This is a carefully crafted, complex pop record that benefits from the production contributions of industry heavyweights like Nicole Morier (Britney), but undeniably it’s the new-fangled delivery and star appeal of Rina Sawayama that gives this album its sparkling essence.

At times it feels like a strange fusion of medium and message but it’s a triumph that Catholic Action manage to imbue an increasingly staid format with some revolutionary zeal.

There’s very little room for light and shade amongst their wall of cavernous synths, and while this can generate an evocative mood (the bursts of percussion and gloomy electronics of pink lightning does give the impression of thunderstorms) it can sometimes feel like James and Roddick are happy to operate within their comfort zone. Nevertheless, fans of Purity Ring fans will undoubtedly find WOMB to be a welcome return.

They’ve gone from mammoth, side-long pseudo-jams to relatively bite-sized chunks without sacrificing any of the fury they’ve harboured from the beginning.

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.

At its most delicate points, slow climbing chord progressions carry as much emotion as her lyrics, and at its lowest, though sparse, carry them where they feel overly simple.

As usual Flying Lotus produces, with his fingerprints particularly keenly felt on tracks such as Unrequited Love, to assist Bruner with yet another fantastic release.

The Caretaker is not for the fainthearted, nor is it designed to be background music: it demands to keep your full and undivided attention.

Too many of the tracks dissolve into an atmosphere-for-the-sake-of-it sludge, yanking you into consciousness only every once in a while.

Snapshot of a Beginner might be their most focused and uplifting release to date.

New Me, Same Us finds its vigour in the sweet spot between pure pop and the band’s more adventurous tendencies. When an emotionally-charged, jazz-inspired piano climax cuts through the otherwise smooth veneer of New Fiction or when Where You Belong leans fully into a part-funk, part-R'n'B groove, the band really hit their stride. It’s just a shame there are some stumbles on the way.

That’s not to say that Saint Cloud is all moments of quiet self-reflection. Crutchfield’s artful command of heartfelt truths is still present and correct.

Chaos often ensues within oneself following heartbreak, and Maine captures that devastating chaos beautifully on Ricky Music, sometimes too accurately. It’s not always an easy listen, but it’s certainly a very relatable one.

With four years between their debut Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers, Every Bad is similarly anxious and seeking validation, endearing itself desperately to any listener who’s ever felt the same way.

Deap Lips works best when Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd are in the background, as messy closer There Is Know Right There Is Know Wrong proves, but the fact that they know when to keep themselves there suggests they’ve learned lessons from With a Little Help from My Fwends. An intriguing diversion.

Ultimately, although it’s more immediate than their 2016 record, what you gain from We Are Sent Here By History will be dictated by how much you connect with its musical vision. Sink into its groove though and it’s an album that presents a fascinating societal commentary.

A record that thrives on its biocentric themes, it’s one you won’t want to leave behind.

It's not a record that's overly concerned with coherence, but the freedom to experiment suits Malkmus well, especially when he lets the ideas dictate the music without trying to adhere to any sort of thematic cohesion.

Produced by Remy and recorded live with 20 session musicians, Heavy Light is rich, textured and sonically huge.

Out of My Province finds Reid on magnificent form. ... For all the emotion she conveys and coaxes from the listener, she sounds like she’s been singing these songs all her life. Like all her thrilling and incredibly distinctive inflections come as easy as breathing.

Creative, life-affirming, funny and beautiful, Thumb World gets the thumbs up.

It never feels like an escapist project. It becomes an expression of the bleed between the unconscious and the world around us, through often beautiful, always unsettling music.

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.

It's a beautiful album that requires patience and provokes instrospection, while still retaining the gorgeous discotronics and expertly stitched samples that come with a Caribou release.

While Peggy Sue never quite reached the dizzy heights of Mumford and Sons’ stadium-sized tours, their artfully woven narratives are more than double-tap worthy of it.

