Fetch The Bolt Cutters isn’t the easiest album to listen to – and in these claustrophobic lockdown times, some may baulk at spending 51 minutes with an album of this intensity. Yet while it’s certainly not an album for background listening, those who are willing to invest some time in it will be rewarded by one of the most remarkable records released this year.

It is an album that both looks back and innovates.

Yes, it can be painful, but there’s a beautiful catharsis contained within Ghosteen that makes it one of the most essential records of recent times – a lifejacket for anyone surfing that dreadful wave of grief.

Bob Ludwig's remastering punches up the drums and adds clarity and volume to the mix without overblowing it or excessively altering the overall sound, and the result is that these two albums sound incredibly modern, relevant, and invigourated.... Siamese Dream includes exceptional demos for U.S.A. and U.S.S.R., as well as Moleasskiss from the much sought after Mashed Potatoes bootlegs.

These singles show that Manic Street Preachers have stayed true to one at least one of their ideals – which is to write the best songs they possibly could.

It is, quite simply, a staggeringly good record for an artist at this late stage of what has been a remarkable career, entirely made up of original compositions and worthy in its own way to stand alongside the masterpieces of its creator’s mid-’60s and mid-’70s halcyon periods.

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).

As from an unspeakable event a remarkable record has come. One that sits amongst Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ best. Skeleton Tree is full of grief, but full of heart too.

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.

Musically, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a nice blend of Kanye's older and newer styles.

He has been launched into the UK jazz marketplace fully formed, capable of extraordinary flights of dexterity and rhythmic trickery, yet also with a strong sense of fundamental musical language and compositional flair.

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.

With all matters of the heart explored in extremely intimate detail it sees Beyoncé back on top of the pop world ready to slay like only she can.

Throughout Ants From Up There, they seem to revel in the creation of different atmospheres rather than the laying down of hooks or choruses.

Although Pull Up Some Dust... delves deep into both North and South American musical history and moves rapidly from style to style, there is scant scope for quibbling over Cooder's honesty or authenticity.

Sunbather is an emotionally overwhelming but truly absorbing listen. But best of all, it’s cleansing.

The 16 tracks here aren't just duplicate recordings--with sudden new depth we are able to complete an emotive, triumphant musical triptych.

What follows maintains both the high standard and the mixture of shades and textures.

It feels like the most human of his late works, with acoustic instrumentation carefully balanced alongside drum programming and vintage keyboards.

Channel Orange hasn't so much been crafted into being as grown from the passion of one man, an extension of the Frank Ocean psyche into audible form.

It’s the album that disproves the myth of the ‘Mercury Prize Curse’ and also consolidates Dave’s reputation as one of this country’s most important and impressive young artists.

With Carnage, Cave and Ellis have successfully balanced introspection and self reflection with the tumult and confusion of the wider world. It’s a hugely powerful statement.

Melodrama delivers everything pop music should, but yet it manages to find more. As an album it is unlikely to be bettered in 2017.

A career-best work that serves both as a tribute to and means of overcoming a life sadly gone.

While it’s impossible to fault Cowboy Carter’s ambition, it’s sometimes a bit too sprawling for its own good. Eighty minutes is a long runtime for an album, and some tracks inevitably sag a bit, especially in the middle section.

What Perfume Genius started with Too Bright was strengthened and solidified on No Shape and has been brought into full focus here, and nurtured to full bloom.

The wry humour on display even extends to the setlist, with 'I Tried To Leave You' being the first song of the encore. It's little touches like that which make Live In London both the perfect souvenir for those who were there on the night and also a handy introduction to one of the true living legends of the music industry.

His major label debut good kid m.A.A.d city solidifies his burgeoning reputation and stands out as a landmark contemporary hip-hop album.

The Myth Of The Happily Ever After doesn’t just stand out, it soars, inadvertently becoming not only Biffy Clyro’s best album to date but one that will undoubtedly stun their critics.

Beyoncé mostly eschews polished vocal performances in favour of expression, with the intricate vocal runs that wrap up Plastic Off The Sofa a notable exception, and while the explosive final verse of Heated is being edited at time of writing its raw and spontaneous quality is intensely satisfying.

Bailey Rae sounds like an artist reborn. It may not be what you expect, but it’s all the better for that. Without a doubt, it is the best album of Bailey Rae’s career, and quite probably one of the albums of 2023 as well.

This is a fantastic album. It may be the best of an already-excellent run of albums produced by – and it really does bear repeating – the greatest rock band in the world.

Sex, Death & The Infinite Void resembles The Rocky Horror Picture Show if you were to watch it on a rollercoaster in the dark: it’s thrilling, coquettishly idiosyncratic, and filled to the brim with palpable pride at their lack of creative limits. If it’s one thing no critic could ever say Creeper lacks, it’s ambition, and here it really pays off.

