A subtle shift toward curated production and raw lyrical revelation. Which isn’t to say that her earlier records didn’t have those things, but they feel far more present and deliberate here. Running once more in complete sync with inflo, these songs are some of Simz’s most personal and most vitriolic, masked in measured rhythms and encased in the wrath of someone who’s too tired to give a fuck.

It’s Noname’s most convincing album yet – as a whole, it defies any attempt to be embraced as “mainstream” or “digestible”.

Free I.H. may have been Tudzin’s war cry, but Let Me Do One More is a comfort record. It shows resilience and passion from one of indie music’s most intriguing risk takers.

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.

Her vision of R&B is unfiltered and uncompromising. At her most modern, she is advancing her genre rather than watering it down for current tastes. Things her songwriting could only hint at in the work of others are here in full, and they make for a beautiful end product.

In many ways, it’s Wet Leg’s small imperfections that make it the perfect debut – an impressive, tantalising exploration of their core talents that leaves just enough room for improvement.

RAM can oftentimes feel scattered, too ambitious, or too similar to the era it’s working from, but, in the end, it’s an album held together by that palpable reverence.

Even in his lost moments, like “A Random Act of Kindness” where he repeats “Out of time, out of money”, he searches out the hope while faced with setbacks and sorrow. It’s in these moments that Morby shines as that everyman – a role he has been crafted into through those various influences he holds up so high.

With Celestial Lineage Wolves in the Throne Room have managed to craft a seamless and moving record as well as exceed the potential they'd previously left unfulfilled.

For all its horror trappings and flat-out aggression (the album-closing title track even ends with one last fakeout jump-scare blast to the face), We Are Always Alone is a deeply emotional record. It is catharsis writ large; a writhing, wailing, violent resistance against the injustice of a cruel world full of self-serving people.

Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? is a wonderful record of majesty and enveloping textures that radiate a sense of collective positive energy. Daniel Drew has produced an album of exquisite delight; mature enough to know its place in the world yet filled with childlike awe at how things could be.

Exquisitely textured. ... Every song has terrific sonic and narrative depth.

[A] sprawling, at times impenetrable, but most outstandingly, engaging ramble.

Though album’s influences go as far back as Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” (“Deeper”), the overall tone is suitably compressed and claustrophobic. The taut paranoia and confusion that belied Prince & The Revolution’s 1999 and Purple Rain forms a touchstone, modernised when the tenor shifts to Rhye.

The Italian duo have put together a timeless and beautiful dance record that slides easily to the top of 2012′s best.

It's an album that continues to unpack itself after half a dozen listens--as beautiful as it is detailed.

The core of the album's success is its fantastic establishment of tonal environment--a brooding sexuality both sadistic and carnivalesque.

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.

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

On Life On Earth, marginalized voices are amplified and given credence. Segarra is the kind of potent lyricist who can flesh out characters and scenes with just one or two lines, paint entire panoramic worlds within the succinct space of a song.

This is rager music, the fun and frantic rock anthems that the weirdos and the geeks who have grown into successful entrepreneurs and innovators can dance to while the quarterback from their high school bags their groceries.

A dimly lit, lo-fi hybrid, Shake takes its cue from some of Harvey's most successful past works, but has its own uniquely brash textures.

Heavy, Heavy never buckles. As a testament to the constant, psychological stresses of being an artist in the 2020s, it is bright, inventive, vulnerable, and rewarding. Pressure making diamonds and all that… maybe there’s something to it.

Fatigue, for all its many-sided intrigue and snatches of moving beauty, can be a bit like driving by a series of natural wonders at 150mph – too fast to truly appreciate what’s there. There’s a purposely otherworldly vibe to these 29 minutes, but the moments when Cheek the artist is most nakedly visible in the constellation are when Fatigue feels most successful.

The title Beware of the Monkey may come across as a warning, but it’s a lively adventure destined to pull more in than repel. Here’s a man who loves the antique sounds of yesteryear, finding use for them even in the 2020s.

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.

To be fair, she's still in the process of resurfacing, rather successfully actually, and Body Talk is a fine dance-pop album.

Though the album now comes with studio polish and masterful songwriting, W H O K I L L still feels like an underground tape, challenging the listeners with oddball melodic choices.