Shaking the Habitual's problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society.

There aren’t really bad Spoon albums. There are really good Spoon albums and there are excellent Spoon albums. Lucifer on the Sofa is one of the latter. What a delight.

This isn’t spiky postpunk like their last album--it’s more unhinged: they’ve swapped hooks for a dirgy epicness, distortion bulldozes through, sometimes flaring angrily, punctured by driving, truly affecting drums. As poignant as those images of a decrepit Motor City, once brilliant, now decayed.

One of the most understated and charming albums of the year.

This is an upbeat album, as if LaVere is looking back on her youthful adventures with a twinkle in her eye.

You couldn’t call Badbea wildly original; it’s filled with references to Collins’s musical touchstones (northern soul; the Velvet Underground) and an explicit melodic link to Big Star’s Feel in I’m OK Jack. But Collins is in fine voice, and it’s always a pleasure to have him back.

Simon’s lyrics are finely honed, from the conversational The Werewolf to the confessional title track, a moving exploration of his creative process.

Mr Morale & the Big Steppers is absolutely crammed with lyrical and musical ideas. Its opening tracks don’t so much play as teem. ... An album that leaves the listener feeling almost punch-drunk at its conclusion.

50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having.

The singing gives you goosebumps.

Lyrically, he's never been better.

Sunny yet substantive, Anderson .Paak’s second studio album shows he is as at home settling into a breezy club groove over euphoric brass (Am I Wrong, featuring Schoolboy Q) or unleashing James Brown-esque funk yelps as he is waxing autobiographical tales of family hardship.

Simon's openness and spirit of inquiry ensure that So Beautiful Or So What is never the work of a man slouched in complacency.

Portishead's third album is initially more a record to admire than to love, its muscular synthesisers, drum breaks and abrupt endings keeping the tension high. But after several listens, Third's majesty unfurls.

Like the Dorset woods they describe, I Inside the Old Year Dying is eerily forbidding, but intoxicating, and easy to lose yourself in.

It’s all hugely impressive and striking, the familiar made subtly unfamiliar, Clark’s famously incendiary guitar playing spinning off at unexpected and occasionally atonal tangents, its effect simultaneously heady and disturbing.

The Overload is a starting point for a number of routes, rather than a perfectly formed end in itself. Certainly, there are flashes of a smartness and depth to Smith’s writing that go beyond scabrous one-liners.

This exhilarating set is a real find, for Jaco fans and left-field big-band followers alike.

The music offers further evidence of how far outside rap's usual strictures West operates. OutKast aside, mainstream hip-hop doesn't really do ambiguity or irony, but just as West's arrogance occasionally appears to be a protracted joke, Late Registration finds him in thrillingly subversive form, working in the production booth to undercut tracks' messages and shifting their meanings.

A slow-burn apocalypse of ennui and injustice crackles through the sensational fourth album from these Detroit post-punks.

At times, the bloodlust in Craig Finn's growl gets too thirsty. But it's the album's closing lyric - "Man, we make our own movies" - that reveals the secret of this band's special powers.

You find yourself simultaneously applauding its elegance and the evident thought and craftsmanship that went into making it, while quietly wishing it would get a move on. When it does, it’s fantastic.

Hail to the Thief's big drawback has less to do with its similarity to its predecessor than the sense that Radiohead's famed gloominess is becoming self-parodic.

You never find yourself in the presence of music that sounds self-consciously clever. Everything flows easily, nothing jars.

Lke most 23-track albums, Un Verano Sin Ti could have used a nip and a tuck. But when it hits its heights, it leaves you puzzled at Britain’s lack of interest in Bad Bunny.

Say Something Loving pits its depiction of a relationship in crisis against a lovely, rolling, dubby rhythm track and samples of bouffant-haired 70s soft-rock duo Alessi. It’s an old trick, but, like the rest of I See You, it really works.

That confidence is the thing that binds Midnights together. There’s a sure-footedness about Swift’s songwriting, filled with subtle, brilliant touches.

Clarke, McCoy and co have made one of 2018’s most ambitious and urgent albums.

The result is almost laughably beautiful.

Who'd have thought you could describe a metal band as "intriguing"?

Purple is a far more focused and fiery beast; both a return to the stormy riffing and skewed melodies of old and a subtle but unmistakable lunge for mainstream glory. It’s a balance they pull off brilliantly.

On a concept album about lovelessness, he creates a cavernous feeling of loneliness using soundscapes similar to those Nigel Godrich explores. There’s a warmth too.

Pompeii is noticeably more subdued than much of her earlier work. Where once there was a playfulness in the arrangements, the slow and austere songs here sound as if they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.