As this wildly talented, unpredictable and near flawless young singer and musician bids her farewell with the album's longest track, BaBopBye Ya, this time in cocktail club torch singer style, one can but marvel at the impressive range, ambition (realised) and detail of this deeply polished, professional yet utterly, brilliantly bonkers album.

Blue Weekend is Wolf Alice’s best work yet – a confident, euphoric, blistering 40 minutes that’s guaranteed to be on many people’s ‘best of’ lists at the end of the year.

Guts is an immensely confident and assured record which confirms that Olivia Rodrigo is here for the long-term.

If SZA needed to prove that she’s still at the top of R&B, she has succeeded with emotional heft, piercingly astute lyrics and a versatile delivery: with more than a few similarities to Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, SOS is perhaps the best break-up record since TDE’s last one.

He has bravely laid his songwriting gifts bare in their purest form.

Somehow, from nothing, they’ve pulled off a surprising but oh so welcome return, and this record plays like a triumphant middle finger salute, coolly showing everyone how its done... and writing the first line on a thousand ‘album of the year’ lists before January’s even out.

Punisher is funny but serious, subtle yet obtuse, familiar and somehow simultaneously entirely unique. Even if in the final analysis it’s still not massively folky.

Like all the best albums, it keeps you on edge, never quite knowing what’s coming next.

Black Dog might not be a comfortable listen but its unrelenting power and undisguised starkness demands attention and makes it impossible to ignore.

Just like a balloon the music soars to ever greater heights, until finally the listener stands transfixed, observing until they can see no more.

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.

It’s rare to hear a debut album so confident and accomplished, especially when the artist himself has just turned 20 years old. Yet Psychodrama is pretty close to a masterpiece and raises the bar for a new standard in British rap.

Untrue is complex, stark, tender, blurred and breathtaking. Burial has managed the impossible and improved on his faultless debut.

It’s just as special as you’d expect.

With a couple of judicious tweaks to the song choices, this retrospective could have been truly great rather than simply very, very good.

Spaces demonstrates a prodigious, world-class talent that shines through regardless of format or circumstance.

It’s an album that manages to remain accessible while still sounding challenging and unconventional, an album that can sound heart-stoppingly beautiful one minute and scratchily acerbic the next and, ultimately, an album that’s impossible to grow bored of.

Run The Jewels 2 is one of the best albums of the year.

It’s about clean lines, geometric beauty and clear sincerity. But it also has depth, richness and luxurious colour. It can be taken as superficially perfect pop music, or you can listen a little deeper and hear just how intricately woven her heartbreak anthems really are. She is an artist in the truest sense. And Honey is her latest masterpiece.

[Love & Hate] was a magnificent album, and the formula is continued with the same collaborators to stunning effect on KIWANUKA.

It’s an album that confirms the sound of an artist continuing to push forward, a unified expression of joy that is never anything but bold, playful and fun.

Killer Mike and El-P have been speaking out about the deep rot at the core of the USA for their whole careers, and with this album they add several more tunes to a rich canon of protest music that will galvanise an oppositional movement.

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.

Olsen, her arrangers and producer (The Paper Chase‘s John Congleton) have created an album that simply bulges with perfection and timeless songs.

This is thrillingly visceral music that could bring Mannequin Pussy ever closer to crossover success.

If the sound of Beyoncé‘s similarly sonically adventurous Renaissance whetted your appetite for challenging, demanding soul, then Sudan Archives’ latest could be just what you’re looking for.

The Hare, The Hound & The Tortoise is a promising debut album, one which spells a bright future for a quite unique band.

This then, is a solid album of phenomenally crafted songs.

This music is restless but keenly aware, finding common ground and intersections between a range of source material and contemporary contexts and, most importantly of all, delivering these songs with honesty, conviction and genuine feeling.

Safe In The Hands Of Love is a fascinating synthesis of rock, plunderphonics, bass music and noise from an artist that remains stubbornly undefinable.

The recordings here are ideal for longtime fans, whose only gripe might be paying for material that they already own. But this is not a big problem when you consider just how many rare tracks you get for your buck.

What makes Shortly After Take Off work is the attention to detail, both musically and lyrically.

Anchoring the album with his own painful history and never admitting defeat, Balfe has scripted a exhilarating album that contends with unimaginable loss whilst warmly celebrating persistence.

The Mess We Seem To Make is a remarkably confident, assured debut album – every inch of care and time that’s been lavished on it has obviously been well spent. Crawlers sound very much like a band on the cusp of some very big things.

