His continuous work positions him as the Bob Dylan of the alternative rock era, and By The Fire sums up every aspect of his artistry.

While Róisín Machine is probably the most straightforward album she’s made, and is clearly within her wheelhouse, it just leaves a desire that she had pushed things even further, as we know she’s capable of doing.

While his latest effort is leaner and lighter than Cataclysm, it doesn’t recapture the essence of Ratchet, which may disappoint some despite the artist’s clear intention to change things up. But for those looking for a breezy indie rock record with Prince-vibes, Shamir delivers.

Free Humans rewards the time investment, even if it does take a few unnecessary detours. It possesses so much pop ingenuity and sonic diversity that it has the potential to appeal to all sorts of people previously unfamiliar with the band.

The hook-heavy Haunted Painting is prime for tweens looking to break into indie rock sectors – it’s quirky, it’s light, it’s fun, and it’s Dupuis at her most earnest.

It is him following a path of lesser resistance through the landscape, writing actual choruses and melodic hooks, and finding that there is just as much natural brilliance and artistic merit to approaching his work in this manner.

It’s sometimes refreshing to hear them lean into their minimalist instincts a little more this time around, but often there’s just a bit of weight missing from the bones.

Together with longtime bandmates Jason Narducy (bass) and Jon Wurster (drums), Mould has created his strongest album since 2012’s Silver Age. Their chemistry soars on the wild tracks “When You Left” and “Racing to the End” as much as on the somber closer “The Ocean”.

Ohms is the first Deftones record to feel entirely like all of the rest but also like none of them. It somehow manages to push the band into a new direction while leaving breadcrumbs from each album. With a wide range of enjoyment coming from each cut, Ohms further cements Deftones as the premier mainstream rock band to reinvent themselves every decade.

IDLES are evolving and learning how to create change through a model most accepting. It’s 2020: let’s try the simplicity of hope and clichéd positivity for a change. Maybe this tight collection of high-octane nursery rhymes and simple chants will do the trick.

The Ascension is at its best when Sufjan calls forth light in the darkness.

Overall, while the album certainly has some parts that stunningly wash over you, it has many others that simply wash away.

This set of songs, intimate and filled with lyrical and musical nuances that encourage repeated listening, is supremely rewarding. That resilient streak is sure to take Anjimile places.

Despite the troublesome personal events during his band’s four year absence, Figure is a strong return.

There’s no predicting what genre he’ll take on next or how far his frightening productivity can go, and by delivering albums this spirited and melodically rich, with no signs of watering himself down when he’s already 10 releases deep in one year, Romano earns the trust to follow him anywhere.

It’s less playful and more focused than her last full-length, 2015’s The Expanding Flower Planet, and the concept record suits her well. Any indie artist should start taking notes on how to construct such a complete statement. The rest of us now have a guidebook for an effective personal journey right when we need it most.

While the warm emotionality and elegant melodicism of BREACH should earn her legions of fans, it’s the little snippets of hard-to-admit truth that are going to come to mean the most to people. It’s these moments that set her apart, and are as sure a sign as any that Fenne Lily is going to grow into an even more exciting and important artist in the years to come.

Host is a consistent record in its drive towards freedom, and both sound and lyrics embody that. At times this really allows them soar, and at others there’s the struggle to go it alone. It’s great to see Cults taking risks and pressing forward, but more than anything it makes you long for their past.

Shame is another great record from Uniform. Slightly more mature, perhaps even more confident, than some of the visceral slabs of pure adrenaline that marked their earlier releases, it’s a record that plays with extremes but with a command over the noise created. The overarching thematic intent of the record gets lost, truth be told, as the rush of sounds overwhelm the lyrics but this just gives you more reason to go back to it to pick those narrative elements apart.

There are echoes of the Spice Girls, Le Tigre, The Ting Tings, Kero Kero Bonito, and country-mates The Presets here, but despite its musical and stylistic nods to other acts, it still feels fresh – which is mostly down to the relentless delivery. But even at a respectable 39 minutes, it still loses steam; any album with this much energy would.

This is them coming to grips with their heritage and their age, although it’s no swan song. But American Head does what its predecessors haven’t been able to do – it shows the Flaming Lips still know how to write thoughtful and sincere songs that also tap into the psychedelics their fans have come to expect.

It gets bogged down in the doldrums somewhere between the personal and universal, and ends without truly having reached either shore.

Every track on The Universal Want has a warmth to it that is absent on most reunion albums.

It may not stand at the forefront of its creator’s dauntingly strong body of work, but Gold Record more than earns its place among his never-ending soul searching.

It’s a stunning and properly weird ending to a weird album, and though it may be one of their most succinct albums, Sun Racket still showcases what the Muses are up to so long into their career, and why they should keep doing exactly what they’re doing.

Hannah is a culmination of everything Read has done up to this point and she delivers bittersweet missives through tender songwriting and a deft application of her strengths as a musician.

Plum is a warm hug of a record. The kind you get from those types of friends you know you don’t need to keep in touch with all that regularly, but when you do it feels as though they’ve never been away and time goes all too quickly.

Her third album leaves no stone unturned, turning darkness into sheer catharsis. Sounds like something we all could use.