Bicycle begins with an infectious melancholy hook, opens up with a perfectly placed vocal line steeped in regret and ends with Peter Hook-inspired guitars over a choir. Breathtaking stuff.

Shields is not going to grab you, but it rewards patience.

After a while, the microscopic detail underscoring each turn of phrase, delivered with such delicate poise and precise drama, is suffocating.

It's difficult not to fall head over heels for Saadiq's hard-working showman ethic, especially when he threatens to take the party past the three-minute pop format (which he rarely does, unfortunately).

There are a few moments when Auerbach's production touches threaten to distract from the grooves, but the overall quality is so impressively high that the occasional misstep is quickly forgotten.

Fortress stands out as gratifyingly heavy and heady.

The record’s simple presentation and briefness make for an engaging change from the epic crossover attempts of his prior LP Darkest Before Dawn.

A huge improvement over Alligator, and likely to launch the band into a new phase.

The problem is that Earl’s stream of consciousness style does not lend itself to easy listening. Off-kilter drum loops and piano chords bury the lyrics on Red Water and Peanut, creating an unfriendly sonic experience reminiscent of listening to a song with cheap earphones in a noisy room. Listeners will only be able to appreciate Earl’s poetry once they devote every ounce of their focus to hearing it.

The backup vocals that seem de rigueur on all Cohen albums are often unnecessary here and at their worst distracting when sung overtop the main attraction.

While the mixtape features strong guest spots from Ab-Soul, Action Bronson and a rare appearance by veteran Twista, none of them overshadow Chance, whose distinctive drawl, rapid-fire delivery and keen ear for experimental beats--ranging from hometown-grown juke to piano jazz--will have a bunch of labels tripping over themselves to sign him.

Fucked Up's grand ambition may one day be their downfall, but right now it has produced an intricate, rewarding beast of an album, their magnum opus.

The album may have been borne in a fog, but the result finds Granduciel on the other side of the murk.

Though minimalist, it's not all austere.

As a songwriter, singer, guitarist and bandleader, he’s self-assured, masterful and working from his own plain.

Lamar is as cutting as ever in his rhymes, and adjusts his flow to great effect.

While there's still mystery and misdirection on his new album, Poison Season is nakedly ambitious and utterly satisfying.

Shaking The Habitual is full of thrillingly percussive highs and brilliantly deranged vocals, but overall its anti-pop move is more typical than radical.

The album teeters on adult contemporary but never lets go of Maxwell's characteristic playful glint. Anyone remotely interested in his sound should pick this up.

The Agent Intellect is a multi-layered, emotive powerhouse of a record.

One of the year's most imaginative albums.

Case's overzealous self-production means there are layers upon layers to every track, which sometimes works to her detriment.

It's a lot to wrap your head around, especially given the brief run time, but it also hits with a powerful immediacy, even on first listen. Justifies the hype.

There is something especially poignant and inspired about his 12th studio album.

Even though not every twisted move they make on Third pays dividends, considering the stakes, consciously fucking with their formula is a bold gamble for which they should be saluted.

Some trendy lite disco and uplifting, singalong hooks give her voice more to compete with and play up the universality of experience, but Sullivan sounds better the more specific she gets.

I remember being disappointed after subsequently discovering Bleach, the band’s debut. It didn’t have Nevermind’s hooks, precise quiet/loud dynamics or Butch Vig’s glossy production. Years later, it’s those attributes that make Bleach so endearing.

The xx have always been concise pop songwriters, but now they seem interested in approaching the gates of pop nirvana.

His guttural howl on The Shrine/An Argument is the only moment when Helplessness Blues snaps out of its preciousness and hints that this genre can be more than a soundtrack to brunch.

Amidst the crushing avant-metal, we also get nods to classic rock, elegant instrumental work, searing lyrics and atmospheric keyboards.

Too few of the two dozen half-developed tracks here do justice to Smith's talent as a songwriter.

It contains some of her poppiest and funniest material to date, taking her minimal techno and Italo-esque electro rhythms into unabashedly melodic territory on the joyous So Right while swinging in the opposite direction with warehouse-friendly industrial sci-fi instrumentals Burn Me and Workaholic Paranoid Bitch.

When they do get adventurous and experimental, they execute it with such smoothness that even those moments of danger and excitement sound muted and safe. It's a solid disc, but you can't shake a sense that the Budos Band is capable of more.

