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.

Minor frustrations do present, though they are quickly dispersed. ALL SHE EVER WANTED, which feels like disposable Radio 1 fodder, transitions into HATE and DEAR IMMIGRATION, pillars of brilliance from which BERWYN confronts systems of power that engage in active oppression: moments that affirm BERWYN’s voice and salience as an important figure in British music.

Skeleton Tree might be, to flip the phrase, a mile deep and an inch wide. The lyrics are often beautiful, and when he can be concrete, Cave conjures unforgettable, living images.

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

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

While Don’t Look Down might lack the knockout punches that would bring Kojey Radical to the top table of UK rap, it's another step in his rise as a star of the alternative scene as he continues to carve out his own sound.

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

It's a fascinating second album from a band that feel genuinely unpredictable.

An album that captures the rise and fall of restless youth in a fluorescent, dazzling city.

Her voice is excellent throughout – defiant and unwavering over Littmann's production – and sonically it is patient, cinematic and hopeful. A refuge, perhaps, for anyone who has been on the receiving end of the confounding and cosmic world of grief.

aya pushes her sound into more abrasive territory here, yet the record’s most crushing peaks come in its sparser moments, be it the haunting coda of peach, or the subterranean drone of the album’s title track.

This record, like the band behind it, repeatedly and successfully refuses genrefication in its ambitiousness.

The album is truly extraordinary – it is a once-in-a-career masterpiece that synthesises difference through abstracted self-observation. It is a vehicle for making meaning, an invitation to try again.

Blame is a pounding Faithless-esque banger; the angry, awkward Divide enlists the envious talents of Middlesborough rapper Shakk; and the static jams of Dancing On the Tables produce one of the most memorable tracks you’ll hear this year. Benefits are back, whether you like it or not.

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.

There is a timeless and timely feel to these tunes and it sounds as if something stately is stirring in West Kirby. Good health, indeed.

It’s no surprise though to people familiar with Coates’ work that his input is sublime, expertly judged, particularly on Gown where he churns down into desperation and reaches for salvation simultaneously.

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.

That! Feels Good! is a revved-up hedonistic joyride that extols and celebrates the sensual necessity of pleasure. Jessie is firmly in her lane here, and it’s a satisfying drive from start to finish.

The results are unlike anything the band has produced before.

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.

Forty years in and Nick Cave isn't showing any signs of slowing down, if any he's got too much creativity to try and contain within this album's ten songs.

On their debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, the duo show their beating heart, without sacrificing the chaos or creativity. ... It’s a labyrinth of a pop album.

Florist already feels like an album to live and grow with. It's a warm hug which asks the listener to smell the flowers every now and then.

Heart Under is an ear-piercing piece of intuitively crafted work.

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.

A work of emotional clarity and quiet resolve, The Passionate Ones is a timely reminder that tenderness can be its own form of resistance.

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.

These musical twists and turns can occasionally detract from Christinzio’s lyrics, which veer between gallows humour and vulnerability. When the latter half of the album gives his words more room to breathe, their impact becomes even greater.

Nobody Loves You More has both the versatility and reflective quality of a ‘best of’ compilation, but one that simultaneously hints at there being plenty more highlights to come.

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

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

As its title suggests, Chris is a supremely confident introduction to the next phase of Christine and the Queens.

She can’t do any wrong at the minute; this is timeless songwriting, and Tigers Blood is a worthy successor to Saint Cloud.

Pink Noise is a John Hughes soundtrack just waiting for its film to be written and it’s a bold return from an artist with a point to prove.

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.

When Bright Green Field follows in the footsteps of their best track The Cleaner – supercharging the banal and mundane with vigour and purpose – it rips, mixing genres like straight-ahead indie-rock with funk and jazz, and exploring ambient and textural backdrops which make their now-home Warp apt.

LC! demonstrate once more that they are masters of drilling down into the minutiae of life, spotting the danger ahead, while remaining powerless to make better choices.

It’s testament to Clark’s self-assured and enigmatic oeuvre: indeed, she still holds surprises for us yet.

