Comprising of 14 scorching, razor-sharp vignettes – some scarcely a minute long – this is the sound of a songwriter standing on the top of their mountain, chest puffed-out and giving it the biggun’. Those confrontational moments are spiky and fun.

A joyous and compassionate return, ‘Real Power’ proves that Gossip’s clear-headed maturity has ensured they achieve its titular sentiment.

With ‘Stereo Mind Game’, Daughter marks a new era of tending to sorrow instead of dwelling in it, where the band wading into new wider ranges of emotion without leaving behind the rich orchestration and poetic lyricism they’re known for.

The band operate in the same art-pop playground as bands like alt-J and Field Music, with guitars popping and chiming over Andrew Thompson and Bryn Jenkins’ rhythms, only taking a moment to change the pace for tracks like ‘Out to Get You’, with its prettily plucked pastoral guitar strings and close, breathy vocals, and ‘Smorgasbord’, which makes sparing use of anguished, weeping piano notes.

For now, Haim are a rock band who've made one of the best pop albums you'll hear all year.

It's unquestionably a beautiful (debut) album, and one that may be well-timed.

There are many ways to find solace in the unstable world we live in, and The Lookout is Veirs’ quietly optimistic manifesto.

Art Brut haven’t made the record that’ll reverse their gradual slide back towards cult. But they have at least made the one that’ll make the cult even more fervent.

‘Welcome To Bobby’s Motel’ sees them flexing their muscles and trying to find their own space within it, all while having a hell of a lot of fun along the way. By the end, you’re desperate to find out just who Bobby is and how on earth you can beg, steal or borrow to spend a night in that mysterious motel.

Always inventive, often beautiful and occasionally totally sublime, Mew have always stood out from the pack, and this latest--with producer Rich Costey back on board--sees them raise the bar that extra inch higher.

Spencer.’s gift is in how he has made a coming-of-age album on his own self-assured terms. His observations on how love can both crumble and blossom within a city as storied as New York are immediate and self-aware – and most importantly – endearingly hopeful.

In 2021, Low aren’t merely playing rock music gently and slowly: now they’re attempting to rewrite the language of the genre.

There’s new confidence here, and a sense that she’s stretching herself musically and lyrically.

Cosentino announced her solo debut the same day Best Coast announced their “indefinite hiatus”. It was a bold move, but judging by the fruits of ‘Natural Disaster’, it was worth it.

Reflektor is cleaner, sharper and dancier than anything the band have done before.

Comparisons to SK will doubtless arise but the production here is sparser, with more focus on intricate oddities.

Wander no more, Lanegan. It’s clear to see that, with Soulsavers, you’ve found salvation.

It's a brave and curious record that, as on 'Bugs', occasionally resembles Willie Nelson fronting Labradford.

'Kiss...' operates on a level of perversity, honesty and originality that blows most bands out of the water.

The tunes he’s releasing are fresh and exciting.

‘ELE 2’ finds Busta Rhymes reseated at hip-hop’s top table – until the world comes to an end, of course.

Positively overflowing with magnificent oddities. [1 Jul 2006, p.36]

If it doesn't quite scale the dizzy heights of 'The Holy Bible' or 'Everything Must Go', it certainly comes close and is, in many ways, the quintessential Manics album - the cathartic regeneration that the band really needed in order to become relevant again.

‘Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies’ doesn’t broaden Aalegra’s sound or lyrical content greatly, and there are certainly points where she could push things further forward. But in continuing to be so open and expressive about love, hope, and loss, she makes it feel possible for the rest of us.

Hymn feels like the imaginary soundtrack to the film inside your head and is an outstanding work of epic beauty.

After a foray into a different sonic world, on Swift’s return to pure pop she still shimmers.

The album deviates from their previous alt-folkish sensibilities: the fuzzed-up shoegazing of ‘Things’ and the anthemic chorus of ‘Living In Colour’ herald an exciting new bullshit-free dawn.

Lyrical gloom aside, though, 'Exciter' sounds like a band not just revitalised but reassembled from scratch. Not many long-running groups could make an album this fresh and confident in their 20th year, never mind one which bridges timeless soulman crooning and underground techno.

The duo have used their total creative freedom to make an album which doesn’t sound like the last one, exactly, but doesn’t concern itself with the supposed importance of ‘progression’ either.

It's The Game's candour that is his unbridled strength. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

He’s mastered this stylistic skittishness and you’ll do well to find much dispute about his talent.

Having spent 11 years away from the studio, The Hives zapped straight back into the only mode they know: pure pandemonium. It’s about time new generations received this healthy dose of old school Hives, packed with the same intensity, goofiness – and of course, the matching black and white suits.

