The only caveat to Themes is that its stark cohesion demands a single two hour sit-through to soak in the weight of its patient, holistic, slowly-unfolding approach.

Another excellent sort-of-post-dubstep EP from a relative unknown making use of thickly nocturnal synths with distant and obscured vocal samples.

Where Superwolf imagined Sweeney and Oldham as blood-splattered riders or jealousy-crazed sailors turning into godless cannibals and sodomites, Superwolves has them sitting on the porch and watching the sun set as their children play in the high grass. ... That makes for a less gripping experience; the predecessor’s bitter, sexual tone made it unique and unforgettable, working off of the subconscious urges of the post 9/11 George Bush Jr. era, but the sequel’s gentle acceptance of the world and all therein allows something thought impossible on that first album: forgiveness.

His voice is consistently stroking it throughout the 16 tracks, ensuring it’s one of his most revealing bodies of work to date. A true and honest portrait of a complex human being.

Allo Darlin' makes this leap on Europe, resulting in an album that is subtly ambitious and surprisingly rewarding.

Her ability to speak about truly complex and philosophical facets of love and the self in a lyrically simplified way, but with sonically expansive and cohesive instrumentation, is admirable and incredibly progressive in the world of genres and storytelling.

With Forever Blue, she has created an album for those who like to close their curtains when the sun is out; it’s a debut of richness, depth and genuinely shattering emotional engagement – pure melancholic majesty to lose yourself in.

Illusory Walls is a definitive document of the power of their combined ability and belief.

She has found a way to go beyond merely soothing; she nourishes her soul with each word uttered, building herself up into the titular Protector. This is the sound of her new day dawning, and it’s a wonder to behold.

There's much to cherish here, but this isn't a complete effort.

The band’s most emotionally delicate and intricate record to date.

Windswept Adan is a landscape, an aquatic world to be lost within, and one from which you’ll scarcely want to emerge.

The fragmentation of characters, the dislocation and purposefully disruptive sense of a core musical identity on Warm Chris make this a collection of disparate songs rather than a body of work – for some this will be a boon, for others problematic.

With Quarter Turns Over A Living Line Raime fleshes out the promise of earlier work and delivers one 2012′s most compelling and listenable experimental records.

Instead of wry irony or wallowing in hopeless abandon, Pale Horse Rider achieves something more like a fellow soul joining in on watching a fire in the distance.

To his credit, he once again proves why he’s esteemed at the former via the blunt insights of “TMVTL”, but the “run that verse back” Benny is all but absent on Everybody Can’t Go. Once more, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he doesn’t seem sure how to replace that energy with conviction. Even The Alchemist gets dragged down by the pursuit of safe material.

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.

This is far from a “safe” debut – her authenticity, vulnerability and innate ability to scribe the gory innards of her consciousness on to paper are entirely unique and intimately personal. It is not always the easiest listen and that is precisely the point.

America is an album in two halves, once again separate but together, a side of individual tracks and a four-song suite that inform each other even as they generate tension by nature of their disparity.

It is the soundtrack to rousay’s year of insularity, isolation, and adaptation, and harmonises beautifully with anyone who’s undergone similar feelings of repression and growth during this period.

Animal is a beast worthy of its own spotlight and attentions. The genre-crossing is much less surface level, as the duo creates grander and grander platforms for Marling’s commanding voice. The whole thing is far more theatrical, full of slow building ballads and cresting climaxes.

Overall, I Don’t Know is a formidable leap forward for bdrmm and needs to be seen as one body of work that veers this way and that, but always with a purposeful forward motion.

Album pacing, songcraft and the all-important killer chorus--all of these aspects have been considerably improved on since last time out.

The album is all about big and big is what you get.

All in all, Hopkins’ roadmap is splendidly plotted, taking the right amount of time to deliver you to your destination and showing you the detours you didn’t even know you wanted to see.

Radical Romantics offers enough detail, emotion, and vigour to tide us over until the next inevitable shapeshifting moment.

As a whole, Arkhon is a distinct statement. Even Danilova’s uneven work manages to be intriguing.

Pinned up and thoroughly artistic, Field of Reeds is affecting, but it’s also hard to get genuinely excited about.

Anime, Trauma and Divorce is a self-help rap record that manages to be heart-breaking and humorous at the same time, and never takes its audience for granted, which is a rare find in any medium.

They're not quite catchy, not quite infectious, but they're hooky enough to get your head nodding.

At times, take the cake feels like it’s at an ennui crossroads, trying to define listlessness while side-stepping its intentions. But how many artists have we seen hover around an emotional bullseye on their first album only to hit it on their next go-round? Even if take the cake doesn’t show PACKS’ full potential, it still gives us much to look forward to.

With Erickson’s arrangements augmenting his tales at every beat, they become immersive emotional explorations. Not every entry is gripping, and their mileage will depend on how much time you’re willing to settle in and let them wash over you, but overall it’s an impressively graceful skip into a new era for the songwriter.

sketchy. may not be their out-and-out best work, but it’s proof that they still have the guts and the songwriting ability — as well as their ever-present, obvious earnestness and candor — to do what endeared their work to so many in the first place.

