A vital artefact, 1985: The Miracle Year catches Hüsker Dü at their most inventive, straddling the line between hardcore ferocity and pop accessibility while revealing a potent mix of raw power, emotional maturity and musical ambition that helped pave the way for alternative rock’s emergence from the underground into the mainstream.

In another rapper's hands the concepts might have been overcooked or the messages too self-righteous, but Kendrick manages to achieve scale while remaining firmly grounded on two feet.

Lean and yet lush, No More Blue Skies might boom slightly less than 2019’s My House but it is more richly arranged, the sound built out with sax and strings as mastermind Andrya Ambro carefully details a beguiling series of stark, spidery vignettes.

This is another incredible addition to Roberts’ Coin Coin project, and one can only assume that when the 12-album cycle is completed, it will be regarded as a singular masterpiece of twenty-first century sonic and narrative art.

While this particular take lacks the almost chaotic energy and sense of transcendence of the Coltrane/Ali version, it still overflows with riotous lyricism. The additional instruments expand the textural and rhythmical dimensions of the piece, before topping them with a rumbling drum solo. A fitting end for an equally inspirited, crucial live recording.

This new music is carefully constructed, cerebral, intrinsically heavy, and has the quiet amazement of someone looking at their near-forgotten reflection. It’s not a complete transfiguration, but owns its corner of darkness, and shines precious shards of light on what might come.

There’s an intrigue which lies in the way these are threaded together and you can hear the many musical influences at work which create a distinctive and well-crafted album.

Little Simz' third studio album, Grey Area, sees her swing confidently through the duality of youth to harness the harshest of her vulnerable, raw moments, and the best savage, wisdom-weaponry, giving each reflection on herself pride and place on this record.

hexed! is both a difficult and rewarding listen because it’s such a true portrait of the way trauma sticks to us, even if it’s sometimes dormant.

Only the live recording, Manhattan is not essential here, given that, as is often the case with much archival material from the period, the sound quality is uneven, but it at least gives a glimpse of what the band was like onstage. Elitism For The People confirms two things, essentially: that Pere Ubu were possibly the most original band to emerge from the embers of America's punk scene and, more importantly, one of the best rock & roll bands to have ever spat out riffs, lyrics and noise.

SOS is twenty-three tracks long and sonically it sprawls all over the hood. From low to high, clipped to soaring, SZA’s vocals are icily superb and her overwrought writing is vivid throughout. These progressive, ambitious melodies act like stitching to hold together the patchwork of an exceptionally diverse approach to genre and production.

It's not certain whether the acre to the desert forest has been crossed, but the feeling that abides is one of compassionate admiration for Stevens, not only for making this beautiful album of unfaltering rawness (and one which may even provide a crutch, a brutal one, for others), but for all of his work that has preceded it, music which frequently transcended the hurt of a life so wounded at its root.

While not an unqualified success, particularly in its sequencing, the overwhelming majority of Bright Phoebus warrants every ounce of the reputation the record has spawned during its absence from the world at large. Where it sags, it recovers quickly, and where it rises, it rides upon thermal after thermal, scornful of gravity.

While the tightly managed polish and control perhaps doesn't grab the heart in the visceral way of older Sleater-Kinney, an emotional urgency remains on this album, albeit conveyed with greater sophistication.

Sonically, she expands exponentially from her debut Stranger in the Alps. That album, elegant and wise, dealt mostly in acoustic guitars and fairly familiar folk influences. Her hero, Elliott Smith, was deeply felt. Punisher keeps some of the acoustics but also blows it all up: strings, horns, waves of mellotron melodies and nylon guitars create a greater sense of a swirling hurricane just waiting to happen.

Private Music Deftones sounds just like Deftones, but with something off about them: even compared to their most ethereal numbers, Private Music is blown all the way out. Everything echoes or is covered in fuzz. It sounds like the slowed-and-reverbed version of themselves. In a word, a memory.

Send Them To Coventry is an album bursting with life. Pa Salieu sounds confident and convincing whatever style he turns his hand to. Whether or not it’s the best album of 2020, it’s surely one of the most interesting, and should be a strong contender for awards in the coming months.

Constant Noise redirects attention to the urgent task of repairing the fractured connections within our society. At times, the message may feel on the nose, but to articulate an appropriate emotional response, such directness may be warranted in an era where division reigns.

Here, you'll find a more focused version of mournful doom, no less emotive for its precision. Happily, even in their later years Paradise Lost sound hoary and venerable rather than wizened or dilapidated.

This is unabashedly retro-stuff, cut from the same silken cloth as Timbaland and Noah Shebib. But that’s no bad thing. Rochelle makes the sound her own, effortlessly. Some music is just cool, plain and simple.

Restless reinvention is to be admired, but reconsideration and striving for personal perfection is to be prized. While Frahm’s previous penchant for the former has given him a brilliant and varied book of songs from which to draw, it’s his intense performance and passionate adoption of the latter which makes Spaces a work of gentle genius, and one of the year’s best albums.

Like most bumper collections of this nature, Savage Young Dü is not a starting point. Sensibly, one should swot up on Hüsker Dü’s complete 1984-86 output first, then dig into this box and its wealth of eyewitness anecdotes and photos of puppy-fattened band members. Historical context suitably delivered, toast the lifespan of a great rock band and burn one for the guy who didn’t see this release hit the shelves.

St. Vincent's real genius is the way it manages to project an aura of perfection while simultaneously showing us its guts; it suggests that while the polished surface may not be a lie, exactly, it's based on a series of elisions that we're all uncomfortably complicit in.

Run The Jewels 2 is a great listen because of the artistry on display, but it's the pent-up frustration that takes it into the stratosphere, that makes you want to hug your loved ones and thank god for each breath while you set fire to the neighborhood.

It’s very easy for a reviewer to play armchair warrior and forward claims for all sorts of nonsense for music they like. But this is a glorious, heart-stopping, essential album. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it.

Apex Predator - Easy Meat retains the hyperactive energy and deadly pacing of its recent predecessors, and as a result, it gives their fans a diverse and devastating listening experience during what is a quintessential, zeitgeist-destroying grindcore album.

Bowie sounded like Bowie again. .... Judging by the excellent A Reality Tour live album, remastered and resequenced here, Bowie was on a roll. .... The ground was being tilled for Bowie’s extraordinary swansong, Blackstar. .... His late-career bits-and-bobs tracks, as evidenced by the music gathered on the Re:Call 6 compilation and The Next Day Extra and No Plan EPs, were often fantastic.

On their best album to date, it makes for extraordinary music, rich and rewarding. The smallest tonal shifts define the way the next moment feels.