At its best, Overgrown proves that James Blake doesn't need to listen to anyone's advice. He's doing fine already.

The dazzling deftness of his fingering in the Presto and Double Presto sections evokes a kind of giddy delirium and his feathery technique wrests the tenderest of emotions from the second Sonata's Andante.

Into just nine songs, BMTH have distilled a breathtaking demonstration of their ambition, their technical skill, and their awareness of the social climate.

It's an enchanting snapshot of British rock'n'roll at its moment of greatest revelation, the point at which the Tin Pan Alley production line of ersatz Elvises was rendered utterly obsolete.

Already Disappeared, which was co-produced with Cate Le Bon in the sprawling desert expanse of Marfa, Texas, is not an easy album. It’s often bleak and experimental: Cox’s vocals burst through like distorted, burbling fragments of static, or appear muffled amid the instrumentation. This is a new side of Deerhunter that gives the listener much to contemplate.

The unusual alliance of Floridian rapper/singer Eric Biddines with south London groovemaster Paul White brings an engaging, infectious charm to Golden Ticket reminiscent of Outkast and Arrested Development.

There’s a delicacy to his songs, lazily ambling along with just a few key elements allowed to flourish; the gentle, echoey guitar winding through “You’ve Got Your Way Of Leaving”, the fuzzy, Yamaha YC30 riff that “Abandoned Buick” is built on, the melancholic piano that appears on “Wildflower”. All of this gives his soft, lilting voice space to shine, and framed by such elegant, pastoral music, his delivery--and his lyrics--do most of the emotional heavy lifting.

The Australian artist sounds like a brand new person, ready to make up for those years she played it safe. Produced by Thomas Bartlett and Annie Clark (St Vincent), Sixty Summers is a celebration of newly claimed liberty.

Where his recent albums have leant more towards long-form improvisation, 50 focuses on songs, with the warm drizzle of Chapman’s gnarled Yorkshire burr lending a bluff, worldly-wise character to American tableaux.

Guitarist Vieux Farka Toure here seeks to extend his Malian musical heritage beyond the country's borders, by collaborating with American musicians on several tracks--though never obscuring the native essence of his style.

Lurking behind the cosmicity, there’s usually a solid pop hook.

[The] debut album sparkles with invention and throbs with emotion.

The result should be something that feels rooted in nostalgia, but in fact these songs sound and feel as modern and innovative as they did when first released decades ago.

This is music that sounds as fun to make as it is to listen to. The energy here is thrilling, the strong rhythm section provided by former Detroit garage band The Greenhornes’ bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler. ... Help Us Stranger has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

She has pulled off the difficult trick of developing a new signature sound, without losing the personal perspective that separated her from the pack in the first place.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

Patti Smith's latest album, her best in a while, is held together by a spine of pieces themed around exploration.

The past typically isn’t the most comfortable place to inhabit, but Swift embodies her younger self fully, imbuing these tracks with the same immediacy and emotional heft as she did all those years ago. Country twang or not.

Moreover, Newman never sounds more quintessentially Newman than when experienced, as here, alone at the piano, with the lyrical intricacies and ironies of his songs dependent on just his laconic delivery and trenchant accompaniment for their effect.

Lindi Ortega split sessions between Nashville and Muscle Shoals. The result stretches her character in new and intriguing ways, effectively redefining Ortega as a cross between Loretta Lynn and Amy Winehouse.

Not Your Muse is an album that will lure you back time and time again, as much for its technical brilliance as any of its other qualities.

There’s so much deliciously analogue texture to cherish here – all bakelite, mahogany, coconut shells and bougainvillea, with woodwind you could drink and percussion you could tuck behind your ear. It’s 2023’s hippest release. Get up, get down, kick back to it.

Tarpaper Sky finds him relaxed and confident in his craft.

With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.

A significant improvement on both Humbug and Suck It and See, suggesting they’ve found a more satisfying rapprochement with the classic rock that tends to come with the territory over there.

Wood is one of our finest songwriters, a brilliant exponent of the topical troubadour form, and rarely on better form than he is with None the Wiser.

There’s a strange, comforting beauty to Romano’s sombre baritone.

On her best album in years, Thea Gilmore darts back and forth between sharp, intelligent pieces on dark themes--depression, loneliness, murder--and more positive songs about love and hope.

“Valid Jagger” and the Genet-referencing “Steed” are suffused with sensuous carnal urgency, while the turmoil of “Talk About It Later” is perfectly captured in the eerie, keening mellotronic strings riding its lumpy bump’n’grind.

It’s a much better album than Sea Change, just as immersive, but wiser and less indulgently wallowing.

Zeros is the sound of an artist pushing his creative development, and enjoying himself as he does so. Exciting stuff.

