Not to be outdone by US stoner-rock peers Sleep and Earth, who have records out this year, the Dorset satanists have spat out this eighth album.

What's finally made it is an expansive, guest-packed 57 minutes that recall the Southern hip-hop bounce of 2003's 'Speakerboxxx', but with an added twist of maturity.

Belying its also-ran billing, Darkest Before Dawn... is a minor masterpiece of dark, smart, modern hip-hop.

Fact is, though, the best metropolitan records are part gutter reality, part romantic fantasy, and so it goes with Panic Prevention.

At 47 minutes, Long Way Home may seem lengthy for a debut, but it feels cohesive without boxing Låpsley into a limited sound.

Journal For Plague Lovers is an outstanding album in its own right and is not "The Holy Bible." But then again, what is?

Endlessly charming.

The absence of original guitarist Jim Martin is soon overshadowed by just how focused the record is.

An album of impossibly adorable disco - Star Wars "ping p-p-p-ping ping" bits, cheesy synths, George Clinton (!...hmm) workouts... all delivered in a slightly unsettlingly ersatz kitschness, half-hinted ironies, indietastic samples, hip-hop phrasings and The Asian Influence seductive throughout.

The Courteeners have developed the ability to, at points, blow away tribal allegiances with hooks forged from pure indie gold.

This album shows his growth as both an artist, and as aa person who’s had to deal with the most private aspects of their life being publicly dissected. It’s a stellar--if somewhat overlong--artistic statement.

Caminiti's style is uniquely desolate and delicious.

Clever and memorable--an electrifying frisson of underground meets overground, punk purism meets pop perfection, artistic integrity meets not minding too much if more than five people like you. [11 Jun 2005, p.65]

If Bain’s lyrics are poised to pull you one way on ‘In The End It Always Does’, her voice and instrumentals yank you back in the other direction – it’s disorientating, dizzying and utterly intoxicating.

If this really is Poliça’s “final paper” (as Leaneagh’s called it), then they’ve excelled themselves with the most intimate and empowering album of their career.

‘Pain Olympics’ is a disturbing, joyous, cataclysmic listen that travels from claustrophobia and fear into wide-eyed expressions of joy.

In making a record with such universal themes of love and hate, and sounding so pissed off in the process, Brody has inadvertently made herself the most important new rock star in the world.

While The Lathums may crib from their working class heroes, they don’t solely rely on them.

‘Shamir’ is the sound of a consistently evolving artist reclaiming their path and making the music they want to make. His seventh, self-titled album is the sound of an artist who’s finally found his musical home.

Lovers of the plush paranoia of 2014’s breakthrough album ‘Lost In The Dream’ will be relieved that his fourth outing doesn’t touch that dial. From the opening highway piano judder of ‘Up All Night’ it’s like losing yourself once more in some lost golden age of MOR.

This is an album of extremes, but they’re all bridged by bold and fluid movements of an artist refusing to be either man, woman or victim--always the hunter.

Raw and rugged at every turn, the album captures the telepathic bond that these rock’n’roll renegades have cultivated over the years. ... Neil Young remains as vital as he always has been.

Sound[s] like Marvin Gaye fronting The Smiths while the London Philharmonic Orchestra has a stab at the Burt Bacharach songbook. [9 Oct 2004, p.55]

Michaelson’s oaken, hefty voice is flecked with creaks of optimism, while the band slump elegantly into their forlorn Americana, to stand proudly alongside the likes of Bill Callahan and The National.

There may be elements of these greats in her vocals, but as ‘Not Your Muse’ proves, Celeste is on her way to becoming a star in her own right.

What it all adds up to isn't big-push psych loonycakes like The Flaming Lips, but something more subtly disorienting.

Out of necessity, the sonic experimentation is braver, too, as if to emphasise the intensity of the feelings that Templeman examines throughout. The songs are immediate and involving.

It all comes together to make ‘Madres’ a true love letter to the varied, invigorating sounds that have shaped Kourtesis.

Now Pollock has rediscovered her former band’s grandiose esoterica and stark, scratchy danger.

Their best album since their 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' debut, Karl and Rick have pulled off a comeback in fine style and laid some demons to rest.

Ultimately, Blossoms leap from their chart-bound Trojan horse as modernist rock heroes.

Musically, Acts Of Fear And Love is the most accomplished of Slaves’ three albums, switching things up and pulling off new sounds without losing sight of the band’s DNA.

His songs are rarely constructed from a place of deeply considered meaning. Instead, they’re largely streams of his conscience: creations that invite listeners to cosy up in his world. On ‘House of Sugar’, it’s his most exciting invitation yet.

The hangover may be setting in, but DZ Deathrays have found new ways to party.

