Chaos is incoming. Yet the Welsh artist’s sixth album never fully unleashes that chaos; she restrains it, wrestles with it, and in doing so exacerbates its sense of unease. Written in complete isolation in Cardiff, Pompeii demonstrates Le Bon’s flair for the surreal, while exploring themes close to home: religious guilt, family, death.

One of the truest, wisest albums you’ll ever hear.

There's a maturity about Rumer's delivery that sets her apart from all the Duffys and Adeles.

Right from the lolloping big-beat Goth motorik of “Vessels”, there’s a confident, low-life muscularity to the album, partly recorded with Sean Lennon at his upstate New York studio.

This fourth album is produced by south London’s Paul White, and a shared taste for Talking Heads and especially Joy Division (the LP is named after their song, more than JG Ballard’s novel) takes it way off the mainstream hip-hop map.

When pondering gets this skilled, and this fruitful, the dividends far outweigh the misgivings.

Equal parts Jean Genet and Hellboy, it’s a magnificent oddity, exultant in its uniqueness, both personally and musically.

Overall, Smother finds Wild Beasts hurdling that difficult third album with some aplomb.

Robinson’s blues-rock background gives the CRB a soulful edge evident here in the funk shuffle “Behold The Seer”, where liquid guitar licks and quacking clavinet carry his invocation to “put on your dancing shoes, we got nothing to lose, it’s only space and time”.

As a record that’s as lyrically compelling as it is sonically daring, I’m All Ears is an admirable follow-up to an impressive debut.

On Skinty Fia, Fontaines DC have nailed their themes of urban decay and defiant immigrant soul. They just need to find the courage to fully emerge from the chrysalis of their indie and post-punk influences.

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck augments his usual reedy Americana stylings with some unexpected developments on Muchacho.

Ultimately, Dry Cleaning start to sound like a one-song idea dragged out over two albums. A slog.

if it is to be his last communiqué, at least the old smoothie's going down swinging.

“Sleep All Summer,” which features Archers of Loaf frontman Eric Bachmann brings his harsh vocals to the forefront of the track, which unfortunately make it challenging for Case to standout. But it’s a small flaw in a gorgeously curated record that reveals Case is never really done reinventing herself.

An absorbing, intermittently amusing album.

Two Hands is Big Thief’s best to date, and undoubtedly one of the best of the year.

White's own voice lacks the character to drive his songs, but Big Inner is a hugely impressive debut nonetheless.

Max Richter’s only motive here is beauty, drawn from all corners of his musical interests, which are many and varied. The result is a journey that takes one from Renaissance choral polyphony to the inventive precocity of teen duo Let’s Eat Grandma, via Bach and Handel, minimalism, post-rock and electronica, with nary a misstep in sound, selection or sequence. ... A rare treat.

Dacus’s warm vocals are as rich and full as ever, between upbeat album singles like “Hot & Heavy” and yearning, piano-driven ballads (“Please Stay”).

Despite the occasional challenge of big blasts of (gleefully disruptive) discord on tracks such as “trolle-gabba”, those considering dipping a toe into avant garde pop will find the waters are warm on Fossora. Give it time – it’ll grow on you. Like a fungus.

For better or worse, Duster sounds as though it was created by humans. Imperfections are packed into structures that are more comprehensible, and far less nebulous. Each crackle, echo and strained vocal makes the limitations of being human seem not only clear, but beautiful in its vulnerability.

Some are perfectly matched: the cycling strings of the poignant “The Electricity Goes Out And We Move To A Hotel” are like waves lapping at a wall, while the darting bricolage of scraping bow and “close-up” violin brings a real sense of desperation to “Dawn Of The World”. Anderson’s characteristic air of matter-of-fact wonder, meanwhile, lends a gentle charm to the epiphanies of “Everything Is Floating” and “Nothing Left But Their Names.”

After releasing all the pent-up adrenaline in the album’s first half, Paramore’s melodies lumber likeably to a sludgier, shoegazier speed after that. But the band keep things interesting by accessorising that sound with a synth flute (on “Big Man, Little Dignity”); a rattle stick tap (on “You First”); a twinkling keyboard; and low horn effect (on “Figure 8”).

For her third album as St. Vincent, Annie Clark has jettisoned the baroque string and woodwind arrangements that marked 2009's Actor, in favour of more direct, guitar-based settings.

Ultimately, it’s his own, most career-defining work to date. ... The record progresses--in every sense of the word---he allows himself to become more vulnerable, more considerate.

Close your eyes as you listen to Montero and you can almost feel the rainbow confetti falling from the ceiling and sticking to your tears. This album isn’t the creation of a gimmick-spinner. It’s an album bursting with technicolour heart.

On this, Gillian Welch's fifth album, the familiar blending of traditional sounds and moods with modern sensibilities is effortlessly sustained through songs like the mordant "The Way It Goes" ("Betsy Johnson bought the farm, stuck a needle in her arm, that's the way that it goes").

