There's something very satisfying about listening to a woman whose career has been marked by deeply ambivalent encounters with the machinery of the music industry--who was briefly being touted as the next Marianne Faithful under Loog Oldham, and whose work was later forced into a folk mould on Diamond Day--finally seize the means of music production and create an album on her own terms.

There’s no clever foreshadowing here, and the real-time emotions make the death of the relationship so much more powerful. Both she and we got something terrific out of it.

Saint Etienne want you to remember them this way with not just the pop album of the year but with the pop album of all our lives.

Hushed and Grim is not only Mastodon’s longest, but also their most personal album to date. An impressive and brutal addition to the canon, even if making it to the other side can sometimes feel like a more unassailable task than traversing Blood Mountain itself.

This is a record which deserves your time and effort; it is not an easy listen and nor should it be. It is a dense and weighty work of art which examines the areas between life and death in which we shall all find ourselves. Kevin Richard Martin is making music about subject matters almost wilfully unconsidered by many due to the sheer terrors represented within their everyday realities. If you're human, then Sirens will resonate with you.

This is a record with conflict, displacement, trauma, and tension woven into every seam, and all the more powerful for it.

Mclusky are here with us now and guess what? They’ve grown up. Don’t panic: they’re as daft and irreverent as ever but there’s a newfound inventiveness to their songwriting that’s clearly the result of experience. With Falco and drummer Jack Egglestone perennially busy with projects like Future of the Left and Christian Fitness, the past twenty years haven’t been spent idly, and it shows.

Re-working black histories through both a personal lens and the structure of modern technologies, Moor Mother has created an album as a mythos of possibilities, a cartography of hope.

It is certainly a dizzyingly contagious collection of songs that benefit from main man Dan Bejar’s scattergun technique of song selection. Not for him, the smooth transition from song to song, building neatly to a gentle climax. It is in his blood to unhinge the casual listener and provide a shifting backdrop for his lively lyricism.

Words And Music By Saint Etienne is an album that reaffirms all that is glorious and brilliant about pop music.

Solid and dependable, Fade is another album in a long line of impressive works that, whilst never setting a cultural agenda, is always returned to for satisfying rewards

Through Obel’s breathtaking vocals and ethereal piano and cello compositions, Citizens of Glass succeeds in creating a welcome musical space to escape the observations of ourselves and others.

It’s an album made for obsessives to dissect, component by component. But independent from the technical obsession, Ishibashi creates a clear narrative through the album.

Certain passages evoke Popol Vuh or Cluster (for all the Brazilian flourishes, Simian Angel feels quite German) while others bring to mind avant-garde composers like Robert Ashley or Laurie Spiegel. All this is created seamlessly, the parts fusing into one another to create a vivid, if mysterious, tapestry.

England is a Garden is a beautiful and well-worked project. The five years wait it induced is retrospectively more than worth it as it is one of the most thoughtful and listenable albums the band have unleashed for quite a stretch of time.

A case can be made for the transitional albums, like 2011’s at ease with itself Suck It And See. The Car, however – in which a songwriter matures and finds an unexpected emotional range – is sure ultimately to be ranked in the band’s very top tier.

Confession presents dal Forno’s music at its most lush and sensual, evoking 90s dream pop as much as 80s post-punk. It still has the chilly sensibilities of her previous work, but there’s a shimmering lightness there as well, like sunlight reflecting off the ice.

It’s a brilliant, confounding piece of work, in other words, although good luck finding its niche in your well-ordered record collection.

Track-for-track the birth of a new legend? Absolutely.

While perhaps not as original or unpredictable as their previous monoliths, Infinite Granite is undoubtedly another epic, engrossing and engulfing piece.

While at first listen Everything Is Alive might seem plain and minimalist, its flavours can be savoured for a long time. A bit similar to a perennial flower regrowing every spring. Like wonders of life and death hiding beyond the seemingly impenetrable façade of routine and time, its sonic complexity lies beneath the surface.

It's to Earl's credit that he's managed to make the music he wants to, even if it's more of a rapper's rap record than one of any major crossover appeal.

It would be a stretch to say that this album is easy going, but it’s probably the most accessible of his records. It’s exciting to find such an artist trying out more populist forms.

Across the album, lyrics leap suddenly out like car lights in a dark tunnel, illuminating unpalatable truths with the sarcasm on full beam.

There’s an ancient sense of purity to this music which seems a cut above any similar projects.

Small wonders are waiting to be uncovered here, though they take considerable searching. While there’s limited novelty these days in live performances, given their ubiquity online, there are a few stunning examples scattered in the tapes. ... Reviewing these recordings may be superfluous. The songs were not designed to be heard but to be worked through and altered so it’s akin to reviewing storyboards or rushes.

For Plastic Bouquet they’ve come together to make an album that is as relevant to modern ears as it is those more attuned to the old ways.

The intensity is stunning and continued across the remaining nine cuts, but shaped into divergent designs.