The Men's highly enjoyable chaos.

II tweaks the Metz formula just enough to stand as an improvement over the band's excellent 2012 self-titled debut.

Simple Songs is the most emotionally direct of O'Rourke's pop-oriented releases for Drag City, and the least likely to distance the listener with a cruel joke or winking musical allusion.

The songs not only feel like they exist in a vacuum, but that they demand the listener create one too. It’s an important and serious album because it forces you to experience it as one, it asserts itself as the only thing you can concentrate on.

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.

Idle No More is evidence that this band is serious (sometimes) and it's in it for the long haul.

RPG casts a powerful spell but finds magic in the power of imagination rather than the supernatural. It is a celebration of the essentially human playfulness of gaming, storytelling and songs.

Ypres is an eloquent meditation on such complacency, on valour and its misuse, as well as a memorial to the battles, and war, that was meant to end them all.

By deconstructing their identity, Saint Etienne have created a coherent sequence of remarkable songs which sound like everything else they have done and nothing else, at the same time. It is a very impressive achievement.

As well as command of the overall mood, Lipstate always demonstrates a steely command of her influences. But these mini homages don't swamp her sound--quite the reverse.

John Glacier sits firmly at the helm, shifting the mood around her with each note and nuance, yielding a quiet magnetism throughout.

The best part about it is the Oh Sees manages to make this shift while still sounding like themselves, holding true with some killer bursts of distorted guitar and psychedelic reverb throughout.

Revelations very much sets the benchmark by which their subsequent work will be judged.

A New Nature does retain elements of the brooding intelligent gothic pop of their earlier work but this time around, Esben And The Witch's predilection for post and progressive rock is thrust to the fore.

His third album may not perform the economic miracles of the second, but it’s a powerful addition to Stromae’s canon and a beautiful gift to the world.

Sic Alps, a taut and absorbing listen, appears to have a mission to take conventional beauty and make it something more interesting by fraying its corners and smearing it with a little dirt. There is nothing Sic Alps could have done to create a better, more delicious sweet and sour record.

Under the Sun is well crafted, interrogating the listener and experimental where it needs to be, gifting you with something to gain throughout.

Divide And Exit is a record that demands you sit up and pay attention, unable to do anything else while it's on, a ticker-tape of frustration and smart tension blocking out peripheral vision.

Haiku Salut could be a curious fit for this – certainly, anyone looking for an evocation of the honky tonk contemporary to that era of silent film will be disappointed. Instead, Haiku Salut have delivered one of their strongest works to date.

Deciding to reflect on states of mind some of us could resonate to – especially this year – BE serves as a chronicle of what 2020 has been during lockdown: a year of uncertainty, anxiety, depression and frustration. But it also delivers hope for the future.

While many of the songs are gloomy as ever they are not cynical or nihilistic in their view of love or other subjects. Nor are they especially sentimental.

Sandwell District still seem eager to assault the biggest speakers in the darkest rooms and they eloquently marry the primal physicality of techno’s propulsion with its forward-facing techniques. It might not have the initial groundbreaking impact of its predecessor, but End Beginnings pushes the techno continuum on, inch by inch, bleep by alien bleep, beat by rib-crushing beat.

Temples then. A bit retro--check. Noel Gallagher and Johnny Marr likes them--check. Singer has amazing hair--check. A debut album chock full of references to their sources, but elegantly reformed and futureproofed--check.

While Here And Nowhere Else is a noisy onslaught that rattles along at a cracking pace, there's a real sense of fun and catchy melodies that Billie Joe Armstrong would be proud of.

Recorded on an eight-track in her flat, Colt steadily emerges as a feature-length celebration of what solitude can yield when approached with creative ablution in mind and the right amount of inspiration at one’s disposal. Woods sounds at home in her seclusion and strikes a chimeric midpoint between electronic and acoustic worlds.

Willoughby Tucker is the most complete, emotional and addictive Ethel Cain record to date.

Miles away from the poppy happy clappy smiley lovey dovey vibes of Twenty One or epic choruses of Serotonin, Radlands displays a new direction and confidence.

The six impressive soundscapes are often desolate and overwhelming, with brief flashes of hope. What grounds Disconnect is Joseph Kamaru’s spoken vocal, delivered like warnings through static.