Thematically he might travel into dark and desperate places, but the idea that one can find salvation in music is made vividly real by the rush of energy that is Atrocity Exhibition.

For long-time fans, this three-disc (or vinyl) release won’t disappoint, though it’s not a total departure.

This back and forth continues throughout the album and makes for a satisfying mix of clarity and perplexity. In the indie rock game, Grizzly Bear’s expansive scope is unmatched.

The album contains some indisputable classics (Here, Summer Babe, Shady Lane) but aims to dig deeper than the hits.

It's lush, sophisticated pastiche, best epitomized by debut single Running.

Throw in some elegant, economical strings arranged by Owen Pallett and touches of harmonica, vibraphone and sax and you’ve got the best 32 minutes of music you’ll hear anytime soon.

Most of its 10 songs last just two or three minutes. It's too good to be a mixtape and too short to be an album, raising the stakes even higher for the album proper.

But it’s when she cuts loose from the serene guitar-voice template also favoured by her like-minded collaborator Bahamas (whose Afie Jurvanen is credited as “senior advisor” here) that the album really shines. Lush strings (arranged by Lindeman) bring a new richness to the songwriting, while upbeat tracks like Kept It All To Myself and Complicit showcase more playful vocal turns (the latter closing with a choir of layered vocals) and dense, twangy melodies.

The goofier bits and sloppy sunshine pop moments are really what make this an interesting and complete album.

Blackheart is refreshingly unbeholden to the convention that requires R&B singers to balladeer non-stop at top volume.

There’s a reason why this Toronto band is capturing the imagination of critics and fans all over the world: they’ve reinvigorated the form and stretched its limits in genuinely novel ways, and for the most part their experiments actually hit their mark.

Old Ideas feels like you're hearing Cohen performing live at a small club with a top-notch band of veteran players, and this new level of intimacy suits him perfectly.

Plant's voice is noticeably lower than his salad-days falsetto, and Jimmy Page's guitar sounds slicker than before, but for the most part this is the Zeppelin of yore.

The songs on Elaenia sound closer to psychedelic jazz and post-rock, and feel more like improvised jam sessions than carefully sequenced electronic music. It's a risky strategy, but the gamble pays off big.

No doubt some of the album feels overly sanctimonious. ... And yet Tillman’s prophetic songwriting makes Pure Comedy one of the first--and best--post-Trump albums in what’s sure to be a long line over the next four years.

Like the best dance music, The Drawing Board has one foot firmly planted in the early origins of house, while still sounding completely modern and forward-thinking.

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.

The moody synthesizer soundscapes of Tomorrow’s Harvest reveal their rewardingly intricate layers and details with repeated listens.

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is an astounding electric guitarist, yet on her absorbing third album she never puts her mastery of the instrument ahead of a great song.

Winter Wheat reminds us that Samson, with his plaintive, modest timbre, is a singular voice in Canadian music.

The choruses are stronger, the harmonies, guitar and banjo lines as tasteful as ever, and the brittle edge that crept into 2003's Soul Journey is nowhere to be found.

The weakest link is Lemonworld, which trips itself up on too many thoughts. But the rest of this misery tour? Masterful.

While there isn’t a chart-smashing Single Ladies or Baby Boy in the mix, the resulting 14 tracks (plus 17 videos) make her most complete album to date.

Killer Mike is the Jäger shot of rap: efficient, acrid and totally devastating.

At times you kind of wish he’d settle down and just write a proper pop song, but the intoxicating mess of textures and ideas is too addictive and fascinating to complain about.

Jacklin sings like she’s reading entries from her journal back to herself. The confessional quality is amplified by minimal, unobtrusive production that places her superb voice and her acoustic guitar forward.

While Bejar's arrangement decisions challenge popular notions of what delineates good and bad music, shaking off preconceptions in order to immerse yourself in Kaputt's nighttime world is worth the effort.

For those seduced by that album's gorgeous dream pop, Passive Aggressive serves as a comprehensive refresher course in the Swedish band's satisfying back catalogue.

Most songs clock in under two and a half minutes but manage to say plenty.

The Oslo five-piece flirt with overindulging their feedback fetish... but avoid wankery by reining in the songs just before boredom sets in.

The record is full of earnest female backup vocals and frequent reminders (like wind chimes all over the place) that the music is homemade. Yet like a lot of modern folk, the songwriting sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

In this current moment, when the us vs them of identity politics is at a sharp pitch, it's an enlightened view for an artist to put forth.

