Like all great psychedelic music, it perfectly evokes a deeply weird altered state, albeit that of a head wrecked by grief rather than lysergic acid diethylamide.

An exquisite album from a virtuoso band.

It’s an album for grown-ups, contemplative and wise.

In rock, technical brilliance can sometimes impede immediacy, but Code Orange use it to achieve total and thrilling omnipotence. They are a reminder that visionary music never wears a genre tag.

It’s the work of an artist who has succeeded on a big stage now working in miniature, sweating the small stuff with utterly charming results.

It’s all held together by sharp, tunefully lovely songwriting, and the likes of Make Me a Song and Everything are copper-bottomed, classy, euphoric electro pop.

At this point, Stith is more of an arranger than a songwriter--the 12 tracks are perfect little canapes of tastefulness, glorious while they last but not lingering as much more than an aftertaste of something rich and dark--but an undeniable talent lurks within.

With little more than her voice and guitars, and Hanson St. Pt 2, I Come Home to You and Ain’t Got You are quietly, perfectly crafted statements from a blossoming talent.

Even when referencing the haunting flattened fifth of Satie’s Gnossienne No 1 on pieces such as Famous Hungarians and Chico, Gonzales doesn’t linger or probe: he tells his story and gets the hell out. He’s like an Edwardian parlour pianist, reshaping the tropes of fin-de-siècle impressionism into a series of concise, three-minute pop songs. It’s very satisfying to hear.

It has taken Water From Your Eyes six years to reach a point where their music feels genuinely original, a journey that feels worth it. There’s a lesson in there.

Where Kurosky's fiercely sardonic lyrics were once couched in soaring trumpet lines and glorious powerpop hooks, now they bristle against grumbling electronics, sliding discordant chords and drunken, hazy horns.

The 10 tracks never stint on the basic stuff. There are big choruses and hooks amid the teeming sound, not least on Unlock It and Out of My Head, tracks that sound like hit singles from a slightly more adventurous, expansive alternate universe than the one the charts currently inhabit.

Kelela’s vocal stops Take Me Apart ending up as a fragmented series of sounds: consistently exquisite as it dances between lovesick confusion and shrewd sensuality.

As Suddenly underlines, [his career has] ended up somewhere exciting: in a niche of its own, where electronic auteur meets singer-songwriter, where an innate feel for pop music and the dancefloor co-exists with experimentation.

Whatever the reason, a band that sounded pretty weary eight months ago sound recharged and inspired.

Vampire Weekend suddenly sound like a band in it for the long haul.

Putting Grande on a pedestal helps no one, and the beatific, mature Eternal Sunshine brings her safely back down to earth.

Ferguson is no innovator, but her voice makes the world a slightly nicer place.

Sadly, [Ounsworth's] lyrics are a letdown.... When the tunes are this good, it certainly feels like a wasted opportunity.

Deeper, bolder, and more playful than Ariadna, it’s a robust album that mines the past for inspiration, while rooting you bodily in the present.

A streak of high-gauge shellings are a reminder of his own prowess as a club rapper, the peak being Back With a Banger, with precision-tooled syllables over a speed-garage beat from Preditah, flowing into the equally nimble Joe Bloggs.

Asunder, Sweet begins in devastation and lament, takes time to plot, then surges with a single purpose: it is resolute and defiant, much like the players themselves.

They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.

Hunter is glorious and triumphant, a record that succeeds on any terms you try to force upon it.

LaVette is the true focus, leading the fiery JB’s-esque funk of Mess About, and declaring “champagne and a joint would do me just fine” on Plan B. She’s glorious company, and when she croons sadly “I keep on rolling, but the thrill is gone” on See Through Me, the electric charge of her voice makes a liar of her.

He breaks language down into building blocks for new metaphors, exploiting every possible semantic and phonetic loophole for humour and yanking pop culture references into startling new contexts.

The old bodily pleasure is here, but it’s approached in altogether sterner, more serious ways.

The fearless try-anything spirit of Paul Welly, it seems, is still alive and well.

Though The House Always Wins unlocks a tidal wave of frustration with its nervy guitars, the change of pace can't prevent the numbness.

[Singer Guy] McKnight's baritone, which could earn him a packet doing horror movie voiceovers, injects melodrama into songs already drowning in it.

Vieux already sounds like his [father's] natural heir, with confidence, expertise and a style of his own.

Thompson has emerged from his parents shadows to deliver one of this year's best.

Lovano pulls no punches here, but his lyrical instincts are also strong; Folk Art remains as accessible as its title implies it ought to be.

It has a unifying historical and social agenda--but it's a discreet one, and the music is certainly the priority.