Miss Anthropocene is an uneven record, and one that arrives with considerable baggage that threatens to turn it into a punching bag. But Grimes' proven abilities as a producer win out. There are superfluous, overlong passages, especially when the brightness in her music drains away.

Hyacinth sees a strong progression in production values from its predeccesor. While there's a widening of Spinning Coin's scope here, there's still a tendancy to stick to a familiar formula across the album. Thankfully, they do it well.

Look At Us Now Dad is at its best when it treads further into experimental territory. ... Unfortunately, it can be frustrating that this isn’t emphasised more fully or frequently but still gives a glimpse into where Banoffee could ultimately head.

That there’s room for experimentation, too (see the spoken word outro to Graceless Kids, or the spacey closer Used to Be) speaks to her confidence. This is the record she wanted us to think California Nights was.

Whilst it’s fair to say that the offering has been fine-tuned somewhat (frontwoman Lili Trifilio has all but ditched the Courtney Barnett schtick in favour of a far more direct punk-pop far closer in tone to early Paramore), it’s still a solid effort.

This time it’s only a partial reinvention, but by the time the huge guitars and stereo panning of One More Hour fade away, there’s no doubt that Kevin Parker is a man with his own unique sense of time.

Seven years on from their first record, Shopping are still giving audacious levels of energy. It would be interesting to see the band develop their electronic experiments even further in their next album; though All or Nothing builds on its predecessor, it only gives us a taste of what the trio can do when left alone with a synth.

There Is No Other is a similar, gentle masterpiece [to Beck's Morning Phase], but there's leather located behind the silk and the record packs an emotional punch.

Aside from the heavenly chorus that opens the title track, this feels very much like business as usual – which is no bad thing. Nada Surf are a fine guitar pop band. There’s not much sense on Never Not Together of them looking to change things up.

Overall, there's a real sense that La Roux is on autopilot, resulting in a ‘samey’ sound that struggles to hold the listener’s attention.

It takes repeated plays to reveal the subtle depths, the pump organ, accordion, electric bass, melodica, mellotron.

Navarasa: Nine Emotions is a rollercoaster of vibrancy.

Silver Tongue may prove to be a bridge, between a time of turbulence and a period of renewed creative independence. However, even in that, this record is proof that she can remain uncompromisingly herself.

Brooding and hypnotic, I Was Born Swimming is delicately sombre, yet diverse in such a way that evades any risk of tedium.

Moments of despair are gorgeously balanced by tight, optimistic motifs that are dotted throughout the record.

It’s a superb return to the traditional album for Deacon. He's clearly learned a great deal making soundtracks, producing a record of a grand cinematic scale with a clearer eye on creating emotionally shifting tracks. Yet Dan Deacon maintains his constant look towards salvation and joy and retains an almost incomparable gift for conjuring them in a listener.

It's a surprisingly spotty album from an artist who rarely puts a foot wrong.

While Power is sonically different to the rest of the band’s outings, and a solid release that keeps their ever-consistent discography ticking over, it’s perhaps not as vibrant as previous efforts.

Overall, the band have carefully crafted another winning record with just a few tweaks to their regular formula. Maybe not one to win over new fans, but a solid addition to a sparkling oeuvre.

This early run of songs is perfectly enjoyable and the lyrics play superbly with country clichés, but rarely does it reach towards the quality we know the band to be capable. That is until lead single Gentleman turns up and gives the album the kick it needs.

Frances’s voice has a tendency to sway into a mumble throughout, making certain vantages into her world a strain to perceive – unfortunately lending itself to the album’s mysterious nature a little too well.

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.

Everything that grooves here (over half the album, which clocks in at 19 tracks) is great and makes you want to see the band live. The rub? Making a New World is a song cycle about the after-effects of the First World War.

Seeking Thrills is an album that delivers on its initial promise, proving that the upward trajectory Georgia currently finds herself on can only continue.

While the music itself never strays far from Lewis' usual anti-folk template (although In Certain Orders' spot-on replication of The Cult's mid-80s stadium rock sound is an interesting aside), there's a focus and commitment to make each of these songs sound the best they can. It's a plan that's worked and Bad Wiring is an electrifying addition to the Lewis canon.

