The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs revels in keeping you off balance; it impresses, inspires and occasionally overwhelms, but it never outstays its welcome. A fantastic statement from an endlessly evolving band shouting louder than ever.

Finding strength in vulnerability, and the tug of war between contrastingly feeling powerful and helpless, angry and devastated, after heartbreak, has rarely been so well conveyed on record.

Arguing which record between this and U.F.O.F. is better is pointless. They are two sides of the same sovereign coin, all it proves is 2019 is Big Thief's year.

Horror is an impassioned journey, beautifully crafted and brightly euphoric.

Throughout, Grow Up is a bracing and vital antidote to genre norms, and shares a worldview that nourishes both heart and head. A huge undertaking, a staggering achievement. You need this.

On this latest opus, Washington and company are a tightened-drum of an ensemble that effortlessly flit between an intense focus and a playful freedom, and the results are stunning.

What Hold on to Your Heart really is though, is a lesson in the art of the chorus. Rarely have so many fist-pumping, singalong hooks been squeezed into 40 minutes of music.

The band’s excellent 2019 record Patience was full of self-flagellation, guttural outpouring and railing against abuse and injustice, but it ended on the hopeful budding of new love, a journey of breakdown and renewal. They continue on this record to wrap up extreme emotion in sonic confection.

Like much of Callahan’s finest work, this is an incredibly contemplative yet focused collection of songs from one of the most talented raconteurs of his generation.

The vividity of NAO’s lyrical expression leaves the listener deeply enthralled and invested in her stories. Thankfully, downtempo closing track A Life Like This provides some reassuring confirmation that everything has come together.

There are no split decisions here. Divorce have delivered a strong early contender for album of the year.

The poetry of it is woven into the musicality; the longer I listen, the more deeply I fall into it. The album is delicious; it's a nourishing meal for this cold and dark season.

It’s confidently compressed, and where this kind of urban dance music can serve as a vehicle for ego, Rodrigues' deft arrangements and choice guests speak for him--and speak volumes.

For all the screeching dissonance and politically infused anger present, No Home Record is a real joy of an album, proof if proof were ever needed that Gordon will not allow herself to slide into anything approaching resting on her laurels.

What unites it all is Eisenberg's ability to roam freely without ever losing the thread – it turns out the confidence was warranted.

Much like Ocean’s Blonde, Devotion unfolds and unravels in different ways upon each listen, giving you everything but never too soon. With it, Tirzah and Levi have created something fiercely unique, relatable and of the moment; one of the most crucial pop records of the year.

This is untethered, uncluttered music, made with real heart by an artist at her peak.

Meaty riffs, expertly orchestrated songwriting skills, arena-championing choruses, and delicate experimentation with metal nuances – this is Slipknot, and this is undoubtedly a Slipknot record. If you want We Are Not Your Kind to be heavy, you got it – but there’s far more craftsmanship hidden beneath the distortion.

The diaristic, stripped back process it was necessary to use to assemble 12 makes it a much looser, more instinctive listen. ... What we are left with is a record of endurance, struggle and the lingering ability to create something new. 12 shows a path can be made, even into that unknown.

The only weak portion of the album (relatively) is two consecutive rockers towards the end (Today, I Will), because you've come to expect something more experimental. But this is a minor quibble in what's otherwise one of the most exciting albums to come out this year, regardless of genre.

Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, just keeps getting better. Her latest record surpasses any expectations set by 2018’s Clean, which set her apart from the crowd with its effortlessly cool pop energy, razor-sharp riffs and wise takes on adolescent turmoil. With color theory, Allison revives a fiery and rebellious noughties aesthetic, upgraded with enchanting sonic clarity.

If I don't make it, I love u is magnificent, the peak of their recorded output to date, the sound of a band solidifying and pushing forward into something genuinely their own. A truly brilliant piece of work.

In a Poem Unlimited lives up to its aim and its name. It’s a reflection of abuse that feels all-encompassing, and of this era. It’s a timeless gem of an album that is about as powerful as pop music can be.

