The brightest and most subversive moments on the album come when Dreijer enlist blunt lyrics and wobbling instrumentals to articulate hard-to-explain emotions flawlessly.

There's a bloodymindedness on The Monitor that is equally infuriating and invigorating.

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

In the poetic and thoughtful nature of it, as well as the odd glimpse of where she could go next, WILLOW’s fifth record should be noted as her breaking sonically mature new ground.

Far from softening Parquet Courts’ edges, [producer Danger Mouse] has enhanced everything that makes the quartet great--sound, imagination, style. The Beastie Boys, Black Flag and Talking Heads are all here in spirit.

The real star of the show isn’t the often-bloodless figure of Thomas Mars, it’s the brilliantly detailed production, centred around the dovetailing drum and guitar chops, best heard via headphones for the full stroboscopic effect.

Easily their finest record yet, a genre-shrugging masterpiece of delicate musicianship and warm feeling.

This is a great pop record. [17 Jul 2004, p.49]

Too many of the 15 tracks are padding and the entire record is neutered by a production that brushes everything up to a mediocre gloss.

A quiet return to form.

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.

With ‘Broken Hearts Club’, Syd has crafted an album that elevates her to new heights – one that positions her as an exceptional, peerless talent.

Nao’s real flair, though, lies in embracing the old school and making it seem fresh. ‘Get To Know Ya’ and ‘DYWM’ both re-rub late ’80s soul and push it firmly into 2016 with crisp production and an effortless dancefloor feeling. More proof, if it were needed, that Nao--and her odd but addictive vocal--belongs up front.

Do You Like Rock Music? might be fashionably rough around all the right edges, but there's definitely still enough lyrical wit and musical beauty contained herein to warrant your attention.

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.

Besides its flirtations with big band-style instrumentals, ‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’ serves as a gorgeously crafted highlight reel of the singer’s many previous styles and guises, rather than a complete reinvention.

For the most part, ‘Before Love Came To Kill Us’ is a beautiful, heart-wrenching debut that sees its creator come good on her early promise.

‘Sketchy’ takes the best, feral pulses from tUnE-yArDs’ DIY material and the richest sounds of later records in its doubling down on societal crises. If Garbus was worried about finding inspiration, she needn’t have been.

While Saint Etienne will always sound like Saint Etienne, these songs are their sharpest in over a decade.

Save perhaps for an unusual dalliance with folk ('I'll Be Around'), little new personal ground is broken, but their songwriting chops and sound design remain cherishable.

Anger has always been at the root of Low's modus operandi; the difference, ultimately, is that where once it lurked behind marble pillars, it now stomps and snorts like a pig on a griddle. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

Stormzy came out swinging for his second album – it’s big, it’s broad and it is mostly brilliant.

The album sits at the intersection of ambient, house and dancehall crafting an intricate and comforting world to get lost in.

‘The Car’ is almost overwhelming in terms of its ambition and scope, but provides ample motive to revisit this record over and over again.

These heartfelt, confessional apologies are delivered via Jay’s most concise, straightforward album in years. 10 tracks and 36 minutes long, this is a filler-free return to form after 2013’s patchy and bloated ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’.

The nerve of it all is breathtaking. Turbo-beats poke up a gospel-jazz revivalist meeting, a mariachi band wanders into the hazy disco sashay of 'Broken Dreams', a Gary Numan sample gets bludgeoned to credibility in the Van Helden-esque pogo of 'Where's Your Head At?'.

Essentially more surgical sonic detritus, it is Autechre nuanced, minutely reprocessed and at the top of their game.

He keeps growing musically, challenging what drill music can be. On ‘Noughty By Nature’, he confirms he’s a genre juggernaut, but in wearing his heart a little more on his sleeve, he’s also evolving right in front of us.

Compelling from its first note to its very last, the record presents a band who, yes, are still in their infancy, but clearly know who they are and what that sounds like.

The risk here pays dividends. It’s their most ambitious and cohesive album to date and embracing their shoegaze selves brings renewal: for a band known for torment and chaos, it’s a joy to hear them sounding so hopeful.

He doesn’t want to be a powerhouse rap star. Doris may alienate people looking for him to be that. For everyone else, this is a powerful record.

Gibbs’ coarsely inventive flow works perfectly with Madlib’s imperfectly human beats.

Their strength is that, musically as well as sartorially, they’re unafraid to plunder and repurpose styles previously considered naffer than Bluetooth headsets.

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

The Seldom Seen Kid is a stunning record, a career-best from a band whose consistency has seldom been matched by any British indie band this decade.

Bayston’s brilliant at producing these repetitive but nuanced melodies, most of which knot themselves inside your brain and won’t let go.

