The supporting cast also includes Anderson .Paak, Pusha T and Killer Mike, all of whom give impressive turns. But Gibbs is the star and, behind the boards, Madlib guides him like a skilled director. The result is an album of unvarnished realities transmuting into cinematic excellence.

I don't expect to hear a better album this year.

So it’s dreamy and fuzzy but sharp, witty and danceable with it; varied but coherent, consistently enjoyable. It’s an album on which Kali Uchis sounds not just like an artist who is now doing exactly what she wants, but one who also knows exactly what she’s doing.

Idles won’t be for everybody: this isn’t good-time, aspirational, radio-friendly pop. But for anyone in need of music that articulates their concerns or helps them to work through their troubles--or anyone who simply appreciates blistering, intelligent punk--they might just be Britain’s most necessary band.

2020s pop music so brilliantly crafted that it causes you to realise how much other 2020s pop music is makeweight.

An entirely unique return to form.

Majestic while confronting his mortal fears on the gospel-hued Hope There's Someone, childlike and life-affirming on For Today I Am a Boy, he is never less than a class act.

While there seems to be a macabre sense of humour at work in the decision to start the album with a children’s choir. Otherwise, this is trademark, huge, at times semi-operatic, industrially heavy black metal.

Shrapnel-sharp dance music that demands to be heard.

A collection of songs that sink deeply into the subjects of death and old age with poignancy but never self-pity.

As each song merges into the next, as one style succeeds another, the sensation is that of being in a dream.

There’s a temptation with Young to concentrate on the big statement songs, but the joy of Homegrown is its lightness of touch.

Its hour run time notwithstanding, few albums are this expansive. The acoustic arrangements and brushed drums expand its sense of the infinite, and Callahan disarms with humour and subtly shattering insight.

My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a particularly powerful entry in her discography: surrounded by music that’s beautiful but relatively straightforward, that voice seems more extraordinary still.

The songwriting never dips below classic.

Intriguing and affecting.

It’s dense and rewarding and has more interesting things to say than the earnest but pat song titles – Live and Let Live, Love Can Heal – suggest.

The result is a genuinely exceptional and entrancing album, opaque but effective, filled with beautiful, skewed songs, unconventional without ever feeling precious or affected.

It all adds up to a landmark in American music, an instant classic.

You occasionally wonder if an understandable desire to cross over commercially might not be at the root of the album’s less inspired moments: there’s something commonplace and risk-averse about the pop-R&B backing of Crazy, Classic, Life and I Got the Juice.

Accompanying him for the hour that Reality lasts makes for an endlessly fascinating journey.

The prevailing mood is one of euphoria - of clouds parting, sun shining and hearts melting.

There are times when the less charitable might be inclined to shout at Toledo to pull himself together, but Car Seat Headrest increasingly feel like a significant band, and Toledo like an unusual and compelling voice.

It’s a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music.

The songs on m b v, however, are more melodically complex, intriguing and often pleasing than anything he has written before.

Now and then, the band delve back into their previous, less rarefied styles. ... Those diversions create moments of gut-wrenching contrast, making hackneyed rock tropes feel surprising again--proof that with this softening of their sound, Big Thief have alighted upon something that packs a real punch.

This feels like a record that contains a great deal to pore over.

Perhaps no album could tie together all the diverse strands of Stevens’ musical career but, as it ranges from lo-fi singer-songwriter to baroque orchestration to opaque electronics to warped pop, Javelin comes surprisingly close: a remarkable achievement in itself. That it sounds like a holisitic album, one that flows rather than fractures, is remarkable, too – but it does, carrying the listener along with it as it goes.

Microshift manages to be both their most accessible work and their most intense: the sound of an already powerful band gaining not just clarity, but focus.

It’s both appealingly direct yet perfectly thought-through.

One of 2015’s most addictive, pulse-racing noisy joys.

Arise may be too long on genre music and short on improv for jazz hardliners, but for many it will be a fascinating perspective on an African Caribbean family lineage shared by McFarlane and her gifted drummer and producer Moses Boyd.

It feels genuinely different and exhilarating.

The guitar-led Kingdom pokes at Brexit and the messiness of our government but lacks personal touches, as does by-numbers ballad To Lose Someone. But these are mild complaints amid otherwise distinctive songwriting.

Karol’s skill is in evocative melodies that transcend any language barrier.

Beyond his trademark agitated yelp and panic-attack rhythms are all manner of surprising and compelling sonic twists.

Realign your expectations, and what gradually emerges is a record of enigmatic beauty, intoxicating depth and intense emotion.