We may never get another album as breathtaking as Wolf Parade's debut, but it's great to have them firing on all cylinders once again.

It feels cohesive and wholeheartedly honest, embracing its rough edges with vulnerability. Guitar scene frontrunners once again? Most certainly.

Gazelle Twin has crafted a masterpiece that feels timeless, her most deft blend of punishing and melodic yet as well as a fearless examination of both then and now.

From the surety of Aquamarine to the simple vulnerability of Graves, Duffy strikes an irresistible balance between sorrow and joy, once again displaying their knack for dressing stark trauma in infectious beats and major chords. Whether a coping mechanism or an inside joke, the result is truly exciting music that is also uniquely heartbreaking.

This is a record with a remarkable scope. Hawk’s lyrics are still vivid and romantic; brooding, teasing and taunting as his narrators’ gaze shifts from Berlin rooftops to Scottish seaside towns.

The best album of Vetiver's career. Provided we all agree that Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is as good as Sunday morning music gets, Up On High is just about the sweetest Sunday morning record you’ve ever heard.

This album is littered with strangely beautiful imagery. ... Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is an exciting new milestone for Polachek.

There’s not a single track on European Heartbreak that isn’t a beautifully composed, shining picture postcard of emotion from a songwriter you should be listening to right now.

Give Utopia Defeated time, and the alien logic that binds this outstanding record begins to unfurl and initial skepticism turns to sheer awe.

The album feels as much a personal exploration of Adigéry’s own heritage and life experiences as it does a commentary on social attitudes. But, most importantly, it establishes Adigéry and Pupul as a real force to be reckoned with.

With a multi-layered narrative, Levy sings between abstract and Auto-Tuned clippings of her purchasing a dove, and in this proves the success of her experimentalist artistry. By welcoming the world into her record, Alexandra Levy has created something much more whole and warm than perhaps it might have been.

These are songs for the faithful and the uninitiated; universal yet strikingly intimate.

It’s a record about moving forward, appreciating "tiny triumphs" and staying open. It may also be Finn's most timely release to date.

Sentir que no sabes is endlessly playful, Fratti using either her cello, or some out-of-nowhere sonic texture, to constantly colour outside the lines, conjure dramatic tension, and create real emotional resonance.

Whilst their run-of-the-mill, dream-pop contemporaries experiment with a range of distortion pedals, this band continue to show that use of every crayon in the box (or, rather, every seat in the orchestra) can create a true masterpiece.

Across the album, Uchis seamlessly slips between English and Spanish. ... When the journey comes to a close, it couldn’t be clearer that, in Uchis’ world, love is the message.

Few artists can toe the line between melancholy and miracle like Allison, making Sometimes, Forever a record worthy of accolades for some time, perhaps even forever.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor's third album as Self Esteem sharpens what’s always been at the core of her musical identity: the tension between frank vulnerability and pop maximalism.

These writers are resurrecting a long lost art in popular music – using big sounds, with indulgent lyrics, crafting a listening experience so rich it borders on hedonism. Some records are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and few to be chewed and digested. We’re still digesting Prelude to Ecstasy.

Deforming Lobes sees Ty Segall infallibly cement himself as a tyrant of stoner rock: it excites in its furious passion.

nothing or something to die for is a jaw-droppingly beautiful, immersive experience where each track melts into the next, and in a quiet room with a decent set of headphones, you’ll get lost in its dreamy, bittersweet soundscape.

Designer is a record entirely in the image of its creator--Harding remains as lyrically oblique as ever, and the idiosyncrasies in her voice remain her calling card--and yet one that strongly recalls Julia Holter’s Have You in My Wilderness or Angel Olsen’s Burn Your Fire for No Witness in how calmly it oozes confidence.

Songs of a Lost World is a true return to the desolate beauty of their 80s heyday.

Vocally, lyrically, creatively, CMAT has never sounded better. In truth, you’d be hard pushed to find another record like this one.