It’s gratifying to hear Young push her idea of pop beyond the spacey atmospherics of her earlier material – this is the overdue arrival of a completely credible new talent.

Over the course of a 35-year career defined by excess, reinvention and the occasional brush with genius, Primal Scream have made all sorts of albums, but not one quite like this.

There's no overarching narrative to Short Movie--it plays out like a series of vignettes, of moods and moments, people and places--but there is a sense of a journey completed, with a hard-won wisdom at the end of it.

Out of the lo-fi punk/hardcore/black metal bedrock clatter of sound they create, lysergic and buzzing riffs clarify gloriously before melting back into chaos.

Playground misogyny aside, ALLA is a thrillingly focused follow-up that betrays its anxieties even as it mostly makes do with extolling the virtues of vice.

When you cover this sort of expansive, experimental territory, you're inevitably flirting with pomposity. But like Tool or Radiohead, Cave-In's progressiveness is hypnotic rather than alienating, played out with a sense of near-religious awe that's difficult to deny.

Williams has clearly approached 'Fly Or Die' as the kind of project where the central aim is to show us all how clever he is, and as he flits from musical style to style like a hungry pop bee, you're pounded into submission because HE IS JUST SO GODDAMN GOOD AT EVERYTHING.

Never Enough is laser-focused on doing the simple things to perfection: guitar, bass and drums in service of verse-chorus-verse hooks that will rattle around your head for days with rakish, disreputable charm in spades.

The result is the most expansive, yet cohesive record Bastille have put their name to. In fact, they may have created a perfect soundtrack to life after lockdown.

Menace Beach’s debut may relish a world on the brink of chaos, but this is a band with their shit together.

It is also, perhaps more importantly, an album absolutely overloaded with spine-tingling, pulse-quickening electro noises.

With ‘Intruder’, he’s chiming with the times – and sounding thrillingly relevant in the process.

Obits create the same buzz in your brain that was almost certainly present the first time you heard The Hives or The Vines, the feeling which had you so giddy that you perfected excitement wees to rival a puppy (probably). This time, though, it’s not bratty whipper-snappers but a fine veteran taking the lead.

‘TANGK’ is an adventure into pastures new. Talbot is keen to put arm’s length at the material that exorcises his past traumas and battles with addiction and general frustration at the modern malaise. Now’s a time of appreciation and restraint.

It's the mischievous desire to deconstruct his own perfectly rounded pop snapshots that marks him down as a post-everything wunderkind

Two Technicolor explosions of creativity that people will be exploring, analysing and partying to for years.

The stuff of jagged, ornate artistes living in a weird pop monsterland with defiantly anti-wacky lyrics. [13 Nov 2004, p.57]

Endless Boogie justify indulgence via countless glorious shut-eye air guitar moments that nod to the Groundhogs, Canned Heat, the Stones at their tuffest.

ESG remain a no-wave New York group unlike any other.

Not only does it showcase Pearl Jam reclaiming the charm that first made them a force to be reckoned with back in 1991, it comes alongside some of their most impressive musicianship yet, as well as a determination to take risks after years of playing it safe.

Fearless in their desire to break out of any pigeonholes but smart enough to play to their strengths, Haiku Hands’ self-titled debut does good on all that live promise and takes on new challenges as the trio adapt to the world around them.

As a statement of blingy opulence, it’s a big look. As gangsta move, it’s pretty potent too. At the same time, though, it proves that while Shabazz Palaces are definitely moving in hip-hop’s orbit, they’re spinning further out than most.

What A Time To Be Alive often sounds more like a Drake album than the jazzier, busier records that Future usually creates. Yet the Atlanta rapper dominates the record, demonstrating his impressive adaptability.

Just as their previous fetish for deep distortion and a limited set of chords did, pink-hued noir here can prove to be something of an acquired taste. However, it never sinks into unintentional parody, earning it the acclaim of sounding like nothing else currently out there.

Follow-up Ready For The Magic is just as angry and their sometimes gauzy alt-rock is beefed up to ferocious levels.

Drunk, as out-there as it can be, is an album totally high on its own unique ideas.

At 18 tracks, ‘In the Meantime’ meanders a bit towards the finish, though there are no real duds here.

This collection encouraged them to follow their instincts and embrace the melodies, choruses and beats that arrived the fastest. The result is brilliant, bruising dance music right from the gut.

Simz’s storytelling is deft and full of range, gliding between generational trauma (‘Broken’) and faith and the grind (‘Who Even Cares’) with ease. The album’s sonic palette, meanwhile, takes on a mellower and less grandiose tone, with Inflo – the producer behind her last two records and the mysterious musical project Sault – and collaborator Cleo Sol bringing a warm, homely base for Simz to nestle in.