Labyrinthitis is Bejar’s best work since Kaputt. At this point, Bejar has several classics under his belt, so there’s no desperation here to create another one, but he manages to do it with ease.

One of the more vocal complaints about The Weeknd's second mixtape was its lack of immediacy, which Echoes of Silence certainly outgrows.

If The Car is any automobile in particular, it’s a Ferrari or Lamborghini; you might watch it pass for a moment, admiring its sleek curves, shimmering façade and purring engine, but you won’t care much about the driver – and once it’s out of view, it probably won’t be long before it fades from memory.

They’ve delivered a certain-to-be-beloved debut – one that separates itself from its peers.

Infinite Granite feels less like an abandonment, and more like a new era – a rebirth that fans can either jump on or off for.

Hard to categorise, and impossible to assess immediately, like all of Slowdive, everything is alive will ever blossom with time.

Many of the best rap records are monochromatically single-minded, but then the other half, embrace contradictions as a weapon, rage hiding insecurities, heartless satire shielding weakness, such as Earl’s hero, early period Slim Shady.

One of their boldest statements yet — Cool It Down has everything one would need in a rock record in this day and age, and it’s the most complete version of the band we’ve ever received.

She will turn heads with Tongues, and we would all do well to listen intently.

Each track finds her motivation intact, with almost no trace of despair that isn’t equally met with perseverance. While it finds the singer consistently laid back, Gifted pushes forward constantly – displaying its creator’s unique resolve.

This is certainly the poppiest the band has ever sounded, and the album has a handful of trite or overly-cheesy moments, but these are easy to overlook when it all sounds this good, and when so many of Maines’ lyrics are this precise and honest.

Raging with a steady purr, Play With Fire might be an obvious follow-up to their 2017 debut—but that doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful or interesting. The LP sees L.A. Witch solidifying their status as the cursed love children of Black Sabbath and The Shangri-Las.

As his catalogue continues to accumulate faster than just about every other artist out there, you can feel him growing more confident in himself and the ideas he bases his music on. Parallax can't help but feel like a win for this cause because it symbolizes growth more than out-and-out excellence.

With The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, Jurado has released another moving and memorable album, gaining further traction in what might be considered the third phase of his career.

This album embraces you like your favorite seat, preserving your outline intimately in its fabric.

While the album doesn’t colour outside the lines as much as previous efforts (though the chuggy, restrained grunge wash on “Cheers” is a welcome outwards venture), that’s no bad moment here.

Is she singing lyrics? Hard to say. But these songs are unquestionably emotive, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually prayers.

The band’s shape-shifting compositions create a forward momentum well suited to a journey through different levels of Hell on Earth.

Sink into Me is possibly superior song-wise to Home for Now and at least equally cogent in terms of vocal performances. Going forward, however, Babeheaven might consider combining the matured skills of their latest work with the less self-conscious and more rangy aesthetic inherent to Home for Now.

While Smiling spreaded itself thin at times, Owusu sounds more settled on Struggler and contorts his voice less.

It’s a new Loaf album, with varied rock gems that will fit snugly into live setlists and even get those old fans to sing along. It’s one of those rare reunion albums that satisfies a need, even if it doesn’t land as hard as some may have hoped.

MUNA is the best soundtrack one can find for the next few months. Seemingly destined to join the canon of pop’s great cult-classics (Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, Robyn’s Body Talk, among them), it’s an album whose legacy should last much longer.

A bold and entrancing set of songs, it’s hard not to see what a big leap forward she took on this album.

Hopefully Slave Ambient will do for The War On Drugs what Smoke Ring For My Halo did for Kurt Vile and place Adam Granduciel as one of the musicians with serious talent and songwriting acumen in modern indie rock.

At best, this sophomore project suggests a band pushing itself in every direction and through every crevice of the genre to see what fits them and their messaging most effectively.

Squeezing 11 songs into 26 minutes is no easy task but somehow Feeble Little Horse manage to give each gem a personality and identity.

It’s a busy record for sure, but it makes for an exhilarating listen front to back. At less than 40 minutes, it’s also one of the most compact rap albums of the year, running more like a singer-songwriter level of conciseness and less of an over-zealous rapper.

Quaranta is an incredibly brave work of art. It eludes navel gazing and the self-flagellation that comes with substance abuse. It is varied enough to provide entertainment, but never submits to commodification.

While James Blake felt aloof, even ahuman, Overgrown is packed with feeling, and releases it with the smallest of gestures.

Since Savages have cultivated such a politicized aesthetic, it’s hard to divorce the concept behind the art from the art itself, but Silence Yourself delivers if you are willing to submit to its unflinching authority.

From epic opener "The Grey Ship," to the equally epic closing track "Red Star," Past Life Martyred Saints is an album that captivates, provokes, and pleases.

Engine of Hell underscores her gifts as a songwriter and for minimalistic arrangement, also illustrating her talent for unadorned performance.

