The Something Rain is the sound of a band entirely reinvigorated, like a new band even, bursting with dreamy, soulful, intelligent songs, though you won't be surprised to learn everything is executed in the most understated way.

For longstanding Mega Bog fans, Life, and Another immediately stands out as one of Birgy’s finest records from start to finish. There’s a maturation to the stylistic choices and general trajectory of the instrumentation.

As these final notes trail off, Leaving None But Small Birds instills a trembling sigh, which resonates long after the last notes die.

A Little Death showcases Rousay’s ability to convey complex feelings of nostalgia, bringing to mind the themes of films such as Aftersun or Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind in their wistful approach to the portrayal of memories.

Although a bit more polished sounding than past endeavours, Le Bon is blessed enough with both sound melodic sense and a strain of Welsh peculiarity that lends Mug Museum a singular sound.

Birthmarks is a deft exploration of selfhood and becoming, and a marked step-up from an artist whose trajectory has promised a release that could stop you in your tracks.

This is an album that sounds massive, pompous, threatening, druggy, psychically hollow, a mirror turned against the daily noise... and is all the better for it.

While Queendom isn't the most impactful musical project of the year, it is definitely enjoyable - a light song sequence that follows the classical traits of the 90s and 00s western pop, when celebrating yourself and talking about mellow love through R&B-pop compositions (like 'Hello, Sunset') were part of the playbook. And it is full of simple, catchy and relatable lyrics with well-thought-out hooks.

Throughout Fain--the band's second album--folk melodies meet visceral fuzz-rock, never sounding quite like anyone else specifically, but a unique blend that never coalesced at the time.

Like all Zedek's music it leaves you reeling with questions, the perfect balance between the dead-ends of despair and the realisation that this turbid onward drift, eternally unresolved and unrequited, is perhaps our only option.

The Agent Intellect probably isn't a record to be throwing on every evening after (or indeed without) work. Distilling the sheer fallibility of the human condition across twelve insistent tracks, each full listen feels like an investment in the slow-burning revelation of some bigger picture, delivered with the ardent persuasion of a band fully able to defend wasting no time in capturing the magic.

His background on the harder edge of modern dance music means that, for all its delicacy, Severant never feels retro or overly derivative.

This remains a rock album that won’t sound out of place in the daytime schedule on 6Music.

This might be their most enjoyable release since 1991's Lived To Tell.

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.

Whilst Sun Ra's enormous back catalogue will always mean that certain aspects of his music may be deemed unrepresented on any given compilation, this collection has huge appeal for both newcomers and obsessive fans alike.

She has delivered a body of work where she has given herself the space to be resilient, vulnerable and inspiring.

While A Trip To Bolgatanga can’t be considered an epochal release as some of their earlier outings, it provides a particularly transportative soundtrack for the coming scorching days.

Thirteen minutes of bliss (or chaos, depending on the listener), Mclusky has proven their continued dominance in the noise rock world, while giving fans something satiating to devour until the next release.

Nothing Important is a remarkable record--at times deeply, painfully intimate, but also witty, bawdy, surreal, disquieting, nostalgic, brash and fearlessly individual.

All The Way is particularly strong, however, for both the production of Galás' piano and its melodies--there is an added, foreboding subtlety which comes through with more clarity here.

An album of scope and unbridled invention, drawing from the past (in both music and aesthetics) to create a universe of sounds and textures that are quite unlike anything around at the moment.

For a band whose titling and artwork is so important for the images they conjure, reverting to a tighter focus works for them. Carlson's guitars, clearly the focus, get to step back from the angular and the lugubrious. Instead, red-lipped riffs flutter over careful and precise percussion, evoking crimson dresses striding down gold corridors. And underneath it all--the star player--Adrienne Davis’s steady, world-eating thud has never sounded better.

Voices From The Lake is a love letter to slow, concentrated listening.

Wand's resultant mixture of the frenetic and the smooth is intoxicating.

A teenage dream of a record.

Much has been made of these vocals, and they certainly do stand out on the recording. That said, any serious listener has heard both precedents and antecedents (Leon Thomas, AMM, about half of both the Nonesuch Explorer and ESP-Disk catalogs) for Coltrane's approach.

Welcome to Condale is a refreshingly ambitious, variegated take on the 80s both conceptually and in its execution.