Though far from being a retread, Should’ve Learned bears some of the most evocative and affecting music of the quintet’s output thus far.

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

UGLY is surely his most intense, unvarnished, unrelenting personal excavation

nature morte is a wonderful, difficult album that requires patience and indulgence. The rewards are huge, though.

Cracker Island’s forgettable, milquetoast assembly line of tracks – though crisply and professionally engineered – proves that having it all shouldn’t always mean using it all.

It’s somehow arguably her most wide-ranging album (stylistically and topically) while also feeling remarkably of a piece; succinct even.

While Strange Dance is a rather nocturnal album, those broad and distant lyrics, aided by the atmospheric yet intricate instrumentation, mean there are many more moods and times that it can fit.

Food for Worms‘ greatest strength is to chronicle how incredible it can feel to be in the presence of this band, at this moment. It feels as if you could almost reach out and touch them, rip open their shirts and feel their sweat.

Algiers are unpredictable yet methodical, driving with eyes closed and reacting to the wheel’s vibrations instead of making it shake.

It’s one of the band’s biggest and best sounding records to date. The band doesn’t lack in sound traditionally, but Bayles’ production takes their grandest qualities and runs them through a meat grinder.

Another successful release from Khotin, an artist who, armed with just his laptop and a small home studio, has the ability to make you laugh, dance, reflect and space out all during the same album.

For those who can appreciate his brew of melodic honesty and sentimental openness, The Vivian Line provides one of the purest pop experiences you’re likely to have all year.

At times it feels maybe a little too familiar sonically or compositionally, but all in all, The Land, The Water, The Sky is a potent portrait of a musician who only gets more impressive with each release.

It certainly has a more present percussive beat than Eucalyptus, however its compositions are allowed to stretch out, with five out of seven tracks here passing the five-minute mark (only two of Cows’ 10 tracks did such). This approach lends 7s‘ centerpiece “Hey Bog” an epic effect, building slowly in tempo.

Each track on in|Flux has a soul and heart of its own.

It would seem then that Let Her Burn is Rebecca Black just flying overhead instead of victoriously soaring above the ashes.

The music, in all its messy beauty, hits like a sack of bricks to the head.

Albums like this are rare and special, highlighting pop’s capacity to sculpt our emotions and steer us towards something better beyond the horizon.

Because of the fractured, whimsical makeup of the album, it can become a bit frustrating for the listeners hoping to detect Half Pearl‘s beating heart. But listen close enough, and resolve is there beneath the rubble in the chopped jazz pop of “Wild Animals”, in which Liv.e struts to her own self-belief, untethered from other people’s expectations of her.

Norm plays with our emotions more than Wilds or The Neon Skyline did because Shauf’s writing from perspective of what could be considered a villain, and his impeccable storytelling takes liberties where others dare not.

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.

Yo La Tengo feel more alive on This Stupid World than they have in years – which isn’t to say that their more recent efforts were lacking in any way. The songs here just crackle and spark with an innate energy and unpredictability not heard since 2006’s I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.

Kelela‘s second album is a transformative work of art that merges house and ambient, soul and dance, and resides within interzones – like the titular animal, a mediator between the material world and the realm of the spirits. It’s a vast canvas of cultural expressions, emotional tones, erotic exploration and musical brilliance.

At its best, the album strums out a stark moment, like a voice calling for help. ... Where a little bit of focus is lost is when Karijord becomes almost incantatory with Dessner’s words, repeating phrases with ambiguous meanings but not coming out the other end with any greater sense of purpose (“April”, “October” and “November” in particular).

Furling is a surprisingly dense record, its sonic pallet feeling deep and widescreen, even in its sparsest moments.

They fire back in 2023 with their most direct record for some time, a collection of hard rock staples mixed with their punk roots that the band uses to pay homage to the legends of their city’s glorious music scene, and do so perfectly.

Any who listen to this record will enjoy it, there’s no reason not to. However, with more run time than ideas, the album runs the risk of having both too much and not enough to make listeners keep coming back.

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.