The album title comes from Menig’s near-death during childbirth, and her subsequent realisation that we are forever “on the cusp” between death and life, heartbreak and euphoria, all of which are in fulsome supply here.

It's hilarious, chilling and exhilarating: further evidence of the unique and enviable position Cave finds himself in at 50.

It is as gloriously varied as her 1980s output. Some tracks see her taking Steve Reich-style minimalist marimba riffs but escorting them through endless harmonic mutations.

Listening to Choose Your Weapon can hover between delirium and frustration, delight and outright annoyance, often in the very same beat.

Fussell makes the good-natured workplace bitching on Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues feel both particular and timeless. These are exceptional songs, performed exceptionally well.

There are remarkably few longueurs, and plenty of great stuff lurking among the discs of unreleased material.

Reward is appropriately titled. Give it time and it fully reveals itself, getting under your skin in the process.

Iyer is the antithesis of a ­contained and cerebral artist. ­Historicity, for the traditional jazz ­format of an acoustic piano trio, features fewer explicit ­contrasts of tonality and ­extremities of drama than Iyer's more familiar duets with saxist Rudresh Mahanthappa, but it offers a different agenda.

Not every effect works (the gloom of I’m a Mother is too airless, the electronic pulse of Longpig too enervating), but on the whole, it’s hypnotic.

Martin Jr’s sonic whizzery doesn’t extend to removing the screams from the recording--they continue throughout, a potent reminder of the pandemonium the Beatles generated at their touring peak--but he has brought out both the melody and muscular tautness of the band’s live performance.

Its triumphant sound comes from the artist’s clear joy in realising these compositions, which shines through every exuberant moment.

Whatever havoc the pandemic may have wreaked on Mering’s already gloomy outlook, it’s done nothing to spoil her melodic facility. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow gently bombards you with one fantastic tune after another.

The Seer won't be for everybody, but deserves to win new converts.

She’s addressed the subject of mental health before in her work, but never quite as bluntly as on Broken, which shifts from a neat summation of depression’s ability to quietly get its claws into you. ... Meanwhile, the music business gets an extended kicking, particularly when it comes to its dealings with artists of colour. ... All of this is punchily, powerfully and, occasionally, wittily done.

Cries for help have rarely been so clear, self-aware, and funny.

It may have been exhausting and painful to put down on record, but listening to it is anything but.

Exquisite opener Piel captures the interplay between poise and prostration that has made Catholic ritual such a rich artistic seam, while arch humour is provided by Whip--hyper-real lashing accompanied by the sound of a powering-down robot--and Desafío, which takes disposable Eurotrash pop and makes it worthy of pious contemplation.

In a year of impressive solo rap albums, Staples has managed to create one that’s arguably the most idiosyncratic of the lot.

You could say there’s something gimlet-eyed about a woman who realises her relationship is collapsing and automatically thinks: still, great material. But it’s nothing if not honest. And besides, on the evidence of Vulnicura, she has a point.

Franz Ferdinand's album arrives packed not just with fizzing guitars, disco-influenced drums and intriguing shifts in tempo, but also memorable songs, laden with hooklines and startling riffs.

Languid and soulful, the debut album from New Jersey singer SZA is an immersive dreamscape, book-ended poignantly with her mother’s musings on the subject of control.

You sense some listeners will find Sundial too ethically complex and contrary. Hopefully many more will flock to Noname, who brings piercing intellect and joie de vivre to tough questions. A librarian, yes, but also a moon stalker.

For all the layers of irony on I Love You, Honeybear, the biggest irony of all might be that such an ostensibly knotty and confusing album’s real strength lies in something as prosaic and transparent as its author’s ability to write a beautiful melody.

Mitski’s songwriting trademarks are strong enough to transcend the stylistic revamp--arrangements that are rich without being precious (Pink in the Night), plus her terrifically mordant worldview.

It's difficult to imagine 'xx' having quite the seismic impact of that opus [Arcade Fire's debut], but the album will win many friends for its beautifully haunting, understated charms.

Beautifully realised, immaculately recorded, and one of the year's loveliest vinyl artefacts to boot.

They’re best known, though, for the swamp-rock they adopted from 1982--distorted, grimy, seedy and just a little psychotic; Swampland was as memorable a manifesto as you could hope for. But there is an awful lot of it here, and you might well find that a little of their midnight-flavoured Birthday Party-meets-Suicide-meets-Iggy stew goes quite a long way.

By streamlining their sound, Deftones have made an album that proves that ferocity is not a diminishing resource.

