Chaos Angel stays inherently pure, expertly produced in a way that Hawke’s airy vocals are free to dance over a gathering of enchanting instrumentation. Still, her poetic writing achievements rest at the foreground of the record, demonstrating a detailed surveillance of her life, in order to acquire some valuable closure in the face of chaos.

While the set brims with a sense of unrest and dislocation, it also rouses an implicit exuberance: though we suffer profoundly, art is redemptive, life is inexplicably beautiful.

Tidal Memory Exo is overwhelming, detailed, textured, and wildly bottom-loaded, but then it continues.

A reprise of the title track with added orchestration and extended strings only serves as a reminder of how lushly the album began and highlights what’s been missing in the latter half. Kahn as the producer can appear less critical than the songwriter and while the whole album possesses an innate beauty some material is very spartan and has you craving more actual songs.

Shaw ultimately takes comfort in the idea that Joe is both an inspiration and a guiding presence for this new music resulting in the band's most creative-sounding and personal release to date.

On a surface level, the melancholy strum of a slow acoustic guitar can come across as another translator for yet more sad songs, yet Atwell tenderly works on herself beneath its topline, where more complexities also lie, refusing to change for the acceptance of others on tracks such as the steadily-paced "Fan Favourite", even taking on crunchy guitars in "Release Myself" for a change in pace.

Even in moving away from indie rock for the time being, Bird keeps his literary flair with him in reappropriating the songs that he is covering. That is the one aspect that makes the whole album subtly magical in its own way even if it might not break as much ground as one would have hoped for.

The renewed cohesion and collaboration may have saved the band during this album’s recording process, airing grievances and settling put-off tensions, but the resulting homogeny of their sound lacks real bite and feels muddied.

A couple of contemporary artists with a similar method come to mind: Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens. Like their celebrated works, Hit Me Hard and Soft is equal parts nuanced and multidimensional.

They’re Zayn’s stories but they’re shared in such an honest, straightforward yet compelling manner that they feel like your own.

Most of the material is pleasant at best, and while the lack of overcompensation is appreciated, it makes the group’s lyrical deficits that much more noticeable than on previous records.

Unrestricted to any interpretation, the record leaves enormous space for thought experiments and imagination (the closer “Out of Time” suggests just as much). Step back a few paces to look at it in full, and you’ll find something that celebrates freedom of opinion and individualism.

The record is described as Gibbons’ “most personal work to date”, dealing with experiences of grief, change, and hopelessness – and it makes for a very conceptually decisive project, with a distinctive vocabulary of motion and stasis, weight and lightness.

Home Counties have firmly asserted themselves as some of today’s brightest musical minds.

This is Bey’s talent as an instrumental storyteller; genres are sequenced and held for their parts, yet respected like caged animals. Organs are the sound of the beginning, pianos of a demise; a dance groove is the motion of the middle, and forthright attitudes are evergreen.

Blending the raw energy of punk with the gritty realism of folk, the result being a potent double pint of catharsis and confrontation. There’s seemingly several albums worth of material on display, from industrial poetry to showmanship indie, held together by its narrative which howls to the struggles of the everyman, from the depths of addiction to the despair of a nation in decline.

Death Jokes is a complex chasm of fractured, intertwining ideas, songs that grasp for purpose, songs with drops of sorts.

After a string of EPs, Chinouriri arrives at her first full-length with confidence and ease. Devastation has never sounded so fun.

Vu didn’t invent tragi-pop (she wouldn’t deny her numerous progenitors, from Cat Power to Julien Baker); however, her airy melodicism and meme-friendly lyrics, coupled with her technically grounded yet mercurial voice, make for a signature presence.

Nobody needs to know the details of Lipa’s real life to lend her songs weight, but there should still be something in her performance, delivery, songwriting or production that sets them apart from platitudes, from background noise.

Calling this album consistently satisfying might come off like a dig. Quite the opposite, actually. It's the mark of a classic.

t's ultimately perhaps telling that the most compelling departures from set templates are more naturally aligned with the territory of Washington’s past triumphs.

If you’ve heard a previous Moctar record and pieced together the best bits, you’ll have an imitation of Funeral for Justice’s righteous glory, but if you haven’t, use this record as a roadmap in discovering the previous odd-decade of Moctar’s talent.

Pratt has long been a consummate texturalist; mining the pop playbook in resourceful ways, she’s now an exemplary tunesmith as well – the result is sublime.

On his third album, he continues crafting his inimitable blend of pop, R&B, and electronica, ferociously cementing his place amongst the very best at work today.

Porij’s confident and assured debut delves into their love for not settling for one genre. Taking you on an adventure through emotions and soundscapes, it’s a fluid record that never stands still. It will appease long-time fans with its infectious and catchy grooves, as well as welcoming new fans to the party with open arms.

While the record feels like a new iteration, it is also an evolution of a deeply familiar form. At the record’s core, it ultimately is more of Hovvdy and at their best, these songs envelop the listener in the same way Hovvdy songs always have.

Ultimately the album's uneven tempo and uncertainty at its heart make it unclear what Hyperdrama wants to be and to whom they still appeal.