Combat Sports reaffirms The Vaccines as one of the most exciting British bands around--and one absolutely still worth pestering friends about.

Whether it’s dark and driving or elegant and echoing, Vultures is at all points capable of igniting a spark in your gut that’ll burn until there’s nothing left.

V isn’t a huge reinvention, more a subtle reboot, and a move which has worked out perfectly. The Horrors are hardly new to making brilliant albums--they did that with their previous three--but V is better than them all.

An album that is truly magical, Man Made is a stand-out debut. After giving everyone a bite of the fruit with previous releases “Downers” and “Hu Man”, this is the full showcase of her impeccable talent.

Here she is not just a musician, but a generational talent capable of creating transfixing otherworlds and, with The Gods We Can Touch, an ethereal masterpiece.

For The First Time is ferocious and endlessly intelligent, highly considered and wildly improvised, eked out with bristling tension and set alight with a burning intensity and a knowing smile.

The prevailing feeling throughout LOGGERHEAD is one of punk, through its take-no-prisoners sound, and its desire to bring kindred spirits together as a community. “I think I’m just going through an exfoliation of my thoughts and experiences,” Romans-Hopcraft said last year, about his then still-in-the-making debut. Never has that sounded more urgent, more wholly unique, and more fiercely individual.

It really is a stunning record, a completely unexpected treat and an album of the year contender, no doubt.

Very few albums are worth such a long wait, though, but blackSUMMERS’night is one of them--it’s an album that should live forever, purely because it sounds so detached from time.

It’s beautifully crafted, and you’ve really not heard anything like it before.

She forges a mighty hammer and her album has a thunderous resonance for our times.

A concept album this is not, but the with the veins running deep with recurring themes, as a second album, Davies has managed to construct a weighty signifier of impassable change. ... Packing a punch musically; twisting and turning; immersing with piano interludes branching elegantly from the albums introductory roots (“All Shall Be Well”), the softest nature is held for later cut “5am” which feels as vulnerable as it does honest.

Wondrous Bughouse is a delicious collage: provocative, allusive and consistently engaging.

On the whole, Freedom represents a watershed moment for Damon McMahon.

You Signed Up For This is candidly aware of the simple fact that you just don’t have everything right just yet. Combining this with Peters' constantly evolving and sharp song writing, and a braver, more mature sound, the singer-songwriter proves she’s one tough act to follow.

Unsurprisingly, there’s an overarching sense of melancholy, but the more you listen, the more you realise that she’s deftly poetic with her words in a way that’s clearly inspired by some of the great writers of the 20th Century.

Jones places a premium on tonal variance and equilibrium throughout Visions; it’s a wise chess move, ensuring an absorbing listen with every spin.

It can range from snarky and contemptuous to comforting and reassured, but every time you listen to The Overload you notice and feel something new.

Lovingly co-produced with Paul (Mansun) Draper, Davies is on startling form throughout, layering spellbinding vocal harmonies and turning her hand to a long list of instruments with names few will even recognise.

She’s delivered an album full of unrepentant honesty, decadent instrumental highs, and an unguarded emotional core. Few other artists can so perfectly capture the dizzying life-or-death stakes of those who love too young and too hard.

With clever twists of post-production, Makaya chops and resamples not only his own band but also choice words and phrases of each stanza, making the poetry a percussive element and drawing out emphasis. A decade after his death, Gil Scot-Heron’s final oeuvre has finally settled into something great.

Desire is the sound of a group who have thoroughly found themselves and sees them standing supremely confident, whilst retaining elements of older material including “Wonderful Life” and “Miracle”. Seemingly, 2017 is the year of the upbeat indie dance record, and it belongs to Hurts.

As a collection of music, There’s A Dream I’ve Been Saving is excellent, but as a story it is a true revelation.

Koze’s superb imagination makes him able to mesh genres and styles that in the normal world shouldn’t work, but this is Koze’s world and we are just living in it--for now at least.

Singles is an effortless wonder. Each and every track runs its course avoiding any pitfalls.

It combines all of Doja’s past lives with some more heavy-hitting punchlines. It feels like a stark departure from her previous commercial efforts, while still showcasing some clear hits like “Paint The Town Red”, “Gun”, “Go Off”

Everything Was Beautiful shows Spiritualized accessing yet another artistic plateau, forging an exemplary hybridization of unshakeable songs and sublimely assembled music.

Whip smart, furious and, most importantly, fun, Songs of Praise is the first essential album of 2018. And what an album it is.