Wet Leg have certainly got people listening, and by channelling their sense of humour and showmanship into a series of tracks that are far more nuanced and three-dimensional than the infuriatingly repetitive song that made their name, they’ve ensured their debut album is well worth hearing – again and again and again.

Its flaws are outweighed by moments that justify the excitement. It felt like a major event before its release: more incredibly, it still does once you've heard it.

It's hard to think of another album that rocks in such an epic manner without sounding completely ridiculous.

This could be one of the unexpected successes of the year. Play it very loud.

Listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an alternately beguiling and frustrating experience. There are moments when you willingly succumb to its sound and its songwriting, counteracted by moments when you just think: oh God, here we go again.

These are beautifully elegiac songs, celebrating life’s transient joy, struggle, laughter and heartbreak, reflecting the fact that “sometimes the good die young, and sometimes they survive”.

Subtle exercises in pushing genre boundaries, these (mostly self-penned) songs deal in profundity without resort to cliche, and they deserve better than to have the life polished out of them.

The second work for 4AD by the Toronto-based, Illinois-born artist arrives with perfect timing, and tackles difficult issues with her most accessible music so far.

The songwriting paints in broader strokes than the hyper-specific character studies of the debut. What the Annies lose there they gain in fuller, more ambitious arrangements.

So many intricate ideas here, so beautifully done.

The end result is fascinating and forbidding in equal measure, and there’s clearly an argument that it’s also very timely: twisted and broken-sounding pop music for a twisted and broken era, replete with villains (the protagonist of In My View, a “greedy bugger”, actively enjoying not just the taste of his foie gras, but the cruelty of its manufacture) and lyrics that appear to swipe at nationalism and toxic masculinity, albeit obliquely.

There's something charming about the way an album about growing up in the suburban 80s gradually starts to resemble a chart rundown from 1983: the taut, post-new wave rock track, the mournful social-realist ballad, the glittering synth-pop masterpiece.

Devoid of weak tracks or ideas that don’t gel, it’s an album that sounds as if it was made by someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. .... An original pop voice: Fabiana Palladino might well be one of 2024’s best debut albums.

It succeeds because of the sheer quality of her singing and the thoughtful, varied songs from the light and then furious Kouma to Mélancholie, a highly personal reflection on sadness and solitude.

Although In Colour flirts with being overly tasteful, it usually manages to stay just the right side of strange--much like the xx themselves.

Listening to Now and Then, it’s hard to see what Harrison’s objection was in purely musical terms. A moody, reflective piano ballad, it’s clearly never going to supplant Strawberry Fields Forever or A Day in the Life in the affections of Beatles fans, but it’s a better song than Free as a Bird or Real Love. And posthumously reworked as a Beatles track, it definitely packs a greater emotional punch.

A record of remarkable delicacy.

Even at its weakest moments, Kala sounds unique--and, thrillingly, like an album that could only have been made in 2007, which is not something you can say about many albums made in 2007.

Magnificent.

A really masterful album.

Anchor is as steadfast and timeless as its title implies. Not that it is a record of ancient lore: it is a broadminded, spellbinding and often surprising collection of songs, celebrating the influences on the family and their friends.

V, on the other hand, sounds, potentially at least, like a huge mainstream hit. It performs the not inconsiderable feat of sounding commercial without losing any of the Horrors’ essence or individuality.

Isolation is a record that feels rich, self-assured and deeply personal--and one that should ensure Uchis isn’t relegated to second billing ever again.

For all its undoubted oddness, what’s striking about the album is how straightforwardly enjoyable it is.

Springsteen on Broadway is a really charming album--charming enough, in fact, to convince a Boss agnostic that there’s more to the man than they might previously have thought--and its charm rests on Springsteen’s alternating conflicting desires to let light in on what he calls “the magic trick”, and suggest that it might really be magic after all.

Made in collaboration with electronic producer Photay, Kalak is a beguiling body of work, enveloping the listener in undulating synth melodies, layered horn fanfares and vocal features – all driven forward by Korwar’s ever-present percussion.

You're left with a richly inventive album that's unlike anything else in Harvey's back catalogue.

This is dance-rock for grown-ups: extraordinary.

Róisín Machine is a sharper, more focused album than 2016’s Take Her Up to Monto; one which reins in some, but not all, of its author’s eccentricities.

You could argue that Robyn does sexy, bolshy, catchy pop so effortlessly – as evidenced again by the new tracks, especially Call Your Girlfriend – that Body Talk should have been edited into a straightforward killer pop album.