Shunning a tried-and-tested formula to focus on evolution and experimentation is always a massive risk. But by choosing to embrace their calmer, and often much darker side, the Dubliners could well have given us their masterpiece.

Love Kraft is the greatest realisation of the Super Furry vision to date.

It might take a week, a month, or even a year for it to yield up all its treasures; but after only a week in its company, this reviewer's instincts tell him that Have One On Me is a masterpiece.

This is a fantastic box that will occupy fans for the next few weeks and months, but it’s also a superb gateway into the world of Tom Petty for those who like both pretty things and great music (and have a few bob to spare).

This is out in the margins, removed from 'pop' and 'alternative' genres by the scale of its reach, its bloody and bold ambition. It is complex, multilayered, densely plotted, wordy. It's also scary, harsh and bruised.

Here, Gira shows that the Swans resurgence isn’t a fluke. Not even close.

Fontaines DC wear their influences close to their sleeve, with nods to The Pogues, The Strokes and Joy Division, but these influences are absorbed into their identity, to create something that instantly familiar and accessible, but also thrillingly compelling. ... They’re going to be big, and one listen to Dogrel will convince you of that fact.

Magdalene is an album that, like FKA twigs herself, defies both genre and classification. Yet it’s a late contender for album of the year, with songs that will live you for months to come.

Western Stars is, annoyingly, another fantastic album to add to your rotation. But then it is a Bruce Springsteen album. Of course it’s superb.

Their best album to date.

This is an astonishing debut album, one to immerse yourself in and live with for weeks, if not months – an intoxicating statement which announces one of Britain’s most exciting new bands.

It’s imbued with a spirit and attitude that only the very best pop records have. Much like Dua Lipa’s incendiary second album Future Nostalgia it’s the sound of not just a step up but a whole leap to a new exalted level of pop excellence.

Overall, Rice has produced a release which equals and perhaps even surpasses his debut, a album that takes you through emotional highs and lows you are unlikely to hear anywhere else this winter.

Lookout Sea paradoxically Silver Jews' most complex and most accessible work to date. Better yet, it improves with each listen, as more and more nuances and links are revealed.

soil is an extraordinary album, triumphing seemingly without making any artistic concessions.

In this globalised but fragmented world, now so obsessed with immediacy, rapidity and digestibility, Ten Freedom Summers is a visionary work of protest and power.

It’s a debut album full of confidence, heart and ambition, with songs that sound both instantly familiar and also like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

Thundercat has, by skirting around the edges of darkness, created a moody, magnificent, endlessly replayable record that also makes sense in late February.

It's rare to be so gushing about a debut album--yet after living with this album for a few weeks, you'll be hard pressed to find any flaws.

Middle Cyclone is the sound of one of the most interesting, independent, and consistently brilliant artists recording today at the top of their game.

The Promise is what got left behind, and the quality of these 21 songs serves to remind the listener how brilliant Darkness On The Edge Of Town really was, and how discerning its craftsmen must have been to leave so much in the dust.

Night Network may not be the 12 tracks which would shake the person who doesn’t like The Cribs out of their most curious position. But it is 12 more assertions of greatness from a band who you really should like.

It all adds up to a magnificent third album which serves as the crowning point of a career that is, excitingly, still in its infancy.

Songs Of Praise distils the best features of classic British alternative music into a vital band passionate to enervate, communicate and entertain.

To those of you out there who crave immediate, wistful pop music that will make you smile about the future and make you cry about the past, you won’t find a better album this decade.

Prioritise Pleasure is a richly compelling album. It’s also a big, glorious pop record, the sort that Taylor hinted at back in the days of her former band Slow Club’s Complete Surrender. ... It’s the album of Rebecca Taylor’s career, and surely quite comfortably the best record that will be released in 2021.

Japan would go on to at least one better album than Quiet Life, but they would never again capture the same kind of nervous youthful energy they display here. An essential album from an essential band.

Thin Black Duke should be regarded as a genuinely innovative and exciting piece of art.