It is heartening and not a little bittersweet to be reminded how Weezer once made sad, twisted, broken-sounding songs like these, and they made them work, and they made our CD player work, and they weren't a bit shit, and we loved them.

Arguably the most influential rock album ever recorded... everyone that matters – and many who don't – between Bowie and Radiohead cites it as an influence.

One of the most illuminating facets of The Cutting Edge is what an unequivocal testament it is, both to the layered ingenuity of the session musicians and Dylan’s self-ordained composing pursuits.

In this latest instalment in the Late Night series, Holmes seems to have scored an origin story of sorts, in inimitable fashion, snatches of places and time woven among some breath-taking selections, passing through the present moment as observed with an eagle eye, before being let to peace until called upon again. 



The album is the real star here, sounding as fresh, vital and universally accessible as ever 25 years down the line.

Sound System really is the definitive article, and with Christmas on the horizon, is sure to feature high on several wishlists.

It’s spellbinding.

Her voice sounds so goddamn fresh, spontaneous, uncompromised. There's an intensely visceral quality to these performances that is so utterly compelling.

This is an important--a very important--piece of work that will stand the test of time. It’s also an utter blast to listen to and live with.

It is a stupendous work of art. R.E.M. are essentially a band that work on an emotional level, and this is their most emotionally articulate record: sad and painful, but also funny, raging, exultant, yearning. That it was an enormous hit is a slight distraction, 25 years on. But the music wins out.

Although this is a fantastic looking package, it really doesn't strike me as a particularly essential addition to the Smashing Pumpkins canon.

It's a glorious mess of contradictions, and what could say 'Manic Street Preachers' more than that?

It’s not what you might have expected or even--on one or two initial listens--have been hoping for from Kendrick Lamar. But this is an artist in his absolute prime: artistically, lyrically and musically.

The social context of this album is not necessarily crucial to its enjoyment; you can just as easily take it all at face value, as a gorgeously woven soul record that will doubtless be able to shift shape to suit all manner of listening environments. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter which angle you take with Black Messiah. It’s a masterpiece from all of them.

Here's a band skipping from one musical fragment to the next with the reckless abandon of youth, trying out ideas, finding their strengths.

Definitely Maybe: Chasing the Sun provides a timely reminder why he [Liam Gallagher] and his former band are still held with such high regard.

It’s exhausting. And while collecting and devouring his albums is probably a more satisfying journey, to be delivered this trove of Fifties big band funk and perverted doo-wop, and to see it spiral out into interstellar space-jams in a stop-motion fashion is a huge thrill. Singles provides the first real opportunity for an audience to hear how Sun Ra became Sun Ra.

Thirty years later and Appetite For Destruction still packs a visceral thrill; a combination of real attitude and proper songcraft that very few bands, if any, have ever combined so perfectly.

Whatever one makes of the songs presented here, at least we should all be able to agree that another addition to Cave’s legendary, beyond comparison catalogue is in itself enough of a reason to feel very satisfied.

Keep your sense of perspective and remember that The Promise really is an offcuts record, and you'll find it's a staggeringly good one.

He's had it rough (or as rough as can be for one with his level of talent and success anyway), but once again he's managed to take his adversity and turn it into perhaps the album of the year.

Overall it's about as perfect as introduction to the band as you're likely to get, and perhaps a timely chance to give the Archers an opportunity to climb back into the upper echelons of your record collection.

The momentum and joie de vivre is intoxicating, and unlike many a transitional record, it's a genuine hoot, an unexpected blast of sunshine between the darkness of Fables… and the fires of Document.

Well, Elverum clearly needed to vent this stuff and to share it with the wider world and you’re unlikely to find a more powerfully eulogistic record released this year. Arguably ever.

So it’s good, but given the large amount of quality Nirvana concert stuff out there, does Live At Reading really have much by way of USP? Probably, yeah, if only because it's the band's sole full electric gig commercially available.

Achtung Baby is worth the admission fee alone and ultimately a must-have addition to anyone's music collection.

A bittersweet symphony that remains unparalleled.

Musically it’s the first half of the album that shows us a new side of Beyoncé, one that thrives in dark atmospheres and minimalism in a way her music never did before.

Individually as good as much of BTC, the bonus material is almost as listenable as the album itself.

The climax brings an emotional resonance to proceedings that confirms Rolo Tomassi's impressive ability to cross these genres and moods and influences but still sound undeniably them.

You Want It Darker is a succinct journey into the psyche of a man who knows his career is at an end, but that isn’t going to stop him going out on a high.

Beyond genre lines, racial lines, sexuality lines, any lines you can think of, it's that all-too-rare gem: a universal story you'll come back to long after the hype's been and gone.

Bluntly, if you consider yourself in any way interested in rock music and don't already own this album, you're doing yourself a rather large disservice.

It’s a flawed album that’s at times unbelievable, at times unbelievably bad but for those interested in investigating the moment Elton John became the legend he sought to be this is a thorough and generous offering.

