‘For Those I Love’ is not only an immaculate debut, but a beautiful record that speaks to anyone who’s ever loved and lost, anyone who might be mourning or just processing the days of youthful abandon, or perhaps those who need reminding that you can’t have shadows without the light.

This new record not only keeps up that 100 per cent strike rate of golden tunes, but also gives us their best release to date. It’s an album that represents huge growth. Their vocals are more powerful and emotive than ever. ... Like true Gen Z artists, they pull from an extensive palette of genres, but manage to make each – be it angsty rock or a return to disco-pop – feel like it’s a sound they’ve been honing for ages.

Crawlers reaffirm their place as one of the young guiding lights in British guitar music.

Fizzingly fun, this third mixtape sees Chance finessing but certainly not hampering, his freewheeling nature.

Whatever this is, it’s jaw-dropping.

The result is an album that pulses with energy, one that’s not a dancefloor record in the traditional sense – we can’t see Diplo dropping any of these tracks into his inevitable socially distanced Las Vegas comeback set at some point in late 2021 – but one with an insistent groove woven into its 10 delicately emotive songs, which deal with love in all its messy permutations.

On the evidence of Chris--a deft and bogglingly-intelligent record, which somehow sounds blissfully effortless too--she’s earned her own place in the pop icon history books.

These songs offer a more adult and grounded perspective than ones like ‘Lone Star Lake’ and ‘Evil Spawn’; they’re about the person who feels like home rather than the one who gets your blood pumping. It’s a nice counterweight that feels emblematic of ‘Tigers Blood’ — it’s a burning fire, and it’s a warm summer evening at once.

Her music is smart, rich and thoughtful enough to pull it off.

It's thrillingly obvious that Junior Boys have made one of the year's best albums. [31 Jul 2004, p.41]

‘Pink Noise’ is steeped in liberation, not bitterness – it isn’t just a heartening comeback, but an absolutely sparkling pop album.

With soothing production, enveloped with numbing vocals, she leaves you in a state of utopia. This surprise album of 2019 was something we didn’t know we needed.

We Are Not Your Kind is an astonishing record, a roaring, horrifying delve into the guts of the band’s revulsion, a primal scream of endlessly inventive extreme metal and searing misanthropy.

The tension created by the lyrics and music is wonderful and uneasy, ensuring that The Idler is endlessly fascinating and unlike anything else you're likely to hear this year.

Merriweather..., their psych-pop pinnacle, shares the simultaneous relentless complexity and instant simplicity of the best Of Montreal albums, but where Kevin Barnes’ last effort got lost in its clever-clever weirdness, shifting rhythms and textures in a way that felt like standing onboard a bus going down a mountain, Animal Collective’s is an easy, good-natured beast.

Their world - sexual, drug-filled, and occasionally paranoid - has become progressively darker, and as such we find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

‘On Bright Green Field’, in all of its weird, frantic and fantastic glory, they’ve gone above and beyond.

A rich and varied album that courses from atmospheric instrumentals (‘Interlude : Dawn’) to the smooth groove of ‘SDL’, on ‘D-DAY’ Agust D is an unstoppable, thought-provoking force, wrapping up his trilogy in peak form.

It’s a shame that on The Mindsweep, Shikari's message is occasionally lost among the madness.

Listen to the beats and you'll find The Neptunes' best work in years. [27 Jan 2007, p.31]

If you want to know about the Glasgow scene which spawned Franz Ferdinand, 'Push Barman To Open Old Wounds' is pretty much essential. [21 May 2005, p.66]

By breaking from what the world might expect from them and letting themselves do whatever the hell they want, they have produced a record that’s experimental, soothing and vulnerable; it’s a thing of great beauty.

‘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.

It’s an insane and challenging, ambitious and exceptional work of art.

Expertly curated, every single song in ‘Valentine’s relatively restrained 10-song tracklist feels like a fully-realised gem.

War Music is the best album Refused have ever made. It has more in common with the violent swing of a sledgehammer than any punk record we’ve heard this year.

Slightly less lo-fi than previous efforts--although as it blends together Slayer, Japanese noisecore and warp-speed prog intricacy, sound recording fidelity is a relative concept. [5 Nov 2005, p.45]

Across 10 air-tight tracks, meticulously crafted and elegantly delivered, it’s an absolute triumph.