – different ways of telling stories, different mythologies to reflect our true nature – are always within our reach, if only we’re able to fully embrace our own imaginations.

Beyond the impressive list of guest stars though, this is an album that reflects on one person’s history and is steeped in honesty, grief and empathy as a result.

Put simply, Redemption is an impressively ambitious record, and its to Richard’s credit that she pulls it off as a cohesive piece of work.

The more cultivated recording process allowed textures such as strings, Tacular's accordion and Moore's sonorous and charismatic vocals to assume a richness that has not been heard before.

Pearl Mystic is the best British psychedelic album since the 1990s; maybe more than that.