The first of two albums planned for 2017, From A Room: Vol. 1 builds on the success of Chris Stapleton’s Grammy-winning debut Traveller, through a similar blend of country songwriting smarts and soulful engagement.

The entire thing is produced meticulously; each track slides into the next to ensure the party never stops. Club Future Nostalgia is pure, undiluted fun.

Archer took half a decade to make this record – no surprise, then, it makes for such a wonderfully unhurried listen.

Despite the diversity of themes and styles, the sense of a confident single voice comes through much louder and clearer than before in this new context.

It’s a fitting record for the global unease of the past few months, but one that’s characteristically intimate.

The Queen Of Hearts, a sublime collection of old songs given contemporary heart transplants without ever betraying their essential original truth and spirit.

The result is probably the best work of the singer’s career, a wide-ranging survey of contemporary shortcomings in which the frequent bursts of offhand spite and bitterness are perfectly balanced by the warmth of the folk-rock arrangements.

Even among the country music gems already released this year, Stapleton’s feels like a small miracle.

The production here is superb. Tyler has never been one for traditional song structure, but on IGOR he’s like the Minotaur luring you through a maze that twists and turns around seemingly impossible corners, drawing you into the thrilling unknown. ... This is Tyler’s best work to date.

These are big themes, dealt with imaginatively by a singer and a band both operating at the peak of their powers. Album of the year?

The result, in tracks like “You Got To Run” and “No No Keshagesh”, is uniquely uplifting, a powerful affirmation of steely spirituality.

It's music that slips between the generic niches favoured by broadcasters; but isn't that exactly where the most interesting music comes from?

A great storyteller, Del Rey consistently delivers the who, what, where and when. She picks out the telling details – turquoise jewellery, the TV in the corner, “on the second floor, baby”. She sketches a backstory (“I come from a small town”) and then tells you how it all feels.

This conflicting need for independence within affection, thrown into stark relief during her self-imposed exile, is one thematic mainspring driving this Short Movie.

Accompanied by a crack hometown band for whom the intricacies of New Orleans’ distinctive second-line rhythms are clearly second nature, it’s a parade of infectious funk and soul right from the moment Bruce Springsteen romps through “Right Place Wrong Time”, to the Doctor’s closing roll through “I Walk On Guilded Splinters” and “Such A Night”.

There’s nothing revolutionary about this very solid release from a kitemarked institution of an act. But Nonetheless proves that the Pets have still got the brains, still got the hooks. And their canny cultural commentary remains on the money.

Both artists sound far more liberated here than on each of their separate solo projects; it’s a collaboration many will want to continue.

Weird, wonderful and whimsical, McCartney III finds the walrus on inspirational form.

A resounding, bitter corrective to the pleasureland fantasies of modern R&B pop and the empty braggadocio of hip-hop clichés, Key Markets may be one of the year’s emblematic albums.

When the songs do drop in tempo, they’re stripped down so the sound is soulful and raw, rather than sickly sweet.

There’s a warm indulgence about the arrangements, which augment the folksy guitars and banjos with ruminative horns, misty string drones and electronics, that speaks loudly of hope and possibility.

A record that finds the 52-year-old Grant on his most romantic, melodic form, as he looks back on the pleasures and fears he faced growing up as a gay kid in America’s Midwest. ... A lovely, generous album.

Weller’s magpie tendencies pay dividends.

It’s a magnificent return to form.

Nichols’ explanation of its development--starting out in the mould of country legends The Stanley Brothers, but metamorphosing through exposure to Malian desert-blues master Ali Farka Toure--reveals the blend of influences his music subtly weaves together.

Musically, Dark Matter is some of their catchiest and punchiest material in years. It’ll have you nodding your head – but it’ll never let you get comfortable.

Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things.

Crush is an insight into Shepherd’s brilliant mind and – such is the sheer variety of this album – a way to inspire one’s own imagination.

Like Randy Newman, the Mael brothers have a knack for voicing the hopes and regrets of diverse, sometimes unsympathetic characters; and the latitude afforded by their operatic arrangements allows them to add commentary in real time, like an instrumental Greek chorus.

Movingly prefaced by Gillian Anderson reading the novelist’s suicide note, its gently absorbing string undulations, with a faintly keening soprano occasionally audible amongst the oceanic swells, bring fiction and real life together in a deep, powerful manner.

This album’s intricate, pressurised urgency keeps Sons of Kemet at that movement’s head.

Be More Kind is certainly a step in a different direction, it still retains much of what everyone fell in love with, while appealing to a much broader audience than ever before.

This is a quietly momentous album of depth, soothing in its introspection.

It’s Blumberg’s longest commitment to a way of working, which is just as well because it is brilliant.

Though it doesn’t deliver the promised 2020 twist on the Nineties formula, beabadoobee’s debut album is a terrific new addition to the “bubblegrunge” genre.

