Shout Out! To Freedom.... is a joy to listen to, packed as it is with warm tones, a boat-load of guest-stars, and an eclectic sound which dips between dub, rap, and house.

It’s a beautiful and inspiring suite of music, by turns both lyrical and aggressive, evocative of the elements in their many different forms. ... Great artistry which is significantly more than the sum of its parts.

Each track is a varying assemblage of satisfying discordance. The layering of sounds one atop the other creates a latter-day Latourian compost heap of experience. ... The quiet confidence of Jenkins’ brevity and his refreshing lightness of touch makes for a sharp, welcome intervention that balances the broad and gestural with close attention to the fine print.

Every moment on the album feels open, inviting every spontaneous sound that enters the fold. Much of the album occupies an unsettled, unpredictable trajectory that’s coloured by a sense of poignancy.

Moor Mother’s voice is an essential anchor on Open the Gates, but the album is more exciting taken as a group work than just the next in a long line of collaborative efforts.

What is impressive about absent origin is that the sprawling album does have a focus. There are repeated themes — feminist and internationalist snippets as well as musical motifs. And the albums winds down in a logical way as the soothing string arrangements and bird song of ‘an infinite thrum (archipelago)’ give way to the piano and more operatic singing of album closer ‘the abandoned colony collapsed my world.’

Dilloway, Gordon, and Nace stick in a precarious balancing act, a taut zone between form and formlessness. Like Mac Low, it doesn’t seem about recklessly pulling something asunder, but poking at the glue that holds the parts together. Delving into errs and stumbles and finding the poignancy that resides within.

All in all, though, a sort of affectlessness emerges here as one songs blend all too smoothly since, not unlike an automated playlist, the whole becomes less than the sum of its parts.

There are nods throughout to progressive soul superstars like Isaac Hayes, and the slide guitar outro on ‘Never Know’ suggests George is in fact Sam’s favourite Beatle – though the album always strikes the right balance between vintage and cutting edge, never unduly nostalgic or pastiche-y, with sax breaks, searing synth solos and simulated Stax horns that never feel indulgent or showy.

The group has made their name by blurring the lines between genres, letting multiple ideas meld into one airy texture, and this album follows suit. But it’s in the spurts of tension, the swelling melancholy, the subtle melodies, that Monument feels its most compelling.

Shade reviews different ways Grouper has approached her work over the years, but is also a unique look at the style that has emerged as a result, even if some of the stops along the way are less polished. If Grouper is normally minimalist in her recordings and performances, Shade is like having Harris perform in your living room: it isn’t always flawless, but it is absolutely special.

This is a gauzy and sometimes deceptively accessible album about falling all the way to the bottom and wondering if there’s any way back.

Water often reminds me of Soused, the excellent Sunn O))) and Scott Walker collaboration. They are both albums where there seems to be so much unavoidable emotional distress on first listen but eventually it can sound exultant. The initial atonality is replaced by the surrender to a different way of treating harmony.

It takes a couple of plays for the songs to individually stand out. Simon le Bon’s still remarkably youthful voice remains the most recognisable element but John Taylor’s bass and Nick Rhodes’s ear for keyboard shade come into their own, while Roger Taylor retains his steady presence on drums.

Lily We Need to Talk Now is an unexpected piece of artwork that manages to reflect the liberating now of boundaryless music. With influences from decades of genres and artists – from 70s to 90s to 00s and from The Sugarcubes to Pixies to beabadoobee – this album pieces together the excitement of discovering fresh music, making for a rollercoaster of a listening session.

This is a brave album about how to move on from grief. It’s challenging but totally compelling.

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.

It’s simultaneously unnerving and feel-good, witty and disconsolate. And though recorded two years ago, somehow it captures the essence of what it is to be a conscious entity negotiating the world in 2021.

Actually, You Can might tumble headfirst into doomsday, but Deerhoof’s day of reckoning sounds just as botanical and prismatic and baroque as they proclaim.

Though the album very occasionally loses its way, getting mired in space-age jazz stylings, it is undoubtedly a superb album that greatly expands on the classic Vanishing Twin sound and mixes it with a sense of experimentation that only occasionally fumbles.

This sprawling double LP’s sheer intensity doesn’t feel intended to alienate the listener, so much as accompany them in processing the mind frying enormity of everything.

Taylor is also creating epic pop from this mess, and the soundworld she has built with her producer, Johan Kalberg, is her lyrical support system. ... The uneasy stuff is louder this time around – beefier, darker – but Taylor has twisted it to become a solid component of her strength.

It is these three songs [MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA, Pool Hopping and Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism] that, in their hugeness, tend to overshadow the rest of the record on initial listens. Though the remaining tracks should not be missed or dismissed because of that.

Much like her previous work, the imperfections, leftfield leanings, and laidback nuances of the lo-fi aesthetic on Colourgrade demonstrate that modern love songs can hit places you never thought they had the integrity to ever reach.

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

It joins the annals of desolate and broken works, like Skeleton Tree and Purple Mountains. It’s also an album whose rewards have to be worked for, and that makes it a challenging listen.

What Saint Etienne articulate across I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is that thirty-one years into their career, their propensity to completely envelop their audience is as palpable as ever. Without hesitation, their latest offering is amongst their finest work. One that will certainly sound and feel as resonant and elevating over the next three decades and beyond.

Change is musically daring but familiar – the austere yet affective electronic backdrops elicit Broadcast in their prime, or High Scores-era Boards of Canada.