Sanguivore is a love letter to the 80s, whether it’s punk, pop, hard-rock or heavy metal, and it’s bursting with great songs that are sure to please long-term and new fans alike.

An album of impeccably considered concepts championed by songwriting that refuses to let the Dublin outfit down.

It’s been a long time, but Riderless Horse is a timely reminder of what Nina Nastasia has always done. Great songs, performed brilliantly, to devastating effect. A record of powerful simplicity, and a stunning return.

It’s an album of growers, taking its time to reach unconventional climaxes. But there’s nothing fluffy about it; Jordan’s delivery is clean, precise and exudes confidence well beyond her years.

It’s the soundtrack to our most outlandish dreams, perhaps the exit music to the unmade film of our most romantic lives. If you're still to discover Radiohead, listen to this, for it's the perfect way in.

From the John Barry-esque orchestration of Reaching Out, to Talk Talk’s Lee Harris’s febrile percussion on Rewind, the album is full of richly detailed arrangements that allow Gibbons to free herself from the pull of Portishead’s past.

The extremes of emotions are covered on Masseduction: the highs and lows of love, heartbreak and just general life. It is the closest we’ve ever been to Clark, and it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get.

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.

While pulling from here and there, what binds Sometimes I Might Be Introvert together is a flair for the cinematic and the result is an album that's both monumental and an innermost peek into Little Simz’s soul.

This debut LP sees English Teacher beginning to consolidate and take the already-delicious sounds introduced on their Polyawkward EP to even greater heights.

If Jenkins is the poster child for anything, it’s that there’s always a place for yourself in the vastness of time and space. It’s a striking, and very human, proposition throughout the record that grief and anticipatory awe can exist as a singular emotion, in a blip on the cosmic scale; the overwhelming ego death of human self-importance and the perfect realisation of its own in-spite beauty, that love and death are on the same spectrum.

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.

The duo’s knack for high five-worthy boasts and massive one-liners remains undiluted. However, RTJ3 truly excels in some of its darkest moments.

This music is experimental and diverse in its sonic scope, but each unique sound is in service of its greater whole, making for a record that is undeniably the vision of a singular artist, a true auteur.

Overall, POST- is a moment-defining record both for Rosenstock but also for wider popular music and culture; it's equal places angry and fun, something we could all do with in 2018.

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.

A nine-track tour de force laden with biting observations and curious characters.

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

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.

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.

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.

It’s a jubilant and sweet experience. The least conceptually bound Zauner has been, she moves confidently through a space befitting of the multi-hyphenate artist she has become.

While not as sparklingly euphoric as their previous album, 2013's Fetch, their long-expected return is a collection of brazen, seering energy beams, like being hunted with a dragon’s breath shotgun in Akira’s Tokyo.

Manning Fireworks is polished and lean, and it’s not unfair to wonder if the record is an attempt to capitalise on Lenderman’s sudden popularity. It’s front-loaded with his best work – funny songs about sad acts and disappointment.

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

Hope is the longest VW song ever at eight minutes, but it never meanders despite its repetition. Instead it points toward the restless creativity that the band have never lacked, and that Only God Was Above Us demonstrates all too clearly.

Bleeds is an alt-rock urtext for Wednesday, both an entry point and a summation of their gifts: mixing the atonal with the blissful (Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)), bizarro choogle (Phish Pepsi), void-splitting hardcore (Wasp) and Low-esque slowcore (Carolina Murder Suicide).

Across its 15 tracks, Madlib’s constant beat switches make it feel more like one piece rather than a series of divided tunes, and you're left with a stunning collage of Gibbs’ headspace: flawed, politicised, desperate to change but tied by circumstance to the things he needs to escape.

Orquídeas is a display of bravura. Between Kali Uchis’ plurality of sound, empowered directives, and dance-inducing hypnosis – this is an entire album of sweet spots.

Besides some pretty clear face value, there are layers, moods, attitudes and tones to dissect and unpick which are overshadowed somewhat as the album stands.

Williams may be known for her inventive approach to the guitar – inspired as much by the spiritual blues of Elizabeth Cotten and American primitive guitarist John Fahey as it is Guitar Hero II – but it’s her egalitarian approach to collaboration that makes Acadia so alluring.