The album's arrangements are uniformly beautiful, coddling Staples' vocals at all times, though sometimes to the point of being overly cloying.

The eight-track album features themes on the new age norms of class, gender, race and power that shape the world today. Beyond the sweet melodies and striking instrumentals, New Age Norms 1 is a project with a message.

It all sounds nice enough, but it's lacking the biting insight of the best Oldham records. Luckily, the second half is a lot more contemplative, with a fascinating final triptych of moody cuts, reveling in an air of opaque imagery (less so on the final track) and campfire rumination.

Despite its title, New Ways doesn’t break boundaries or really see Vollebekk break out of his typecast. But it is nonetheless a nice, warm album.

Sticky harmonies and the running theme of longing for something more are just a few elements that make both GUV I and GUV II very fun, intriguing listens.

I and II are both lean, economical, sweet and seemingly genuine. Both have a similar emotional tone but demonstrate some stylistic differences. The songs on II are a little slower, groovier and less manic.

Stepping away from the core sound of their debut was a bold move from Girl Ray; they don’t always quite pull the change off but, when they do, Girl can be a charismatic record.

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.

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.

While Altogether is a pleasantly enough constructed record, it suffers a similar problem to Nothing's Dancing On the Blacktop from last year – it's just not particularly enthralling for older fans.

There are lyrical themes explored here – social media and the 'digital you' face criticism, as expected from an act sonically indebted to the past – but they are window dressing for songs full of rhythm, forward motion and tightly packed kinetic energy.

It's often said that love is better the second time around; whilst this remains to be seen, Cry is a grower and we look forward to love’s next incarnation.

Yet though FIBS skips swiftly between moods and sounds, Meredith’s innate ability to bring these parts together into a collection that’s both bursting with compositional creativity, while still maintaining its own sense of cohesion and an accessible edge, inspires awe. It’s no lie: Meredith has struck gold once again.

The most crucial overlap here is between Foals’ dual ambitions – creative and commercial. They’ve been one of the biggest bands in Britain for a while now – and finally, they truly sound like it.

It takes multiple listens to get to the heart of this record, each one well worth your time.

A warm, insightful and frequently jarring record full of pain, love, curiosity and mystery.

Vagabon is a record both stripped back yet electronically rich, genre disparate, but ultimately inclusive. A rewarding listen, it's an achievement beyond comprehension.

Crush may be some of Floating Points’ most assertive work, but sinking into its rich and deeply layered textures reaps countless rewards.

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.

Musically, it’s varied and adventurous; thematically, it sees the world’s present darkness and raises it hope. A vital record.

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.

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.

Smith has taken his time, and made mistakes, in comprehending what he’s been through. And Deceiver is all the more honest for it. Impressively, that doesn’t shine through intricate detailing but as something more abstract. Deceiver sounds like that experience, more than it describes it. And there’s hope at the end too.

As an exploration of a incredibly specific emotional space, and attempts to leave it, Look Up Sharp works tremendously. But it’s dal Forno’s compositional poise and skill with restraint that sets her apart as a creator of works of truly unnerving grace.

If anything, uknowhatimsaying¿ is a little more controlled than Brown’s previous record, and perhaps that’s the experienced hand of Q-Tip exerting influence. It does nothing to besmirch the crown that Brown has already claimed as his own – as one of the best, and most boundary pushing, artists in the rap game.

All Mirrors retains a good amount of iconic devastation. Olsen’s timeless, musing lyrics are wise as ever, if perhaps more cynical than before. Yet there is a new, almost paradoxical, quality to the sound, as though it comes both from the past and the future.

The Talkies is a superb return, with Girl Band building upon what they know they can do but without resting on their laurels. Still experimenting, still funny, still brilliant.

Startlingly original and yet somehow a nostalgic comfort in these worrying times, Roberts is one of the best we've got.

