No Cities To Love is a triumph. Not only does it meet every one of our over-the-top demands as fans, it serves as a great entry point for those new comers who have yet to be introduced to one of the most important bands of the last quarter century.

Punisher is a product of the times, but it’s also one that could have only been made by Phoebe Bridgers. She’s the only artist I can think of who has the ambition and elegance to tackle two crumbling worlds at the same time: the one in her mind, and the one outside her doorstep. It's an album characterized by its finality; a series of lasts in a time where preparing for the end is starting to feel less and less absurd.

Some tracks make notable improvements – a subtle lift on "This Love"'s gorgeous arrangement boosts one of Swift's most forgettable ballads to a late tracklist highlight, while the new version of "Clean" emphasises producer Imogen Heap's vocal offerings so resplendently that it's a crime she doesn't receive a feature credit – yet others are misplaced in their adjustments.

The good-not-great quality of much of The Land… is at once its strong and weak point, enhancing the highlights but exposing concrete shortcomings. Simultaneously, this album is a highly productive move for Mitski, opening up a wide array of new possibilities for future endeavours.

Architects have never shied away from clarion calls to action, but this is the band at their most inspiring and effectual, filling in the empty space left behind after a monumental loss. It is an epitaph that nonetheless suggests a bright future ahead.

That an album can match enjoyment with artistic merit in a year that has largely seen albums go one way or another is a joy in itself.

This is an album made by a bunch of dudes in their absolute prime, and while it’s easy for one to assume that the disparate styles being straddled here would make the LP less cohesive, it’s just not the case; Paradise Lost don’t lose an iota of focus or momentum in the making of this concise project – the scenario only serves to strengthen Obsidian’s case for being their most revered album for the years to come, and is one hell of an act to follow up on.

Jama Ko is, for twelve of its thirteen songs, political in the best way, using a deeply focused aesthetic both to engage with and as a momentary escape from the social environment which produced it.

Freed from the aesthetic demands of an odd-couple partnership, Big Boi (Antwan Patton) improves on the standard set with 2003's Speakerboxxx, an ostensibly solo work crystallized inside a double-album set, delivering a record that's rigidly focused and almost uniformly strong.

The overarching weakness seems to be that, while this is a set of songs being performed by talented musicians clearly having the time of their lives, it often feels like nothing more, simply a (great) set of songs rather than a coherent album statement. The previous paragraph’s fleeting criticism is just that, though: fleeting. The Record, when compared to Boygenius, inevitably comes out much ahead, reflecting the singer-songwriters’ substantial growth as musicians in the intervening half-decade.

Kenny Segal, a true and varied talent in and of himself, has a firm grasp on the gift that billy woods possesses, and has doubled down on his instinct to assist, to foreground the whims of a true poet in prime form. billy woods takes the bearing, and we follow.

St. Vincent is a challenging art pop album that convincingly balances the beautiful with the ugly, and ultimately stays human despite its futuristic leanings.

There are some nods to years past, and most longtime acolytes will be satisfied with what is mostly testament Converge; but the band's causal nexus doesn’t exist in a vacuum, or in the grips of GodCity Studio, but out there, rooted in the mundane and then amplified to hysteria. Much of The Dusk in Us seems to obsess over the everyday, or maybe more accurately, our demons lurking on the cusp of day and night.

Outside of “Love Again,” the album is chock-full of jams from front to back, and RTJ2, in its astonishing scope and finesse, continues a tradition of greatness for the unlikely duo, and serves as one of the more distinguished bright spots in an otherwise stale year for hip-hop.

Ten tracks, forty minutes really is the perfect package for a pop record that oozes sophistication while not taking itself too seriously, and that knows when to trade the bomb-ass-thicc with lovers' lullabies.

There’s no other band out there that can write such hopeless lyrics while also managing to make me feel so alive.

Without polish or overproduction, Wednesday sound is a powerful exclamation of a narrative, full of noise, beauty, and deeply relatable feelings and stories. It may not feel perfect, but it’s real.

Blood Moon I is also the heaviest and most impressive expression of Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chrisholm's music, powered by the incombustible force of Converge and the everlasting spirit of Cave In, and resulting in one of the most impressive collaborations of this kind. Blood Moon I is, truly, an essential album for 2021.

As is typical on Run the Jewels albums, every feature is perfectly placed, but the inclusion of Mavis Staples and Josh Homme may be El-P’s finest production moment yet. Homme’s ghostly wailing and questing guitar provide a backdrop for Staples to sing an image that perfectly distills not only RTJ’s oeuvre but the bloody centuries of America’s history.

After a series of good-to-great efforts, the self-titled manages to present a much more unified mood than its predecessors and additionally cuts out the spoken word moments which (in my opinion) greatly detracted from previous albums. Here, it all comes together.

Olsen has created an undeniable stunner that should go down as one of the strongest folk albums of the year.

The best parts of classic rock find a home in Holy Vacants without ever seeming forced.

Humble, modest, unassuming, and attentive to its runtime and the need to make a better song; in a year where Migos, “Mask Off,” and DAMN. have dominated the conversation, Big Fish Theory sticks out as the most consistent and well-versed rap album of the year.

It’s a waste of time to recount highlights though, because this whole album is essential, and to skip from one point to the next without experiencing the journey along the way is sort of the opposite of how Golden Hour deserves to be listened to.

Another stylistic pivot in the future could prevent Waxahatchee from settling into too predictable of a groove, but even if she stays the course, it's clear with Tigers Blood that she's discovered a sustainable winning formula.

This is grounded, back to basics writing that becomes the breath of fresh air for the album. This is the record the band should have come back with post Paul Gray’s death; it has all the hallmarks of what made Slipknot great in the first place, but it contains a lot of the good elements that came from .5: The Gray Chapter as well.

It is perhaps the most unforgettable work of her career.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is heartbreaking and heartwarming, and you can either disregard what is one of the most pleasing, enjoyably rich and rewarding releases of the past decade or you can rally with the rest of us, and clap, and sing, and blare it through the earphones on your iPod because we are still all the things outside of us.