She is intensely self-aware and, accordingly, is able to take all the inelegancies of youth--the stumbles out of nightclub doors, the clothes strewn across the bedroom floor, how apocalyptic that first heartbreak feels--and turn them into something exquisite.

If you can name me just one rapper that made a more complete record in 2003 than either of these two Southern boys' efforts, I’ll call you a liar.

Perhaps one of the greatest, and certainly most underappreciated, post-hardcore rock groups of all time.

This is a faithful and staggering tribute to a state executed with passion and originality, and it's one of the finest records you'll hear this year.

A collection of songs as captivating, poignant and finally, ultimately, redemptive as any that Stevens has produced.

Sleater-Kinney are one of the great rock bands and No Cities To Love is the perfect comeback: a treat for die-hard fans as well, a perfect introduction for newcomers--and what a journey that’ll be.

Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art-rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way towards justifying the amount of gushing praise that's been heaped upon this album since its September release on Merge last year. The fact that the music is so paradoxically life-affirming and euphoric makes it much easier to write, what now feel like, trite hyperboles.

The cumulative effect--somewhere around being lifted into the heavens by sunrays--is at odds with the continuous black clouds that come before. Yet it’s a necessary chink of light to conclude a journey so oppressive you may just forget to breathe through its duration.

The 'odds and ends' packaged at the end of disc one feel like Jay Farrar’s discarded solo off-cuts, although disc two’s collection of demos is an intriguing listen; the ten tracks from the Not Forever, Just For Now tapes being what persuaded Rockville (then Giant) to sign them in the first place.

Whatever the plan was, Both Directions at Once isn’t just a treat for the hardcore, either in terms of Coltrane or jazz more broadly.

It’s a crisp, clear makeover that gives the record a greater definition and focus without piling on the polish, tightening it but toughening it too.

It's a record which brilliantly lives up to and even exceeds all the hype, mystique and hyperbole that has surrounding it since it's inception, and it's essential for anyone with even a fleeting interest in rap music.

What gives this album more depth is the focus, the rolling symmetry and cinema.

With Spaces he goes one further--successfully channelling the chills of an actual performance, and making a genuine connection with his listener even in recorded form.

The songs from St. Vincent that you’ll return to umpteen times are front-loaded into its first 23 minutes.

An unerring sense of conflict courses through The Dusk In Us, and while that might sound like business as usual for a Converge record, it’s a testament to Bannon and his cohorts that they remain so compelling nine albums in.

RTJ2 is replete with razor-sharp lyricism and clattering, abrasive production.

Honey is a fine record, a consistent record and a thoroughly enjoyable record. But it is not a great record, and in comparison with the standard she has set for herself previously, this is a mild (though fleeting) disappointment. That said, there is still a clear and beating heart here and the sheer humanity of Robyn’s musical soul remains one of the most beautiful things in contemporary music.

The first thing to say is that the remastering is pretty good: it's in no way a record that needed remastering, but it's definitely one that suits being remastered.

Form and function crystallize together here, and man does it feel so right.

Nearly half the length of his debut, Big Fish Theory is tightly-wound and laser-focused, yet covers a huge amount of ground, simultaneously showcasing Staples at the most pumped-up and most fragile we’ve yet seen him. His word play is spectacular even when his flow isn’t at its most natural.

Chris is an album delivered for a wider audience, but still with a subversive and unique texture and emotion that loses nothing of the vacillating energy of the subculture whilst making a confident play for the biggest stages.

The 19 songs form a 39-minute-long cohesive whole which looses its meaning once shuffled or reorganised. What could come across as a mash-up of jam sessions slowly reveals its internal coherence.

Is Merriweather Post Pavilion the flawless album that it's been willed to be? Taken as a whole I'd say it's pretty damn close.

The Mindsweep is Enter Shikari at their most inspirational and consistent and as a result, their best record yet.

Even now, Fuzzy Logic hasn't dated and certainly doesn't sound as though it was made 20 years ago.

The Neptunes' pitch-perfect production allied with Pusha-T and Malice's vicious, witty rhymes make Hell Hath No Fury one of the records of the year.

As a document of the way Belle And Sebastian have grown up in public to the sturdy staple of indie pop they now represent on a global scale, 'Push Barman...' is an essential collection of work that simply cements their status as one of the most inspirational musical collectives to have embraced punk's D.I.Y ethic since the late 1970s.

So yadda yadda yadda, a best of isn't as worthwhile as a group's actual albums, what a shocker.

A two-hour odyssey of similar proportions to The Seer, this is an album that emphasises rather than establishes Swans' reconfirmed position at the top of the experimental rock tree, but that doesn’t make it any less of a thrill.

It’s the often perfect synthesis between lyrical content and production on OB4CLII that makes the album simply sublime.

Not only a deftly realised, enchanting meditation on time and its vagaries, the record is effectively a celebration of what we, as time’s denizens, are able to accomplish within it.... Divers is a colossal achievement.