The juxtaposition between weighty lyrical themes and musical buoyancy is cathartic. Simultaneously of its time while managing to sound like a classic, The Official Body is a healing experience; there is light in the darkness.

It's the wealth of exquisitely baroque moments, exploring history as a pliable, multi-dimensional rift, that makes Age Of Lopatin's most ambitious album yet. There is exceptional sonic depth, and those who were confounded by his dive into industrial alternative on Garden of Delete will notice a bewildering continuity.

Quite honestly it's a difficult record to find fault with, as each listen offers a slightly different interpretation. A creative triumph for any artist, Deleter is well-rounded and a welcome return for the Toronto outfit.

Far from a superfluous 'for fans only' reissue, this five-track record (which has been beautifully mastered from the original analogue tape) is a little piece of gothic rock history that should sit proudly in the record collection of any fan of The Cure, Joy Divison, Siouxsie and the Banshees et al.

On i don’t know…, the intentionality and splendour that began to blossom on her 2020 EP Projections are now fully in bloom. Tomberlin holds onto the sonic space that allows her delicate vocals to fly but introduces a host of new sounds, too – pedal steel guitars, brushed percussion, woodwind, twinkling piano.

Indie-goth, shoegaze, post-punk, all of these descriptions fit but none of them can begin to tell the whole story and with the arrival of In Search of the Miraculous there is a sense that this soulful, anthemic, continually evolving band are just getting started.

This is a magical release with far too much on display to communicate; it’s worth trying though.

The album as a whole is a strong argument for Olsen being her generation’s finest songwriter.

As always Deafheaven are anything but ordinary.

Sonic debauchery laced with moments of introspection, The Dare’s debut is worth the hype.

What’s remarkable about the album is how this disquiet slips in amongst some of the most purely beautiful music they’ve ever conjured.

It’s swift, at just 24 minutes across nine songs, but The Afterparty is Lykke Li at her very, very best, which makes her recent claim at an LA listening party that it could be her last, devastating. It might only be May, but it's already a serious contender for album of the year

Being Funny... serves not only as a reflective and refined record, but a showcase of The 1975's almighty journey to their peak, and how much they still have to offer.

Pleasure is easily Feist’s most difficult album, far from the immediate accessibility of The Reminder, but she's a captivating performer and it may well be her richest statement.

To be making music that can truly surprise you 13 albums and 28 years into a career is a testament to Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s continued dedication to their craft.

It may well be Power’s finest solo record, a continuation of the last decade-and-a-half of pushing himself into new sonic realms. It’s an astonishing work; actively abrasive and incandescent with fury with a core of unaffected raw feeling.

A real gem, this bold album brimming with character begins the etching of Chatten’s name among music’s greats.

Jericho Sirens is an incredible turn, and proof to the other half-hearted post-hardcore comebacks of the last years (looking at you At the Drive-In, Refused and more) that it is possible to still be high-quality and relevant. In fact, in places Hot Snakes' fourth album is so good, it even puts newer bands who have come up in the meantime to shame.

Overjoyed, Adios Amigo, and Rumer are worth the admission price alone. All told then, it’s a beauty. The album his fans have been waiting for. An album to bewitch people who don’t even know his name yet. Finally.

Hadreas toys with classic rock and Americana sounds masterfully, these canonical totems of genre upended by his tenderness and specificity of imagery. This is his most band-driven album, and all the players here are vibrating on their own collective frequency.

The overall bleed from one to the next, the movement of the narrative, is what makes this such a brilliant piece of work.

Slowdive represents an awareness of legacy, and the importance of not pissing all over it; to that extent, it’s an essential addition to canon.

Despite being an unnerving, disorienting listen, where samples of screams or phone calls clash with blank verse lines weaving in and out of consciousness, GOLLIWOG is a hugely rewarding experience. Blending an immense array of collaborators on the mic and behind the desk, it somehow manages to string them together cohesively in impressive fashion.

There isn't enough time across the space of one album for the contemplation that this music requires, but the spacious arrangements do their best with a wide variety of electronic affectations.