Like the film it accompanies, the T2 Trainspotting is nostalgic but new, paying homage to its heritage while saluting brilliant new British music. In other words: choose T2.

The Manics' 10th offensive is a more playful beast than that--poignant, joyful and above all really, really loud.

Lux Prima is a hypnotic listen.

Danceable yet thoughtful debut album.

Rammstein and their unshakable sound have remained tethered to their originality, fusing catchy lyrics with serious industrial power hooks. For that they should be applauded across the board, because this album is undoubtedly a resounding triumph.

All we can say for sure is that here is a talent in bloom, the sound of ideas finding shape, winding out in all directions.

He hasn’t sounded this vital in years.

It was a coming together of people and community, and it's therefore fitting that Lupercalia the album is a celebration too.

Overall though, A Star is Born is one of the best Hollywood soundtracks of recent years. Far from being Oscar bait, these are songs that could feasibly shine on their own--and ones that feel entirely believable.

Her ambition is flabbergasting, let alone that she executes it with bundles of fun and a fizzing personality.

They've delivered the tunes, alright, but they can't help but fill them with angst, confusion and lashings of amp fuzz. Safe, predictable and packaged for the mainstream? This album is anything but.

Their debut album is 11 whispered R&B songs, all textured, considered and thoughtfully constructed.

It’s not an easy listen, but it may just be one of the most nuanced, soothing and adventurous of 2013.

Their musical range may not yet be as expansive as her vocal one, but any group who are able to segue from the psychotropic ’70s soul of ‘Guess Who’ to the proto-punk sturm und drang of ‘The Greatest’ are clearly no one-trick ponies.

With the core ‘XTRMNTR’ team--the Scream, Shields, producer David Holmes--More Light, the Scream’s 10th album and first in five years, lives up to its bilious billing.

20 years after the outlines of the band was first sketched by co-creator Jamie Hewlett, the band clearly still stands as a vivid creative outlet for Albarn. He’s managed to tap into the chaotic ethos so electrifying and unpredictable first time round, and reanimate the band’s fortunes in dazzling fashion.

‘Memento Mori’ is comfortably their best album this side of the millennium, and, most importantly, a testament to creativity and friendship. The music world is richer for it.

At 18 tracks, Aquarius may be overstuffed (the ambient interludes offer little) but it’s an impressive statement that should elevate Tinashe far beyond the hype that has surrounded her mixtape releases so far.

We could all do with an absence of cynicism – and the presence of some comfort, hope and optimism – right now, and this 10-song collection certainly delivers on that front. Recorded back in September, the modest and warm performance sees Liam let down his trademark bravado, laying bare the bruised sincerity at the core of his unifying back-catalogue.

Ekstasis reminds us that music can mean so much more.

As ever, their key skill is being extremely dark as well as mega poppy.

Despite the abundance of male influence on the record, from ex-boyfriend to songwriters to producers to mentors, Rihanna makes the sound her own, and fights back.

An utterly charming album.

The first long-play offering by these Pennsylvania teen punks might just be one of the best punk rock debuts of the year.

Shape Shift With Me is an excellent album, Grace an essential cultural figure.

Great Divide is a love letter to the power of music itself; earnest, yes, but as heart-warming a rock record as it's possible to imagine.

Along with its album-ending coda, it helps to shroud the album in a rootsy, pastoral intimacy fitting for the times and akin to (although significantly meatier than) ‘McCartney’. In between, as you’d expect from a legend who’s been pushing his electronic boundaries on recent albums such as ‘2018’s ‘Egypt Station’, Sir Paul approaches the record with the same adventuring spirit as he did ‘McCartney II.’

It's astonishing how the band are unafraid to take on Serious Issues yet remain so much fun.

Newsom has managed to lessen the twee factor of her last record... in the process crafting an album as bewitching as it is odd.

One of the few certainties we can take from this restless, relentlessly intriguing album is that David Bowie is positively allergic to the idea of heritage rock.

Powerful, potent and bloody good for dancing to, In A Poem Unlimited might just be the soundtrack to the revolution.

The fourth album from Caribou is the sound of the summer we're only just getting round to enjoying.

It’s to Weller’s credit that these more plaintive and introspective tracks sit so smoothly aside ‘Fat Pop’’s more playful experiments. It means that for the second time in less than a year he’s released a record that can sit safely among the best of his long career.

People may have been wondering who Bain was when she first released music, but on her debut album she’s made damn sure you won’t forget her.