It’s a jaw-dropping accomplishment, one of those records that’s almost pointless to listen to as a series of individual songs--tracks are mini symphonies in themselves, and to break Loud City Song down into tracks would be missing the point.

Bad As Me sees the performer reaching back into his bag of tricks to pull out a few favourites in a characteristically exhilarating, terrifying, heartbreaking, tear jerking, bone-rattling style.

It is a formidably layered, beautiful record that largely lacks big hooks or aggressive bite, and yet conspires to be endlessly satisfying on a micro level, a clutch of ballads that represent the band's most intricate musical trip.

You wouldn’t want one track or note to be changed or left out. It’s a genuine masterpiece: complex, funny, sexy, bleak, uplifting, inspiring and enthralling from start to finish.

Whether Dear Science stands the test of time like classic records must is impossible to predict right now, but, at this moment in time, it's sounding like one of the albums of the year, and its makers' latest, greatest masterpiece.

Return To Cookie Mountain is a party soundtrack for a fucked-up generation and an opus that inhabits the midpoint between the scarcely conjoining circles of eclecticism and enjoyability whilst maintaining consistency throughout.

Brutalism has lost none of its bite and stands peerless as a staggering album of unmatched sincerity and self-assuredness.

The kind of details she hones in on are so easily overlooked, but often the most jarring. Sometimes... begs you stop to sit and think about them for a while.

This is an album that could easily be subtitled Mission Accomplished, but for once, it feels like bowing out on top would be ill-advised. That, in itself, is quite the compliment.

POST- is an incredibly fun record, and its sequencing feels like the live experience. The way Rosenstock launches into each song is a delight.

There's an honesty of emotions, accentuated through the denseness and complexity of sounds.

Destroyer's Rubies is an inadvertent Guide To Destroyer - every defining quirk, every 70's pop nod and ill-advised but forgivable falsetto is condensed and framed, only without becoming something fans of Bejar will have all heard before.

This reissue is a welcome reminder of an album that has never quite gained the classic status it deserves, but despite this the vital ingredient--the intimate feeling at the heart of Painful--remains agelessly undamaged by the passage of time.

The improvement in sound quality on the re-release is remarkable; the songs, incredibly, sound even meatier and more imposing now. ... The nine 'new' songs, which comprise disc three, do feel a bit like fan service for those who were upset 19 years ago at the absence of the ‘Sunshine Woman’ sessions.

Banhart is a complete antidote to all the consumer focus groups or hit-writers, too scared to tamper with the formula. He has stumbled upon a personal Eureka that says there're no laws governing what can be written about in song except self-imposed ones and he's taken that to his heart, and in Technicolor.

The most fitting of testaments -- a flawed, courageous, beautiful and intimately human portrait of the self.

With their debut Mbongwana Star have made a really classic record for the ages, and what’s more, one that could shape a whole lot of music to come.

Skull-crushingly heavy, but not without a heart, 'The Woods' is definitely Sleater-Kinney’s finest (and loudest) hour to date.

Lonerism marks Tame Impala's arrival as a genuine force to be reckoned with, and even if at times there's a feeling Parker's trying to cram too many ideas into one piece, it's a record that will undoubtedly be used as a benchmark for guitar music of the near future.

For anyone interested in music that works both as art and an intensely new exciting experience--this is easily the best album that has come out this year.

There's an inner beauty--no, honesty--to this debut.

Radio Static High makes a perfect counterpart to In Black and Gold.

All We Love We Leave Behind retains the fire of Jane Doe and harnesses everything they've learned since, combining to create something unrelenting, brutal, and never short of magnificent.

Joy As An Act Of Resistance is everything anyone could have wanted or expected it to be: Idles have released the most relevant and at times gut wrenching album of the year.

In its ability to appeal to so many listeners, while being as thrilling on its first spin as it is on its fifteenth, Art Angels is likely to emerge from 2015 as one of the most universally adored albums of the year.

While the first offering holds a quite tangible anger and general gloom within, 'The Lyre of Orpheus is a much more mellow affair, contemplating existentialism and the like.

I Am A Bird Now is a beautiful, emotive, glorious, and sometimes sinister album that will top many a critic's list come the end-of-year polls, and justifiably so.

Will Bevan's done the unthinkable in managing to both appease and pull the rug out from under his fans.

Flying Lotus has added a new realm to his universe, answering one of life's biggest questions in the process.

This album is simply wondrous.

Dreijer has cemented her place within alternative music's dynasty, and it's refreshing to hear an outwardly queer and fiercely political artist convey a clear message without having the music, performance or reception fall over the potential weight of those themes. For as much as Plunge quite clearly contains these themes, it can and will be enjoyed as a universally creditable piece of brilliantly constructed art, and that is Dreijer's real success here.

Each listener should find their own things to contemplate, relate to and enjoy in these thoughtful, ornamental and fantastic songs, and that’s exactly the way it should be.