None of this group of songs are as good as those from her concise solo album, which only sprawled out with the ambient abstractness of its instrumental companion, something new and unheard for her. Here, listless listening is interrupted by the dangerous, mystical Simulation Swarm, saving the record’s back half. Big Thief are at their most beguiling when giving in to weird experiments.

Like its name, Billie Marten's fifth album is one to be dog-eared – revisited, rediscovered, and cherished.

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.

Further instrumentation was added with care afterwards, but the skeleton of each song can still be discerned, pleasingly, like a pencil sketch beneath watercolours.

There's an ever-growing sense that Segarra is in a class above in terms of poignant lyricism and emotive performance – The Past Is Still Alive reaffirms this in spades.

Endlessly innovative--check the skittering, robotic violin on Red Trails, played by Sara Parkman--Plunge befits the return of an iconic creative voice. Dreijer’s politics are written on her body, and she’s asking you to dive in. You won’t need telling twice.

YTILAER meanders through moods, from melancholic to tumultuous to mellow and easy. Often, the songs take time to reveal their true nature: Naked Souls begins as a gentle jazz ballad over piano, gradually building as other instruments join to become explosive. But elsewhere (Coyotes, Natural Information), it is simply joyful listening from the first beat.

Indulgent? Possibly, but it works, because this record – even the longest tracks--is punchy, witty and razor sharp.

Blackstar is an absorbing (if consciously arty and perhaps a shade self-indulgent) listen.

It takes courage to remain open, and Big Thief lead us gently from the beaten path and into the wilderness with U.F.O.F. There are lessons to be learned underwater, in the cold and among the shadows.

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.

Gracefully distilling a profusion of self-loathing, Javelin is a heartsick high. No one yearns like Sufjan Stevens.

Immersive and lyrically heavy, but not without radiancy and light, Hookworms' ability to turn desperation into euphoria is a quality that makes this album a liberating, often healing, experience.

This aching vulnerability is seared across the album, building upon the elegant orchestration of her previous LP to create a rich, sultry infusion of vintage pop and noisy indie-rock, easily matching her best songwriting to date.

Occasional spoken word excerpts add nice intimate touches with themes of love, heartache and introspection at the forefront of Nutini’s endearing lyrics. It's not faultless, but Nutini still glimmers with magic on this magnetic new record.

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.

The trio of discs add up to a surprisingly tight record, a superb summary of Cook’s work to date, and a thrilling pointer to where the future may lead.

Soulful, impeccable production shines on every heartbreak and highlight.

Not quite Hertz’s most dazzling work, but another string to the bow for one of electronic music’s most intriguing artists.

On caroline 2, caroline have done more than just cut eight glittering art rock diamonds here; they've forged a genuinely new musical lane, one entirely their own.

The record makes time for sharp skit humour and ends with a dazzling dance-pop groove. Where Cheek smooths down her effervescent ability to discard genre for more conventional psych-rock numbers, it’s not as exciting. But she can even do that better than anyone else.

These lullaby-like compositions mask a quiet rage throughout, reflecting the internal discord of those who live with abuse. ... Ever the documentarian of devastating emotions, Joseph's latest release sounds newly communal, with a sense of gathering closer those who share the same pain.

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

On their underrated Stumpwork though, they found surprising ways to provide setting, but their and Cate Le Bon’s production choices here are mostly safe. The album’s second side starts meaner, muddying the palette nicely, while the shuffling, pretty I Need You’s electronic elements are a breath of fresh air.

The pandemic is the ghost at the feast, lyrics dotted throughout about the deep personal upheaval we have all endured both publicly and privately these past two years. Penultimate track The Worst Is Done lifts up the mood with wistful optimism, setting up the stage for the third and final album of this heart-rending saga.

Blending a history of gospel, soul and rap, NO THANK YOU cuts and shifts, showing her irrepressible force and talent.

Featuring crunchy guitars, squeals of feedback and masterful melodicism, comparisons to Pinkerton are inevitable, but there's more nuance and maturity at work here.

A truly singular statement that vividly captures a century of folk, classic rock, and mid-century electronica.