No Shape steps out as Hadreas’ brightest and most lavish record to date but, as in all the best fairy tales, it’s haunted by as many ghosts as it is populated by princes.

A natural empath, she wraps warm words around the shoulders of lives made wretched by those who breathe easiest. ... A monumental achievement that stands utterly alone.

In some ways, My Woman is the love song reimagined: a fearless and accomplished work whose deep-seated humanism is a stirring reminder that falling in love is for idiots, and that we should put our faith in any artist who might just convince us otherwise.

Love Hates achieves a mature tone, complemented perfectly by Roberts' gruff vocals and Hoorn's velvety melodies. Arguably, it's Hoorn’s increased presence on the record that lends this new air of grace.

This is the group’s masterwork to date, a thrillingly rich tapestry that combines passionate reflections on the meaning of black power, sharpened in particular by last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, with sonic love letters to black culture past and present.

Process is an exercise in catharsis, a deep breath in that lays Sampha’s soul bare through gorgeous vignettes of his life. He worries, he regrets, he aches. He’s human.

Soulful, impeccable production shines on every heartbreak and highlight.

Ardently absorb all that there is to feel in this LP, and expect its lullaby-like melodies to draw from you that which is so deeply buried you don’t even know it exists.

Capping off a decade where he has announced and solidified himself as possibly the country’s finest songwriter, Richard Dawson has produced another record of incredible melodic talent, compositional nouse and gloriously empathic writing.

There is no definitive answer in life, but this record is an incredible ride in questioning it.

Converge may be slowing down in their output, but this is perhaps the band's best record since You Fail Me, keeping in mind the three albums in-between are not to be sniffed at.

It’s great, difficult, enjoyable, rewarding, prescient--a notable work of art. It wouldn’t be surprising if the years to come recognise it as such.

As the title suggests, I Inside the Old Year Dying feels like a product of Harvey cocooning, burrowing into a space that feels protected and unhinged from relevance or topicality, as time and space wither. With that she has produced her most beguiling work.

Alongside indulgently unadorned ruminations on fear and love, the record is boundlessly liberating, decadently indulgent, and irresistibly danceable. Aitchison has delivered her greatest work yet.

Staggering, and arguably the purest and fullest expression of the band in its current form. ... For those already converted, this is sure to tattoo a permanent smile on your face, but it will no doubt satisfy even the most casual appreciator of punk, hardcore or classic rock too.

Not a single emotion is spared, as manic meltdowns (Medicine Burn) blend into polished pop (Kerosene!) and moments of melancholy (Romanticist) – all of this depicting a mind running riot.

The results are unlike anything the band has produced before.

Taylor might not have been coming for the crown of pop star of the year, but with Prioritise Pleasure she’s certainly taken it.

What could well be their best effort yet. ... We're taken on a journey through many different genres, concepts, voices and anthems (I Don't Wanna Live in This World Anymore) which all manage to work cohesively to create an unbelievably satisfying whole by the time of finale Joy Stops Time.

Bright Future provides exactly that: a run of songs that captivates in plentiful colour.

BRAT comes together in a genius way; it's literary, musically complex and somehow effortless. Not to mention, perfectly suited for when you need to cry at the club.

Good at Falling has a feeling of the relief that comes after crying. It takes a moment to sit in sorrow, to feel every inch of it, only to find it washed away by hope and gratitude.

What Ought achieve on this album both surpasses and expands on what they've already built. A joyous philosophical cacophony that finds new ways to inform, excite and challenge the listener.

A gorgeous microcosm of sound, Love Heart Cheat Code is a perfect accompaniment for hazy summer days and nights.

This infectious record is a timely reminder that punk’s greatest trick has always been to make the isolated feel less alone.

Before I Die firmly establishes Hye Jin’s multifaceted sound and crafts a mood that feels very of the moment.

This is easily the Long Island band's most mature album, in that it acknowledges and improves on many of the band's past misdemeanours.