There’s been a lot of hype surrounding her since she made it on to BBC’s Sound of 2018 list. Miss Universe justifies it.

Making perfect pop isn’t easy, but Troye Sivan is a star who’s done his homework. With one foot in pop’s past and another in its present, Bloom is a record that could turn its considerate maker into one of mainstream music’s most revered and fascinating talents.

Musically, it's the same kind of electro R&B with which radio is already awash--in large part because it's produced by the same small coterie of hip producers, with Timbaland appearing to take the most prominent role amongst the likes of Detail, Jerome Harmon, Pharrell Williams and Ryan Tedder.

Her vocals – and the album itself – are dextrous, flexing between those high notes and lower registers at the most unexpected moments.

Swift has said she has no idea where she’s going from here. She doesn’t need to. But it’s a Christmas treat to hear her enjoy creating a whole magical, mystical world away from the spotlight. No reinvention required.

By avoiding clutter, both in lyrics and in instrumentation, each song feels like inhaling a gulp of cold, crisp air.

Here, Lewis does what she does best: adds the glossy sparkle of Hollywood and a sunny Californian sheen to melancholy and nostalgia, with her most luxuriantly orchestrated album yet.

This 111-track set does a commendable enough job, reflecting the extraordinary creative tumult happening behind the headline crap about gobbing and safety-pins.

Amo won’t satisfy all of BMTH’s fans, but it’s certainly accomplished, catchy and eclectic enough to bring in some new ones.

Grunge-rinsed, feminist-flipped, upcycled Fifties guitar an’ all: Crushing is a triumph.

On Everything Hits at Once, the Austin-formed indie veterans have compiled a glimmering collection of songs that date back to 2001’s Girls Can Tell, or are as recent as to come from 2017’s Hot Thoughts. There’s also a brand-new song, closer “No Bullets Spent” (built using parts from “Dracula’s Cigarette” of their Get Nice! EP), which is a low-simmering take on power and corruption.

In its commitment to euphoria, Dance Fever is an album that looks forward to the release of all the pandemic’s pent-up energy at this summer’s festivals. ... I hope she never learns to keep a lid on her wonderful wildness.

A blunt, bold album on which Hackman’s beatific voice sits atop methodically messy instrumentals.

It’s a relief then, to find that – despite Fontaines DC’s own misgivings – they still have plenty more of note to say.

Brimming with intensity and the analgesic hypnotism that is Pierce’s signature, And Nothing Hurt would make a suitably majestic final Spiritualized album.

Karine Polwart’s latest album draws together several narrative and observational threads--avian behaviour, the boggy moorland landscape near her home, problematic procreation, and a tragic early 20th century romance – into a taut allegorical message about community and progress, all set to vividly evocative arrangements by soundscaper Pippa Murphy, employing harp, celesta, balofon and percussion as required.

Providence Canyon is more muscular than its predecessor and, for the most part, a heck of a lot of fun: an 11-song LP recorded in Nashville with Cobb’s Grammy-winning producer/cousin Dave Cobb.

What comes across perhaps more strongly in this audio version of Before The Dawn is the subtly contrasting nature of the two suites, their disparate characters--entrapment versus liberation, petrifying terror versus exultant joy--reflected in the music.

Flower Boy presents a surprisingly sensitive, thoughtful, even pleasant personality.

The results are looser and less formal than might be expected, more imbued with soulful swing, slipping back and forth between the modes and incorporating ecstatic gospel-style call and response passages against a patinated backdrop of shakers, percussion, swooping synths and droning organ.

If such bittersweet reflections came packaged on a solo Albarn release, they’d probably be set to sorrowful, detached, acousto-electronic sounds. But his old friends have alchemised those sentiments into songs that elevate his suburban tristesse into moments of sheer ecstasy.

Blending Cline originals and recent covers with reimagined standards by the likes of Jerome Kern and Rodgers & Hart, all realised in beautifully enigmatic arrangements which wrap woodwind, horns, strings and tuned percussion around Cline’s guitar. Throughout, atmosphere is paramount.

This is a record that expands the idea of what Sleaford Mods could be.

In the past, Obert’s fractured lyricism has sounded too blunt against such stark instrumentation; here it’s as though his words are being bathed in moonlight, coaxed softly into being. A wonderful, lucid dream of a record.

An album that soothes, shakes and surprises at every turn.

Perhaps their greatest album since their Mercury Prize-winning breakthrough The Seldom Seen Kid, released over a decade ago.

For the most part, this is an album that restores faith in the sheer joy of music.

I Slept On the Floor is a marvellous, and intense, debut.

The warm but haunting Trouble Will Find Me will surely cement their accession to the rock mainstream.

There’s an interior dialogue throughout, which is sometimes more intriguing than musically engrossing. ... But there is transcendental beauty here to get lost in.