American Love Call is a timeless, optimistic listen in a time of peril one that now, and in the future, can confidently be referred to as a truly great American soul record.

It’s Dionysian disco: dynamic, decadent and utterly brilliant.

You know everything is going to be OK within seconds of the surging, tidal riffs of ‘Wraithlike’, and what follows is simply a fine-tuning of what the Park have done before.

If it’s mournful epics you want, then the album’s crammed full of them, from the strummed, outdoorsy sorrow of ‘Winter Dies’ to ‘Rulers, Ruling All Things’, which is peppered with cheeky Spanish guitar and weighty, fin-de-siècle lyrical flair.

When icy guitar turns ‘Pay My Debts’ into one of Van Etten’s darkest songs yet, Van Etten’s wounds feel incredibly raw.

To bypass Yuck would be imbecilic simply because their debut contains some of the most effortlessly hard-hitting, heart-hitting pop of 2011.

Only a few tracks come down with showtune-itis--‘All The Young Dudes’ and ‘Changes’, which morphs from a breathy, jazz-flecked ballad to an over-emotive Liza Minnelli cabaret piece in the hands of Cristin Milioti. Otherwise, invention reigns.

Dlamini’s taking no chances here and, now that the smoke’s lifted, it’s clear she’s a pop contender with the nous and drive to go as far as she wants.

Where all this fits in the mesh of the Prince pantheon is anyone's guess, but it's in the good part, and after nearly 40 albums that's an achievement.

This is nuanced, purposeful songwriting from an artist growing in power.

An engrossing, bleak and often warming set of exotica, vintage pop and childlike pizzazz.

It's got the charm and spark of the Weezer of old, and that's a quality you just can't fake.

Familiar but daring, ‘Heartwork’ is a dynamic, surprising and enjoyable adventure.

Filled with lively, stylised pop tunes, she’s once again proven that she’s not just that girl from ‘Call Me Maybe’.

Though there are less standout moments than on previous records, it is a wonderfully cohesive whole that renders brooding menace into graceful songcraft.

In aiming to examine the self rather than please others, Fontaines D.C. have exerted a knack for writing anthems that are at once self-excoriating and intimately relatable.

If the DJ's art is to unite unlikely musical party guests, The Automator is a fine and generous host.

It’s not as if Kano’s position as one of the Top Boys of an energised UK grime and rap scene needed any further cementing, though ‘Hoodies All Summer’ has done exactly that.

As the album’s title implies, this is transcendent stuff.

Thorny and tangled, this is dance music for drifting home from the club on deserted pavements; the moment of reflection after the euphoria fades.

Another blistering, brilliant missive from one of rock’s most fearless bands, on ‘Social Lubrication’, Dream Wife prove two things. Firstly, social commentary and exorcising your fury at the world don’t have to be joyless, and secondly, they’re still one of the most vital acts we’ve got right now.

After a year that took so much, the return of the Foos feels like the culture getting back in credit. Consider the record’s closing track, ‘Love Dies Young’, which sparkles with effervescence that the last 12 months have lacked – it’s one of the best songs the band have ever put their name to.

Throughout this record, 070 Shake paints vivid – and often uncomfortable, or jarring – pictures, and it’s all on her own terms.

‘IRL’ reflects a young woman fully becoming herself, not just confidently throwing her hands up but boldly letting her guard down too.

Sure, there is some inevitable fan service – the title, after all, is an anagram of ‘Clancy is dead’ – but this album sees one of the most fearless bands of their generation continue to take risks.

Although it's not quite the perfect pop record 'Video Games' might have led us to wish for, Born To Die still marks the arrival of a fresh--and refreshingly self-aware--sensibility in pop.

It exists in its own eccentric, unique universe, and that is the best thing that any debut album can do.

With The Crying Light Antony And The Johnsons continue to explore the creative boundaries of pop while covering all emotional bases. For that, they should be celebrated.

It’s admittedly not the most cohesive album, infatuated with various experimental threads, but it’s also hard to fault this restlessness album, which is punchy and gutsy enough to hold up Torres’ constantly intriguing ideas.

At a sprawling 16 tracks and 63 minutes long, the only thing I Am Easy To Find suffers from is its sombre and pensive pace, without the feral release that certain fans of ‘Boxer’ or ‘Alligator’ might long for.

On ‘What Happened To The Beach?’, perfectionism is released to make space to revel in creativity, resulting in a truly joyful effort.

Departure isn't merely a psychedelia record cut with Suicide-aping proto-punk. These eight songs wrestle free of that assumption, flying off in myriad directions.