Route One... is an enlightening joy because it trips all over the place, from darkness to bright to fast to slow to synthetic to organic and back again, and that's not because of any one person's influence.

A record of sonic maturity and real beauty. [2 Jul 2005, p.64]

This brilliant half-hour of punky Americana is a chance to read the journals of the coolest kids in town.

Never compromising herself or her sound, Mahalia has produced a debut album filled with dazzling songs.

A mix album of sheer quality.... This should be the soundtrack to every party this summer.

This is the sound of a cleaner, smoother Nine Inch Nails, one that delights in complexities of rhythm more than caustic blasts of rage.

Throughout Empress, an eight-track record billed somewhat mysteriously as a “project”, she states her worth over warm, ‘90s-influenced R&B sounds.

It’s another excellent addition to Brewis’ catalogue; for Smith, it’s a confident step towards the avant-garde.

This album offers an elegant blend of trilling piano, strummed guitar and crisp digital beats, but it's dominated by Mason's voice, and his monastic chants prove as soothing and stirring as when they wafted across The Beta Band's deathless debut 'Dry The Rain'.

Shedding old skins with jubilance, ‘Expert in A Dying Field’ is testament to the belief that better things are always yet to come. For us as listeners, they’re already be here.

O’Brien keeps us under with rich, sophisticated soul vibes, oceanic piano, languid sax solos and an overlying tone of optimism.

More A-grade angst from one of our cleverest songwriters.

Here The Magic Gang have acted on pure instinct and feeling. This is an album that, despite its recognition of the downside of things, ends up as a more reassuring – and more real – listen than their debut. With its collage of genres and refusal to co-opt modern trends, album two finds the band moving towards something timeless.

Sutherland’s taken dancehall to the American mainstream, but, with Forever, he also transports us to a better world--where positivity reigns.

The descent into indie R&B anaemia on 'Animal' is less exciting, but otherwise, drenched in field recordings of whisked eggs and jangling bracelets, this album is an imaginative and accessible bout of boundary-crushing.

Lyrically witty, full of neat turns of phrase, his songs recall the quirks and kinks of Jonathan Richman, the tale-telling and wit of Alex Turner (specifically the Arctics man's gentle, romantic work on the Submarine soundtrack), and the playful verbosity of Pavement's Stephen Malkmus.

They've proved themselves to be a band who defy convention with an album stuffed full of subtle invention and an emotional intensity that you really wouldn't expect from a band still too young to grow a beard between them.

Just as on her recent EP of ’80s cover songs, ‘Aisles’, Olsen approached the decade’s tropes with care, and at no point does ‘Big Time’ descend into parody. Though it uses them in the same way those aforementioned greats did, to access the deep and real emotion at a song’s core and open it up to her listener as something irresistible.

With the arrival of Fantasy Black Channel--four young men given free rein over four studios – it’s time to hail the new age of anything-goes ridiculousness.

His most confident, cohesive album.

With ‘Cool It Down’ the trio disregard expectations with ease, bursting through conjectures with tracks that make the apocalypse sound fun.

It’s this feverishness that’s key to this magnetic and rewarding album.

It’s a fantastic record, a slow-burn masterpiece that buds gradually and thrives on the oxygen of repeated exposure.

Cyclops Reap keeps the party going.

It’s clear this ‘Falkirk miserablist’ has finally found contentment.

‘Folklore’ feels fresh, forward-thinking and, most of all, honest. The glossy production she’s lent on for the past half-decade is cast aside for simpler, softer melodies and wistful instrumentation. It’s the sound of an artist who’s bored of calculated releases and wanted to try something different.

A spiritual follow up to 2003’s ‘Untitled’, ‘Nine’ sees the trio as confident adventurers. Dealing with the ideas of despair, loneliness and longing, the record doesn’t shy away from the shadows but you’re never far from a dash of hope.

Effortlessly hip and seductively suave. [8 Jan 2005, p.44]

None of these 13 tracks break the three-minute mark, but each works an enormous amount of inventiveness into its brief running time.

Volcano may rank as more of a technical progression than an artistic one, but it’s no less impressive for that.

A cocky, self-assured record that blends Sports Team’s chaotic energy with a smart, heartfelt understanding of the power of guitar music.

Their debut buzzes with all the frisson of perspiring pre-teens getting their pseudo-sexual jollies playing Tetris under unmade bed linen; a sort of puerile Pavement with bigger laughs.

‘Shapeless’ is an undeniable early-2023 highlight for cutting-edge pop music. But despite Daine’s distinctive songwriting, these 24 minutes feel less like a coherent, narrative body of work than eight new directions.

If he carries on writing songs as deliciously sour as this, dance music will end up needing to be saved from James Murphy, not by him. [22 Jan 2005, p.50]

On Always Returning, their fourth album, they've delivered yet again.