Opener Human and later, less successfully, Faith For Doubt, divvy up the greatest hits of a Laurel Canyon-indebted film soundtrack with the driving rhythms of Fleetwood Mac. The latter is The War on Drugs without the transcendence. These, unfortunately, muddle an album filled mostly with quiet, vocal-led tracks that veer from haunting, sparse ballads to something more hopeful.

Chastity Belt is proof positive that bands don’t need to simply spin the wheels when they’re going through periods of transition, waiting for the solid ground to return beneath their feet before they get going again.

For the most part we're in familiar territory: the sounds are familiar, the production is crisp and the songs are full of the colour of widescreen Americana.

The record sounds warm, full and flirty; the snares hit you, the bass bounces and harmonicas and organs are as bright as California stars.

For those not attuned to Peggy’s ability to tap into the zeitgeist, All My Heroes Are Cornballs won’t provide a lyrical turning point. But as a showcase for his skills as a producer, it should win over even the most dyed in the wool critics.

Ultimately, though, Close It Quietly doesn’t sound particularly exciting or new, but it certainly succeeds at its intentions – it’s a triumphant album for people that find catharsis in indie pop’s niceness.

Mostly, though, this is everything a debut should be: fascinating, confused and a little bit terrified.

The Practice of Love is a powerful and joyous offering from one of the last artists anyone could ever accuse of playing it safe. Her unorthodox observations ('She found stretch mark cream / In an Airbnb bathroom') are, more so than ever before, full of wit, bite and beauty.

At times, Miami Memory feels like a streamlined repurposing of pop music's warmest sounds – be it the glowing synth jabs on Stepdad or the crispest of snares on Far From Born Again and Divorce – all retooled with a new level of subtlety and honesty for Cameron. What you’re left with is ten great pop songs; bitingly funny, bombastically anthemic and gently sensual, often at the same time.

There's something of an air of spontaneity to some of the tracks here, but this same spontaneity can make feel the album feel slightly ephemeral in places. Pang! can sometimes leave you hungering for more, but it’s still often an engaging listen.

It is intentionally playful and mesmerising. It’s in these moments, when Giannascoli flaunts his ability to turn the bedroom pop moniker he once personified on its head with studio trickery and letting his most outré ideas play out, that the record then rewards you.

Rather like Bruce Springsteen's lo-fi masterpiece Nebraska, Wolfe re-creates a sparseness (albeit with modern production methods) that shows off her best assets, doing more with less.

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.

Producers Marius De Vries and Eldad Guettta, alongside the Valve Bone Woe Ensemble, have helped Hynde find the sweet spots on a selection of songs that bring to mind Iggy Pop's excursions into jazz or the sound of Bob Dylan's recent covers collections.

Everything from funk-inflected bass to smoky brass and even New Jack Swing is represented here. Despite this, sometimes the clash of sounds can feel slightly diluted by some slightly hazy production, including on The Warning, where Robyn’s emotionally-wrought vocals and the melancholy orchestration are dulled by the washed-out beats. Yet, even in these moments, there’s an air of self-assuredness.

Like The Bride, there is a common conceptual thread running through these tracks, but unlike that record, there is less effort exerted in shaping them to fit a narrative. The songs are better for it, each unspooling like a miniature movie of its own without the same need to move the story from point A to point B.

Essentially, while Hunter is fiercely conveying an important message, one's enjoyment will depend on the unsubtle nature of the message or the slightly formulaic nature of the music – but with openers as soaring as Galapagos, it sure is hard to resist.

Unfortunately, for all but the hardcore, Free seems to baffle as much as it bewitches.

All of the beats are familiar, perhaps to a fault, from the instrumental at the midpoint to the shyly epic closer, but Forever Turned Around represents nuanced progress from an admirably subtle band.

He maintains his voice, his melodic instinct and knack for presenting raw emotional landscapes without ever slipping into self-pity or losing his sense of humour. However, in throwing himself into the garage rock mould he loses the loose relationship with genre that allowed the twitchy dynamism of his best work.