If you still have a stomach for violent, vulgar content, this is recommended.

The production has been updated for a new, not so distant future, but retains its mechanical crunch and metallic din.

Murphy is still a brat, but this is a more emotionally mature and personal album than most of us thought him capable of.

It's primal, visceral, addictive stuff – a perfect mix of sweet and evil unlike pretty much everything else out there.

On Trouble Will Find Me, they’ve perfected it, knowing when a hook should explode and when to hold back and let Berninger’s signature, sombre baritone take over.

On 2014’s Too Bright, Hadreas expressed liberationist sentiments, played with gender and made his queerness confrontational. This time, those themes are felt more heavily in the way he channels familiar riffs, structures and themes into something so singular, unsettling and beautiful.

The quality of the recording and performances makes for a brilliant soundtrack.

The band’s trademark solemnity and repetitive downtempo styles prevail in the final three tracks, making you feel like you’re treading in a swimming pool of honey--in a good way.

At times, Cash nails the knife-edge of hurt and love so adeptly, you feel like you're intruding on too-personal confessions.

Yeezus isn’t his masterpiece, but it's an integral piece of an eclectic collection that will one day provide a window to an artist who will either become an insane Howard Hughesian eccentric or mellow into reality TV Kardashian fatherdom.

His third--and best--album moves farther away from beat-oriented R&B toward music that's heavy guitars, sex and hazy Cali vibes.

The remix supposedly reflects how the band always wanted the album to sound, but it’s hard to tell what O’Brien did. It’s definitely cleaner, louder and more polished, but not dramatically different.

It's not the best album of Spoon's career, but it's far from a misstep.

Written and recorded on the road during a long North American tour supporting his recent full-length, The Wild Hunt, the five tracks maintain a consistently downtrodden tone.

The melodies sound effortless, but there’s complexity under the surface.

Vitality courses through every song on her sixth album.

It's more exciting than most everything made by glitch gurus on their laptops today.

The sum is a subtly powerful lo-fi indie rock record produced by John Congleton, who’s proved capable with other bands (Okkervil River, Modest Mouse) of making the production as emotionally intense as the soul-baring songwriting.

Musically, it's considerably less abstract than his last solo album, 2014's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Like the other albums under his name (including last year's Suspiria soundtrack and his pseudo-solo side project Atoms for Peace) it's more electronic than rock, but there's a warmth to it you wouldn't expect.

Oddly, the unconventional sequencing and measured pace of the album make the fragmented mess hold together quite well.

Cohen’s voice is at the centre of all the songs – present and passionate, the unmistakable deep rasp even better matching his searching weariness the older he got. And it’s all here, that never-duplicated mix of sex and death, the sacred and the profane.

Blissful and vibrant, Dark Days is a party album, but one with a soothing, trance-inducing quality. Best listened to loudly and in a communal setting.

It never really achieves the celestial heights of Cosmic Sky, every song after the opener feeling too much like an extended comedown, but From The Ages is an essential record for anyone who likes the sound of guitars sounding like guitars.

A natural progression from the delicately beautiful and strangely funky shoegazer dance pop of his last album, Swim.

The whole thing has a beautiful and unexpected tenderness to it.

Her flow is kaleidoscopic and hearing her turn phrases with Jamaican reggae artist Chronixx on LMPD or trade verses with fellow Londoners Chip and Ghetts on King Of Hearts is an imaginative escape in itself.

Beam has managed to maintain some of the intimate charm of his home recordings by cleverly trading a conventional trap drum kit for hand percussion. It works wonders to make an elaborate production seem smaller and more organic while strengthening the music's rhythmic component.

Across Suddenly, Snaith surrenders to the current. If you do, too, you’ll find a rich and rewarding listening experience.

The record is effusive but unsentimental, pointedly funny (Love Is A Bourgeois Construct) and occasionally subversive (The Last To Die, a Springsteen cover).

Influenced by both the horrors of war and the looming threat of a nearby active volcano, A U R O R A is every bit as terrifying and brutal as those inspirations suggest, but also oddly hypnotic and contemplative.

While the production is tight, it’s not going to cause rival producers to sell their samplers and look for jobs in air conditioning repair.

The achievement here is that each song feels like its own distinct world.

It requires some patience, but it's worth sitting through the less immediately gratifying moments for the final section's payoff.