The albums Smith released before his probable suicide in 2003 had a bruised, fragile quality, and these sparse songs... are no different.

[It] has the pleasing sense of an album made to the artist's vision rather than the focus-grouped demands of the marketplace: almost uniquely in its chosen milleu, Seasons of My Soul sounds like a hit album without sounding like all the other hit albums.

There will be more considered and crafted albums released this year, but few that are so much fun.

The Drift is a record that demands a lot of work and repays tenfold.

Existing at the point where intense focus becomes total nihilism, the unique, funny Working Class Woman depicts Davidson’s fight to resist homogeneity, and the cost of doing so.

His best work since the Clash's London Calling.

It’s all a bit wonderful, actually.

His voice, agitatedly squawking and yet dainty as a ballerina, is one of contemporary music’s greatest pleasures. He quotes Outkast’s BOB on Today, and is the true successor to their trailblazing spirit.

You’re not struck by a sense of dry conceptualising, more her way with a smart, witty lyric.

His lyrics tend to overshadow his skills as a tunesmith or his musical eclecticism, but if you listen to the more manageable two-CD set, you’re struck by how melodically strong and varied his output sounds.

His voice isn't quite what it was, but his writing is distinctive as ever.

Smother isn't conventional chart material, but will make their burgeoning cult impossible to ignore.

Grand, long and bold--Newsom makes it sound like the first word she sings here: easy.

A fine selection of thoughtful songs.

Fans had to wait eight years for Mogoya, while Sangaré expanded her business empire; but this unplugged sequel is better still.

Megan Thee Stallion’s talents are a moveable feast – she sounds as at home snarling over the minimal 80s gangsta rap of Girls in the Hood as she does with Beyoncé’s voice weaving around hers on Savage Remix.

It’s an intense listen, demanding in the sense that you struggle to imagine putting it on in the background. Better to stick your headphones on and give Ultra Truth your undivided attention, something it amply rewards.

The air of two songwriters on rare form, confidently challenging each other to greater heights, is inescapable.

The musical emphasis subtly shifts, from track to track and within tracks to create something that feels rather greater than the sum of its parts.

I’m All Ears is about abandoning fear and leaping boldly towards desire. It is remarkable.

In a polarised era, there’s something cheering about Fontaines DC’s bold refusal to join in, to deal instead in shades of grey and equivocation. There’s also something bold about their disinclination to rely on the most immediate aspect of their sound.

Via the fluttering sketches of David Longstreth's early solo releases and 2007's remarkable Black Flag quasi-tribute album, Rise Above, they arrive at this confounding, beautiful record.

It's honest, heartfelt and warm.

Never resorting to cliche, they continue to be just as inspired by the universal themes of love, politics and nature as they always have been. Their musical delivery is just as heartfelt and forceful for it.

Incomprehensible but irresistible.

It is hardly user-friendly, but Bubblegum is too good an album to languish in the margins. There is something thrilling in its unpredictable lurches between darkness and light, noise and melody. In every sense, Bubblegum is a staggering record.

Forgoing the arena-rock of recent years for something close to the barbed punk of their "Holy Bible" era--though less disjointed this time, and studded with hooks you could hang a feather boa from--they've made a complex but very listenable record.

Pusha T takes a tour through the violence of the past 18 months, from Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore to the shocking phone videos that document death in damning detail but rarely lead to convictions. With Darkest Before Dawn, Pusha T has created his own hip-hop Trojan horse.

For all their playfulness, the group's melancholy weighs down their music with an emotional gravitas that is rare among anorak bands.

Dry Cleaning’s second album isn’t a radical departure from last year’s outstanding New Long Leg. Florence Shaw still has the laconic, deadpan delivery of someone idly chatting over a garden fence. However, everything is slightly more refined, melodious and focused.

These are songs to learn and sing as loudly, messily and drunkenly as possible.

The first disc of this double CD jangles nerves with pop songs which dissect personal issues through wider problems facing America, but the stunning second finds meaning to it all in a series of supernaturally beautiful ballads.

Latest recruits Kenny Andrews (lead guitar) and Terry Butler (bass) have brought renewed focus to both songwriting and sound.

Celebration Day captures a more streamlined band--men in their 60s determined to prove they can still cut it. Over 16 songs and two hours, they do just that.

If you’re willing to meet Bob Vylan on their rough-and-ready terms, The Price of Life offers a decent return on investment.

The Hold Steady couldn't sound less fashionable if they set up a branch of C&A, but their bar-room rock - all power chords and fist-pumping choruses - is a perfect, if counter intuitive accompaniment to Finn's downbeat tales.