Kate Tempest’s follow-up to the dazzling Everybody Down is similarly ambitious in scope, fired by the same compassion and delivered with the same level of energised loquacity.

On this album, you find yourself drifting in and out. She tackles trolls, racism, overpopulation and the internet age. You crave solutions as each track closes, or perhaps more of those sublime, witty character studies she offered on Let Them Eat Chaos.

What’s impressive is how Thundercat makes this music, with its complex structures and zigzagging rhythms, so human.

Where most rock superstars sink into trad tedium by 69, Springsteen is still crafting sophisticated paeans of depth and illumination, a rock grandmaster worthy of the accolade. A must-have for anyone who has a heart.

It’s not quite godlike, but Yeezus certainly feels like it was created by a higher power.

The impression is of someone picking obsessively at an emotional scab, which is effectively what The Wall is all about.

Backed by a band who vigorously play to his timeless strengths, he sounds as sprightly as ever.

Re-Animator packs global anxiety and paranoia into exquisitely crafted songs. A superb album.

It’s a peculiar record and one that involves a push-and-pull between two extremes; on the one hand, the instrumentation is wound tight and built around sharp melodies that, at their best, are difficult to shake off--‘Bellarine’ and ‘Sister’s Jeans’ in particular are real earworms.

What’s Your Pleasure? reveals the magic that happens when an artist feels truly free.

Prelude to Ecstasy gleefully delivers.

Throughout is a sense of wonderment at being alone. Perhaps solitude is an underrated pursuit, but with Inner Song, Owens makes a highly convincing case for it.

Nomad confirms Bombino's promise, but with a few added surprises.

Not an easy listen, but a satisfying one.

Nothing about Invasion of Privacy is formulaic.

Dave Alvin's latest album may be his best yet, its tales of the flipside of the American Dream set to gritty blues riffs that speak of long months on the road.

He drifts like a spectre through a labyrinth, exploring his favourite themes of sleep, reality and the subconscious. The tones here are stark and bleak, compared to the claustrophobia of 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. ... By the end of ANIMA, you’re left wondering about those dreams that are just out of reach, but also what we risk losing when we look back.

Never once do Sons of Kemet compromise on their fiercely individual sound.

While The Breeders may not be reclaiming their youth on their latest effort, they’re not trying to: they approach All Nerve with the sensibility of a band that embraces how they’ve grown since their early punk days.

Of course, it takes a certain degree of patience (or pretension) to unpick the record entirely, but once unravelled listeners are rewarded with a dystopian world best described as sci-fi sleaze.

Although the fear was that Adam would be spreading his father’s legacy too thin, each track has the weight of a completed thought, not a sketch bulked out.

With the skirling, Arabic-tinged drone-rock textures of his band The Space Shifters augmented by cello and Seth Lakeman’s violin, the album’s miasmic charm imbues even the rockabilly standard “Bluebirds Over The Mountain” with new, mysterious depths.

On Don’t Forget Me, she’s found a beguilingly relaxed momentum.

While Negro Swan elaborates on Hynes’s best work, he remains grounded in cosy bedroom-pop by shambling drum machines, vocal compressors and gratuitous psych pedals.

This is a polished, playful album, though it has a DIY edge to it.

Staples called this his most personal record yet. Perhaps it’s this new vulnerability that makes the album so great. Or maybe it’s the whip-smart one-liners. Or the vivid storytelling. Staples will say this latest triumph is just a dude doing some different things.

While copious application of phasing offers a link to Tame Impala’s psychedelic roots, the absence of guitar wig-outs may disappoint some fans.

If the Grammy-nominated Forever was their blistering hellscape, Underneath is a glitchy, industrial wasteland.

On her latest effort, the singer-songwriter proves that the power of reinvention suits her just fine.

Nadia Reid’s 2015 debut Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs heralded the arrival of a prodigious talent, the young New Zealand singer-songwriter’s confessional material embodying an emotional intelligence and honesty akin to Laura Marling and Judee Sill, her folk leanings tempered by languid jazz inflections set among a patina of subtle sonic textures. Preservation continues in like manner.

Pre Pleasure is one of those rare records that reveals the whole artist, cheap kicks and all.

It’s excruciating in its honesty – even for Lenker, who’s hardly known for shying away from her feelings. Now she bares her pain with complete abandon. It’s quite extraordinary.

As beautiful as it is exciting, Suddenly is an uplifting album that embraces the change and shifting perspectives that life throws our way.

It's the most simple, directly dance-oriented they've been since Disco, putting down a marker for the rest of the album.

Experimentation is generally to be applauded, but too often here it works to the detriment of the songs.

While there’s a moreish quality to the off-key guitar of “Imperfect for You” and an unexpectedly golden flush of brass on “Ordinary Things”, Grande’s delicately conversational tone is often left having to compensate for her lack of strong melodic snags.

An album, that restores to R&B some of the adult concerns that powered the genre through its '70s golden era.

There's an urgency and drive about these tracks that's simply exhilarating.