As often happens with Coleman's music, initial misgivings that it's smart but going nowhere are gradually supplanted by the sense of traversing an unfamiliar but welcoming landscape.

Intimate but grand, Crybaby is a triumph.

It's less introspective than Surman's past solo work has sometimes been, and it's full of buoyant, engaging lyricism.

Carroll doesn't seek to start any revolutions in the way she handles this kind of repertoire, but her musical character is so strong she doesn't need to.

For all this radio-friendliness, Waldmann's sensitivity to jazz dynamics and potential for improv remains sharp.

The best songs are his own.

There are thoughtful, highly personal songs about love, lust, ageing and identity, with the final two segued tracks lasting for 23 minutes. He's still unique.

This is cutting-edge music, but always accessible.

It’s a must for Joshua Redman and Bad Plus fans alike.

At the album’s heart are McAlinden’s plaintive vocals, which drive beautifully observed songs that are as lovely as the sun over the loch.

A powerful and original debut.

There are plenty of gems here.

The result is a varied, thoughtful set that stays well clear of political sloganeering.

The musical influences range from cumbia to gospel and soca, and songs such as On the Line or Come See Us Play are masterful examples of the band’s new sunny simplicity.

Not only is the music consistently lovely--a warm bath of sound, where tape hiss is preferred to digital cleanliness--but Baird has a sense of humour, too.

These are magical songs, brimming with understated but powerful hooks and the joys of loss lifted and intimacy shared.

The crooned, English-language Chico Buarque Song is an unashamed stab at the global pop market and less original, but this is still an impressive comeback.

These are old songs subjected to an old jazz method, but brought scintillatingly into the here and now.

There’s no bedroom R&B auteurism, rather the perfectly captured sound of 1979/80--this is a band whose wardrobes must be laden with skinny ties and sneakers. But it’s absolutely fantastic.

With his first solo album in four years, he concentrates on narrative folk ballads that are transformed by bold string and brass arrangements, with Moray adding everything from guitars to vibraphone. It works remarkable well, for the most part.

It doesn’t sound anything at all like Jefferson Airplane or Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, but it does what they did on White Rabbit and See Emily Play respectively, delivering music that sounds like it’s transmitted from the outer limits in sharp, concentrated, accessible doses. All the unearthly power, none of the excess.

It is a hypnotic combination--twee but haunting, and familiar but strange.

Their original influences were desert blues and traditional Songhai styles, but here these are transformed by tight, attacking riffs, jangling funk guitar work and the addition of brass and keyboards.

our of the eleven songs here appeared on the powerful EP he released last year, which included Damon Albarn on keyboards. But the new material is equally impressive.

The result is one of the highlights of an elegant, exquisite set.

Throughout, Waterson’s command wrenches, cossets and hugely impresses.

These are as great as any Australian pop I have heard, from Kylie Minogue to The Easybeats. Similarly, Blasko’s music often feels like it follows the lineage of mod and the core values of that style: aspirational, inspirational, forward looking, tightly wound, late-night fuelled. Every now and then, Blasko wanders into glam-stomp diva territory. And of course she owns it.

A State of Flow’s appeal is to invoke varied source material without ever sounding like empty pastiche. ... Most effective of all are tracks such as First Light and The Chapel, where the drums drop out, leaving just the warm burble of analogue synths and soft woodwind harmonies.

12 tracks, and none breaking four minutes – so no idea is wrung dry, and nothing overplayed. Long may the late flowering of Perrett continue.

Their musical settings give these songs new shoots. Louise’s guitar imitates patterns from an oscillating modular synthesiser as banjo figures loop round; the effect shows how closely nature and electronics can connect. Her reverb-slathered recorders on Blacksmith and Ca the Yowes occasionally veer into Pan Pipe Moods territory, but generally the ambient miasma gives the songs a magical lift.

his is a record that tries to bottle the intricate energy of jazz improvisation into an orchestrated studio production when it has always been the freedom of live performance that has marked out Boyd as an artist. If he makes room for more of that in the studio, we would have a mighty record.

A remarkable, shamanic talent.

Raymond’s similarly fearsome precision often feels both portentous and perfect.

The studio set’s sound balance is warm and spacious, the live takes less so (Bennink’s irrepressible energy sometimes overdominates). These tracks catch the saxophone colossus in gale-force form with partners right on his case, and the accompanying essays and images expand on that fascinating story.

Marçal’s voice is just as playful and experimental as the production, veering from the melodic softness of Ladra, in which it counters the heavily distorted instrumentation, to the impassioned spoken word of Crash, and her warped lower register of Oi, Cat. It’s her mutable voice that gives this wildly varied album its sense of coherence – as well as its message.