Other People’s Lives has achieved a wonderful thing. It is both calm and collected, but wildly unhinged at its core, which bubbles away with insecurities and mysteries. Stats’ record belongs to Ed Seed and his band, but in reality, he’s telling all our stories just as much as his own.

It might not be quite the experimental opus you feel Weller’s still holding back, but that feels a churlish complaint when the songs are this well-written. There’s a lightness of touch and a tenderness at ‘On Sunset”s heart.

Bad Boy Chiller Crew clearly just want to keep make songs that purposefully and brilliantly celebrate the hedonistic corners of life – and that desire should be embraced. They locate their power not just in the recording booth, but on stage, the race track and the dancefloor, fully self-aware and seemingly unstoppable.

Given its creator’s effortless vocals, smart lyricism and obvious ability to craft new bangers, ‘Gifted’ will only add to the clamour surrounding Koffee’s name: time will tell how far she will continue to rise from this point.

The vocals and instrumentation help the album ultimately overcome its few shortcomings, such as its occasionally unwieldy lyrics (“I’m scared of flies / I’m scared of guys” is one such culprit on ‘Valentine’). Yet the lyrics also give us one of ‘Everything I Know About Love’’s primary delights: Laufey’s candid self-expression wrapped in the dreamy lilt of the old jazz standards.

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.

Perhaps V made us wait for this one, but it was thoroughly worth it.

This is an album that leaves you in absolutely no doubt that, at the very least, Pascal Arbez-Nicolas is the best thing to come out of France since Daft Punk. [30 Apr 2005, p.63]

An album full of big ideas, strong conviction and unguarded emotion, it’s more than worth the wait.

After Laughter comes over like the earnest, fist-pumping soundtrack to a long-lost John Hughes coming-of-age film.

JPEGMafia still keeps his integrity no matter what – continually putting out a high standard of work in the process.

The risk pays off.

Here, on their fifth album, the Brooklyn trio sound emboldened, finding room for horn sections and plaintive piano lines amid the murk.

While there’s a sense that Webster’s not taking the songwriting risks she once was, this transcendent set suggests sincerity suits her.

For the most part, Honeys is a prime example of how the innovativeness of your chosen style matters not a jot, as long as you’re doing it with aplomb. And most importantly, having a bloody laugh.

Eminem’s cameo on ‘Medicine Man’ is technically superb, but the content somehow comes over both hateful and boring.... But it's hard to deny Compton is brilliantly constructed, a masterclass in 21st century hip-hop.

It’s definitely in need of a more brutal edit: the 18-song tracklist is a little bloated and some songs such as ‘Don’t Go Hungry’ (which features Labrinth doing his best Weeknd impression) are pretty forgettable. However, there are enough bangers on here to keep you hitting the replay button, with Giggs’ unique vocal delivery never anything but interesting. He sounds ready to reign for a long time yet.

Bubba may be lacking the type of big bangers that thrive in festival sets like ‘99.9%’, but is no worse for it. Instead it’s a dizzying hour that is more interested in enthralling the already-fans that have made it into the club and to give them a helluva night. Job done.

A charged effort with dynamic results, ‘Karma 3’ may not be as flawless a spectacle as ‘Survival’, but it’s not all that far off. And it’s definitely the best entry in the ‘Karma’ series. East remains consistent, unapologetically flying the flag for New York hip-hop.

This album is the work of a man with no time for big cash reunions or the squabbling that prevents them. Instead, he has turned in a record fuelled by soul and new ideas.

At its core, the record continues the thing that made them so exciting in the first place – chaotic, brilliant curveballs that capture the confusion and commotion of life right now.

Much of ‘Struggler’ may be unsettled but it never feels restless.

Through his sprawling and ambitious album, Bad Bunny spins the trappings of fame into Latin trap gold, and, as his album title promises, he continues to blaze his own trail with big carpe diem energy.

It’s easy to simply pore over Savage’s frantic wordplay--which peaks when evaluating kebab-wrapping techniques on ‘Berlin Got Blurry’--but the music is equally brilliant.

By turns brooding and effervescent, but always outrageous fun, 'Writer's Block' is a compact minor classic.

What makes it so compelling is the simplicity of concept: like everyone, they get pissed off by jerkish behaviour, subdued by small misfortunes and comfort themselves with life’s small pleasures.

By now, it should be clear that this lot know how to pen a whopper of a pop anthem – that remains apparent here – but more crucially ‘MUNA’ also serves as solid evidence of a band with many more chapters of evolution up their sleeves yet.