With more questions raised than answered, Cain’s unusually ambitious and fully-realised debut somehow leaves listeners craving more in spite of its wonderful, exhausting, 75 minute runtime.

On Ultimate Success Today, Protomartyr have made essential jams for a genre that’s been passed around dozens of times over. It’s nice to know that, five albums deep, the band haven’t lost any ferocity, and that they continue to be a mouthpiece for so many feelings we all share.

Cut the World is compelling enough to change the way we appreciate the world and its sad beauty. There's simply nothing that sounds quite like this.

It's a spatial and musical theme across the whole of Impossible Spaces and it's perhaps the record's most deserving triumph.

the whaler will make you furious; it will make you feel and assuredly interrogate your own heart. That’s emo music, and it is most definitely Home Is Where.

What we do know is that What Happened to the Beach? is a musical ride. While it does not hand out aces on all fronts, it remarkably returns to classically flamboyant roots that urge the importance of enjoying life.

With any luck, Wakin On A Pretty Daze will go down as a document to the workman he really is.

Overall, Asphalt Meadows is a fine record from a band so deep into their career they really have nothing left to prove — except, it seems, to themselves.

Though it may seem like Vile tends to waver on just how he wants to be perceived, the lack of commitment is nothing if not intensely deliberate.

As the record unravels those far-reaching human touches, supported by the more grounded electronic elements, become the emotional sticking point with a surprising amount of staying power.

Despite the incredible detail built into the songs on All The Time, the productions still feel spacious and lightweight – a futuristic version of the pop-R&B hybrid we already know. This allows the tracks to be engrossing in their layering, but still leave plenty of space for Lanza’s lyrical expression to come through clearly. And it’s shocking how deeply personal and painful a lot of it is for Lanza.

They’ve released what is arguably their definitive record, they wouldn’t have any obligation to release anything else.

On one hand, Muddy Time is clearly a love letter to Doyle’s beloved predecessors, most readily perhaps Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom as well as Eno’s earlier vocal flirtations. But it’s also perhaps the most complete vision of Doyle’s works yet.

Aerial East is a talented songwriter with a signature voice, and Try Harder certainly includes its stellar moments. However, the project as a whole would have benefited from more melodic, tonal, and atmospheric variation, issues which could in part have been addressed via a greater use of recording options and a more hands-on production approach.

For an outsider, it is best approached without expectations, as Ambarchi has no intention to conform to them. Long-time followers of his work, however, will find the label of ‘workout’ very appropriate, as he flexes the creative muscles which have allowed him to create so many long-winded symphonies in the past.

These are warm, lived-in songs, the sort that feel instantly classic, becoming canon without ever feeling like they’re trying all that hard to.

PLUS is a more flagrantly weird collection of odds and ends, but perhaps a better microcosm of the flagrantly weird band that is Autechre.

Less sleepy than Penny Sparkle but also less vibrant and consistent than 23, it’s the work of a band that took a breather, and came back reassured in who they are. They’re inviting us back in — to their table, no less — and proving that they still deserve our company, and we still ought to seek theirs.

It’s not the greatest moment of Tudzin’s career – that moment is still to come. But, even at just 23 minutes, Free I.H is certainly her grandest statement to date.

The album’s strength is in its sheer breadth, its teleological scope, its grandeur without pretence.

While some may miss the utter, blistering, angular noise-scapes of past Autechre albums, be assured that this album is no less Autechre. Despite being, arguably, their most accessible album in over a decade, we are still left with a set of 10 tracks that are just as unpredictable and labyrinthine as ever, and a duo who is trying to work in a slightly different avenue.

A work of tightly-focused determination.

There’s a confidence exhibited here that’s refreshing.

God Don’t Make Mistakes is a complete body of work, Conway’s best to date, and one of the best rap albums to come out in 2022.

Tramp is simply her most fully-realized album yet, and that's all there is to it.

We're treated with music that demonstrates a perfect niche between pop-accessibility and zany experimentation.

Rhinestones might not make it on most publications’ year end lists, but it is the sort of record that will be cherished and rediscovered by those who need it for many years. It’s the kind of music that, when you meet somebody for the first time and they share their appreciation for it, could signify a kindred soul.

Ho99o9 vividly express the anarchic impulse, conjuring the despair and volatility inherent to our postlapsarian age.

Heaux Tales is a provocative return for Sullivan that showcases her incredible knack for storytelling.

Splazsh's followup simply doesn't hold the same tension or drive.

They’ve made the brave decision to remember what it’s like to feel and to breathe again, and it can all be heard in the stirring vibrations of Margolin’s words and voice.

Produced by Sam Evian, Loose Future is brighter and more buoyant than Andrews’ prior output, the Arizona-born artist displaying her well-honed songwriting and impressive vocal skills while adopting a pop-adherent sound.

While Clarke remains tethered to his sources, he still manages to flap his way toward the sun. In this version of the myth, his wings hold up, his father congratulates him, and the gods give him a brief yet sincere ovation.