Taking you on a journey which reveals new landmarks and perspectives each time you listen, To Love is to Live is a compelling and real cinematic picture of the emotions that life throws at us. It’s a journey you will want to relive.

It’s their best album to date.

Faithfull lifts them from the page with a compelling combination of crispness and tenderness. She doesn’t use that soporific “poetry voice”. Instead, she can make 200-year-old visions of beauty, love and death feel as urgent as the latest true-crime podcast.

Feist here cements her position as the poster-girl for intimate US indie rock, with songs that peel back the skin of the human condition.

The predatory, hypnotic swamp grooves that have been Tony Joe White’s stock-in-trade throughout his career lend a magical backwoods bayou ambience to the nine tracks of Rain Crow, on which his peculiar songcraft and grizzled Woodbine baritone conjure up gripping regional narratives.

There’s a pleasing congruence between the way that the surreal invades the ordinary in Rennie Sparks’s lyrics, and the way that Brett Sparks’ voice and music illuminates that invasion.

It’s one of the most considered and thought-provoking electronic albums of the year.

Heart, ultimately, is the key to a project which links personal, small-scale disturbances of loneliness and homesickness with broader concerns of population density and ecological sustainability.

There’s barely a moment on Distance Inbetween that doesn’t ooze new-found strength and inspiration.

The secret is their infallible way with a tune: tracks such as "Get Away" and the single "Georgia" possess a beguiling melodic charm that illuminates the lo-fi boy/girl vocal delivery of Blumberg and his sister Ilana, bringing uplift where once all might have been gloom.

On Kill the Lights, though, he makes the arduous process of self-editing sound simple; with no fat or frills, the melodies shine through in gorgeous fashion.

Realised here in more expressive interpretations, and interspersed with poems read by her daughter, the actress Gabrielle Drake, these songs are full of acute observations, deft allusions and metaphors, and the subtlest of emotional revelations, wielded with an English restraint redolent with the aromas of freshly-mowed lawns and cucumber sandwiches.

he record is a confident immersion into a genre he’s only toyed with before. And just as Good Thing never fully sacrificed Bridges’ style, neither does Gold-Digger forget his roots.

Council Skies is guaranteed to make the old fans feel right at home.

Fender drew plenty of early comparisons to Bruce Springsteen – on Hypersonic Missiles they’re entirely warranted, as much for the instrumentation as the lyricism and his vignettes of working-class struggle.

These dozen visceral tableaux of modern life are shot through with flashes of gallows humour and offhand absurdity that tempers the overall vision of a "newborn hell" peopled by "dumb Brits."

The only constants are Albarn’s drowsy presence, shuffling through songs as if shot in the neck with a tranquiliser dart, and the stout melodicism that makes …Strange Timez the finest Gorillaz album in a decade.

On All Fours is undoubtedly an intense listen, with its blistering harmonies and Pendlebury’s low murmur. They’re good for a sharp analogy, too.

Throughout this intensely poetic, introspective album, currents of guilt, regret and resolution battle in quiet turbulence, the group’s trademark harmonies and acoustic folk settings augmented with additional sonic strata.

It’s a wonderful album, and further proof that you’re never too old, if you’re good enough.

Where previous albums had been bland landfill electro-pop rendered even more indistinguishable through her heavily autotuned vocals, Rainbow offers a range of approaches, from pop and R&B to country and funk, applied to material that brings greater depth to her characteristic sassy attitude.

Sweet Heart Sweet Light is infused with an uplifting lust for life.

The band have retained their brusque character but it’s less ponderous than before, with several tracks taken at an unfeasibly rapid tempo; while Ronson has brought production clarity and a punchy funk sensibility that transforms QOTSA’s trademark robot-rock rhythms into something much more dynamic and danceable.

It's an album packed with Wordsworthian sturm und drang.

Given time and careful attention, CAPRISONGS unfurls to reveal the richest and catchiest melodies twigs has written so far. Its mystique melts into you.

Twelve Nudes is Furman’s most urgent and cathartic record to date.

It's been a long time coming, and all the more welcome for it.

When it all comes together, with the sinuous, haunting grace of "Near Death Experience Experience" or the jaunty élan of "Danse Carribe", the results more than justify the sometimes obtuse methods.

The Coup [has a] breadth of musical settings, which range from indie guitar riffs to itchy techno pulses to a string quartet and French horns.

There are echoes of Pops Staples’s gentle, miasmic guitar in the folksy gospel stylings of “Peaceful Dream” and the cyclical twang carrying the Black Lives Matter anthem “Little Bit”, warning youngsters to be careful around cops; but elsewhere the influence of Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On is paramount.

Sound & Color brims with the confident ambition of a band discovering and exploring exactly what they’re capable of.

I was rendered wonderfully weightless by a journey that delivered whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context. Trust me: the force is strong in this one.