Rodriguez has turned heartbreak into a glorious 30 minutes of club-ready electro-smashes. ‘I’m Your Empress Of’ is nothing short of breathtaking.

Much of this album, with its gritty street-level reportage of booze-alleviated dereliction and crooked politicians, feel so perfect for right now.

There are so many distinct yet intertwined influences peppered throughout Slave Ambient it would be remarkably easy to lose the thread altogether. Yet somewhere in the haze it all just kind of… fits.

Back To The Woods is both a consolidation for Haze (they sound like themselves again and there’s clear sonic unity--all the tracks were produced by old friend/collaborator TK Kayembe) and something of a hangover of a record.

A timeless creation, the record’s nine carefully crafted tracks draw gracefully on the past 50 years of folk music.

This is massive leap on from ‘Songs Of Praise’ – ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ is more ambitious and more accomplished than its predecessor, showcasing a band brimming both with ideas and the confidence to pull them off. ... ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ confirms Shame’s status as one of the most exciting bands at the forefront of British music.

'Silent Alarm' is no 'Franz Ferdinand'. In fact, listen to it with the words 'popular' and 'arty' in mind and its spirit is closer to the Manic Street Preachers' 'The Holy Bible'. [5 Feb 2005, p.49]

For the most part, this is an album of love songs: not in the trite, wishy-washy sense of the word but as an elemental and all-consuming force.

‘Fearless Movement’ feels like more of a personal piece than ‘Heaven and Earth’, leaning more towards humanism than the spiritualism that has so enraptured Washington in the past. The key to his appeal, though, remains unchanged; he makes music that’s apparently limitless in scope and yet joyously immediate, even to the casual jazz listener.

Funny, heartbreaking and at glorious odds with the world. [4 Sep 2004, p.73]

He calls love and life as it really is: occasionally sweet, rarely trouble-free and often so suicidally routine we could all become the man he speaks of on 'Ballad Of The Bastard'.

For two men famed as political firebrands, Robert Wyatt and Israeli anti-Zionist and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon certainly make a beautiful noise together.

As the name suggests, Nothing Is Still is a fluid, complete piece of electronic music that sways from thoughtful down-tempo beats to swelling pieces of orchestral beauty. There are particular moments of beauty, though.

Depending on your mood, there’ll be songs you’d happily lop off for a more streamlined listen, but by and large, all of these songs make the patchwork much more vibrant.

It all suggests a promising future for the reinvigorated band.

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

The objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded.

This is a simple collection of woozy slow-jams and blissed-out recollections (a step back from the hip-hop stylings of ‘Oxnard’, which wrong-footed some fans).

Yes, it's solid rock but what they might lack in glamour (no back up dancers here, dude), they make up for in sheer sincerity.

Within all the emotional turmoil, there's a lot for the listener to love.

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

As with some modern art, you may find Silence Yourself leaves you whispering, “I appreciated it, but I didn’t love it.”

What could have been an act of self-sabotage or self-indulgence – or both – has transpired to be a welcome reminder of all that this band does best, rooted in raw relevance for today and the cyber-punk energy of tomorrow.

If you were looking for a new Bowie, Patrick Wolf is proving himself the Thin White Duke's successor in more than just his extravagant dress sense.

The Californian five-piece’s 14th album packs everything they’re good at into one concentrated effort: frenetic rock, pulsating psychedelia and buoyant melodies.

A new, added tunefulness makes this a much-welcome Exile In Nihilist-ville.

Come the closing ‘Nocturne’, Bradford is wailing into a malfunctioning microphone like the late, great Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse phoning a wasted lullaby home with one unreliable bar of phone coverage, and ‘…Disappeared?’ becomes less Cox’s ‘High Violet’, more his ‘Low’. This is how you turn pop into art.

If the worst of times brings out the worst in people, Viagra Boys are set to be icons of the age, and ‘Cave World’ its defining document.

Hegarty's songs and personality suit the drama of orchestral arrangements, providing him with the perfect platform to 'perform' rather than sing--and his voice works in perfect harmony with the 42 musicians behind him.

What remains is pure, unspoilt guitar-pop genius that demands to be marvelled at. [18 Sep 2004, p.65]

At 73 minutes, it could easily have been boiled down to give it more punch, but you can’t bemoan the celebratory feel of The People In Your Neighbourhood.

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.

Mission Desire, a token shard of folk gloom, does little to undercut the finely honed futurist gleam elsewhere.

Good news for OutKast fans, basically, although the pair’s debut works best when it’s playing it weird.

There’s much to be said for playing to your strengths, though, and they’ve honed their contrasting, distinctive sounds with this impressive double release. Krept & Konan have plenty of days and nights ahead of them.