Ocean is at times a quiet, almost private interchange, but a rich one.

In the end, everything from the softest improvised ballads to the most exuberantly hard-stomping blues draw grateful accolades – the sound of an audience’s thanks for a one-off music that belonged only to their presence with Jarrett, in that space, on that unique evening.

Endure reaches towards fun.

Strays brilliantly rattles through country, psych and Patti Smith-style poetic rock’n’roll.

It all hits just the right note between accessible and experimental: idiosyncratic and intricate yet straightforwardly enjoyable, Variables is unwavering in its brilliance.

Y’Y finds Freitas at his most wide-ranging, embodying soft natural ambience as well as dramatic action on the piano. It is an album of mood music that refuses to settle, leaving the listener moved and invigorated.

It's a strange state of affairs, a band that really come into their own when they background their greatest asset. But there's a lesson in there: sometimes, less is more.

Whether Memories Are Now shifts her from a cult concern, and recipient of handshakes and hugs from heavy friends, into something else remains to be seen, but there is something compellingly unique and hard to pigeonhole here.

The vast sonic palette perhaps mirrors the way that a devastating loss can heighten the senses. Fizzing electro, hazy shoegaze, funk basslines, electronica and even an 80s pop sax solo blend together into a bittersweet, happy-sad soundtrack.

Eccentric, bombastic heavy metal at its finest.

Minus the blandly pretty chimes of an instrumental entitled ---, this is a magical record, one that instils a mindful awareness of your body while also taking you utterly outside of it.

Junglepussy is always knowing, always tongue-in-cheek, but JP3 makes a powerful point about black womanhood and self-love--this record has it in abundance. It is a triumph of slick rap production at its best, and rappers at their most enrapturing.

Secret Wars is a sobering demonstration of what repetition can do in the wrong hands, as the Brooklyn trio funnel the most endurance-testing excesses of Suicide, Can, Sonic Youth and stoner rock into a joyless, oppressive piece of work.

It plays out like a counterpoint to the wracked alienation of Bon Iver’s recent Auto-Tune-heavy 22, A Million, filled with warmth, wistful nostalgia and soft, autumnal light.

Nothing can detract from the monumental density and weight of these hostile and misanthropic psych-jams.

Seventeen Going Under is an album rooted in 2021 that, in spirit at least, seems to look back 40-something years, to the brief early 80s period when Top of the Pops played host to the Specials and the Jam. The result is really powerful.

The more time you spend with it, the more its structures make sense, the more the melodies begin to sparkle, the more the sense of some unsought truth fighting its way out becomes apparent.

Only a shortage of thematic surprises--given its extravagant length--keeps it from being quite the seismically jazz-changing departure that some admirers are claiming.

It ends with Out of My Mind Just in Time, a 10-minute closer that starts as a fairly boring ballad but gradually unravels into the tripped-out weirdness on which New Amerykah Part One was founded. You could argue that's New Amerykah Part Two in a nutshell: as with Badu herself, all is gratifyingly not as it first appeared.

Parks’s debut contains some of the most electrifying and viscerally gorgeous music put to record this year. She may have been inspired by north African one-stringed fiddle-playing and ethnomusicology more generally, but Parks wears her erudition lightly.

Sheer Mag give you everything--socially conscious, sexually confident rock’n’roll that nods to pub rock, punk, funk, blues and 80s indie--and make it even more than the sum of its parts.

Making use of relentless, repeated riffs, matched again chanting drum patterns and occasional guitar solos, their often lengthy songs are exhilarating, edgy and at times downright spooky.

Holter doesn’t drop quite enough of these joyful crumbs to cajole the listener through the entirety of this 90-minute epic--yet there remains a glut of beauty and braininess in store for those willing to stick around.

Your endurance for this level of intensity may vary, though Crampton’s precision is captivating--her touch always elemental rather than bludgeoning. Plus, the harsh textures are thrown into sharp relief by the album’s stunning calmer mome.

Her voice remains her most devastating tool, and she discovers new depths to her gift in layered harmonies and raw recordings.

The stillness and intimacy of each live recording is singularly enthralling.

Her guitar and piano now come with string arrangements and a big, satin-finish production, which takes baby steps towards a mainstream audience, although perhaps some of her magical fragility is being lost.

Miller’s lyrics possess a plainness that occasionally yields moments of heart-rending simplicity, but frequently wither into triteness and banality. Yet when his words fail him, his voice is able to communicate the pain more effectively.

As a whole it’s slightly too laid back to match the masterpiece status of 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition, but Brown is still leaving encrusted marks on the hall of fame.