Elaenia flits, swoops and soars beautifully, impossible to pin down, let alone cage.

This is an album from an artist who refuses to sugarcoat human experience. That Woods is able to set her unflinching insight to hook-filled, restlessly genre-blending tunes makes her a talent not to be sniffed at.

Hell-On, Case’s seventh album, addresses [when a newspaper invaded her privacy] at the hands of selfish writers and cruel men--and finds Case asserting the facts of her life with daring candour and wit.

There’s something hugely impressive about coming up with an album that somehow manages to be both incredibly discomfiting and easy to listen to.

Big Thief’s power is in how they understand duality, both in the macro (with their two albums), and in the micro details. This record is best heard alongside its twin, but it’s equally powerful alone.

The title track (from Iyer’s part in Karole Armitage’s 2011 ballet UnEasy) turns quiet, low-end murmurs into Oh’s tranquil, unhurried bass solo and then fiery exchanges with the drums. The hip, distantly boppish Configurations develops some of the most exciting collective improv on a set rammed with it.

It may well be the most off-putting album released this year. After playing it, there seems every chance it is the also the most astonishing.

For all the 40-year-old reference points, Big Inner never feels like a pastiche; it's audibly more than the sum of its influences, in the same manner as Lambchop's Nixon.

It bears a lot of replaying.

This is a truly lovely album, sweet without being saccharine, and a perfect accompaniment to the spring sunshine.

Listening to the album feels like witnessing a fireworks display, each song exploding to reveal intricate patterns before quickly vanishing as the next one launches.

There's a recurring sense of enforced jollity.

There’s so little light here that the cheeky Sugar Daddy is forgivable--plus there’s a forthrightness to their exhortations to “saddle up and ride” that adds to their theme of women without time to waste.

This isn’t only for completists – anyone will thrill to Russell, whose ability to anchor wandering thought with melodic resolution is as strong as Bob Dylan’s. His naivety is palpable here, and might be a bit much for some, with the title track and Just Regular People truly childlike. But that guileless stance, staring up at the world in confusion, hurt and wonder, is what sets Russell apart.

Landfall, however, manages to eke some joy and inspiration from this grim tragedy.

It’s not perfect – the title track is seven and a half minutes you might better use boiling eggs – but it is its own small wonder, as every Yo La Tengo album seems to be.

Tomorrow's Harvest may not shout for your attention, but it certainly rewards it.

He seamlessly merges interweaving vocals with the sounds of pastoral English folk and lush, 4ADesque dreampop.

There is scope for flashes of greater dynamism but in their consistency, Aftab, Iyer and Ismaily reveal the beauty in quietude.

This Is Why stirs 00s alt-rock into the mix: the band have mentioned Bloc Party and Foals as influences. It’s not a combination that works without fail: there are tracks where the teaming of scratchy guitars and big pop hooks recalls the moment when the post-punk sound of 00s indie crashed into a Britpop-ish desire to make the BBC Radio 1 A-list, with irksome results – particularly on the single C’est Comme Ça. But you’re far more frequently struck by the deftness with which they weave the various aspects of their sound together.

Soothing, moving, occasionally disquieting and utterly immersive, Sundown suggests its predecessor was something else entirely: merely the first step of an entirely unlikely and entirely delightful career renaissance.

It's a little top-heavy, and meanders towards the end, but it's smart, demanding and unique, too.

The album features samples of earthquakes, shovels, shredders and screaming peacocks – an industrial-era Bosch painting turned into music. This nightmare is expertly arranged throughout, though in the second half the maximalism starts to feel like a means of papering over weak songwriting.

As well as the solid rhythms, the anchor amid the sonic burble is singer Alice Merida Richards. Her voice has touches of Broadcast’s Trish Keenan, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, and Julia Holter.

It hits an impressively eclectic sweet spot between hip-hop and pop, leaping confidently from trap beats and martial horns to grinding, distorted hard rock; from music that recalls early 00s R&B to stadium ballads. The genre-hopping is unified by melodies. Song for song, Montero has more hooks – and stickier ones – than any other big rap album thus far released in 2021.

While claims they’ve got a “pop-like accessibility” feel overstated, those who like the loud bits of Mogwai and the more melodic moments of Dillinger Escape Plan will have found the metal band for them.

Welch writes fine, timeless melodies, and her mostly gloomy lyrics are performed in suitably mournful, no-nonsense style.

It's an A-list lineup, but focused on making unique music rather than parading technicalities.

This unexpectedly full-on set is all about celebrating and reinventing, not polishing silverware.