Occasionally the sparkly pop stylings and dependably profound poetic musings give the record an air of interchangeability, but this minor parlour trick merely invites an opportunity to explore the contents further at a pace comfortable to the listener.

It’s true to say that Chris seems to run out of steam a bit at the end, with only the beautifully reflective Make Some Sense really standing out during the album’s last few tracks. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop Héloïse Letissier’s second record being one of the year’s most intelligent, enjoyable albums, and cements her position as one of our most intriguing, interesting pop stars.

Tiger Blood is the sound of an artist improving on her already high standards.

There’s no pure pop moments like Losing You and she may never generate the same amount of press inches as her elder sister does on a regular basis, but this third album is an endlessly compelling one.

In a year where R&B and hip hop have proved the most innovative and original genres Solange has delivered a brilliantly crafted record that places her right at the top.

The Idler Wheel… is a really incredible album, where Apple has quite cleverly developed musically in just the right way, creating something utterly distinct and different to her earlier work whilst still retaining all the characteristics that won fans over to begin with.

Oozing fun out of every pore, this record is the perfect tonic to the increasingly troubled times that 2009 brings with it and will most likely feature on many of those Best Of lists come December.

This album and its predecessor are worthy and awe-inspiring tributes to the man and the Malian musical traditions for which he and Diabaté were--and continue to be--the strongest and most compelling of standard-bearers.

Whether the stylistic digressions work for you or not is immaterial really, because they’re impressive no matter what your expectations were.

This is a remarkable album, even for an artist as consistently strong as Susanne Sundfør has been to date. It reaches into the centre of the human heart with primal connections that probe at its very existence. It is another striking addition to the discography of a singer who just keeps getting better and better.

The fact that Nastasia has documented this period with such honesty, empathy and beauty makes Riderless Horse feel like a small, healing triumph of sorts, a quiet personal victory against overwhelming adversity.

This new album shows that they are capable of not only subverting the expectations of the audience, but subverting expectations of the music world in general.

A priceless archival exercise: these eight sides of vinyl represent both the holy grail of New Zealand indie rock and proof of its insidious journey to a wide world. [Aug 2014, p.100]

As the album draws to a close, it’s hard not to see I Am Not There Anymore as their most ambitious, artistically progressive offering to date.

Their back catalogue is a stunning body of work and arguably each track deserves its own review.

What Folklore ultimately achieves in its narrative of escapism is reinforcing the notion that Swift isn’t one of the greatest twenty-first century artists because her work is autobiographical, or because she leaves cleverly crafted clues leading up to her albums (although these are all interesting elements) but rather because she is, first and foremost, a storyteller. Folklore is sad, beautiful, somewhat tragic, a little bit off the wall, but most of all it feels free.

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

Song For Our Daughter is a return to what made her so widely admired. These are songs of undoubted depth and longevity that can provide moments of relief and solace to those in need.

This vibrant, audacious collection of pop bangers signposts the way.

What is arguably Joanna Newsom’s most consistently outstanding record to date.

Despite her albums being snapshots, sometimes a little more diversity in subject matter would be a good thing. Ultimately, while some intriguing risks have been taken, 30 is probably the weakest, as well as conversely the most intimate and in many ways bravest, Adele album to date.

It might not be an easy listen at times, but make no mistake, this is a vital an important record and one that needs to be heard in order to make sense of it. A definite contender for album of the year and one whose impact will stand alongside Lou Reed‘s Berlin for years to come.

While there may not be anything to rival their breakout hit The Night We Met for ubiquity, much of the band’s fourth album sounds like the sort of warm hug that many people are desperately searching out for right now.

It’s certainly Holter’s most accomplished and imaginative album--indeed, there hasn’t been an album this packed with ideas since tUnE-yArDs' w h o k i l l a couple of years ago.

The fact that he can produce an album like Bad As Me, with more energy, invention and sheer excitement that artists half his age stands as testimony that Tom Waits remains one of the true giants of music.

This is as compelling and coherent a collection as they have ever made. It’s a record that you can delve deep into and really inhabit; everything’s in its right place.

MASSEDUCTION is nothing less than an absolutely towering achievement.

As its title suggests, Accelerando provides plenty of speed and also a very real adrenaline rush.

With barely a weak track to be heard, it all adds up to an album that sees Waxahatchee move up to another level. It’s the sound of a woman at peace with herself, and Crutchfield’s newfound serenity makes for a wonderful listen.

Deep Science should enhance TVOTR's reputation as one of the finest, forward-thinking bands around, along with fellow Brooklyn acts Animal Collective and Liars.

While far from immaculate, Cookie Mountain is the logical progression from Desperate Youth, with its conception fruit enough for those who appreciate musical innovation.