This is a gauzy and sometimes deceptively accessible album about falling all the way to the bottom and wondering if there’s any way back.

Water often reminds me of Soused, the excellent Sunn O))) and Scott Walker collaboration. They are both albums where there seems to be so much unavoidable emotional distress on first listen but eventually it can sound exultant. The initial atonality is replaced by the surrender to a different way of treating harmony.

It takes a couple of plays for the songs to individually stand out. Simon le Bon’s still remarkably youthful voice remains the most recognisable element but John Taylor’s bass and Nick Rhodes’s ear for keyboard shade come into their own, while Roger Taylor retains his steady presence on drums.

Lily We Need to Talk Now is an unexpected piece of artwork that manages to reflect the liberating now of boundaryless music. With influences from decades of genres and artists – from 70s to 90s to 00s and from The Sugarcubes to Pixies to beabadoobee – this album pieces together the excitement of discovering fresh music, making for a rollercoaster of a listening session.

This is a brave album about how to move on from grief. It’s challenging but totally compelling.

Hushed and Grim is not only Mastodon’s longest, but also their most personal album to date. An impressive and brutal addition to the canon, even if making it to the other side can sometimes feel like a more unassailable task than traversing Blood Mountain itself.

It’s simultaneously unnerving and feel-good, witty and disconsolate. And though recorded two years ago, somehow it captures the essence of what it is to be a conscious entity negotiating the world in 2021.

Actually, You Can might tumble headfirst into doomsday, but Deerhoof’s day of reckoning sounds just as botanical and prismatic and baroque as they proclaim.

Though the album very occasionally loses its way, getting mired in space-age jazz stylings, it is undoubtedly a superb album that greatly expands on the classic Vanishing Twin sound and mixes it with a sense of experimentation that only occasionally fumbles.

This sprawling double LP’s sheer intensity doesn’t feel intended to alienate the listener, so much as accompany them in processing the mind frying enormity of everything.

Taylor is also creating epic pop from this mess, and the soundworld she has built with her producer, Johan Kalberg, is her lyrical support system. ... The uneasy stuff is louder this time around – beefier, darker – but Taylor has twisted it to become a solid component of her strength.

It is these three songs [MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA, Pool Hopping and Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism] that, in their hugeness, tend to overshadow the rest of the record on initial listens. Though the remaining tracks should not be missed or dismissed because of that.

Much like her previous work, the imperfections, leftfield leanings, and laidback nuances of the lo-fi aesthetic on Colourgrade demonstrate that modern love songs can hit places you never thought they had the integrity to ever reach.

As these final notes trail off, Leaving None But Small Birds instills a trembling sigh, which resonates long after the last notes die.

It joins the annals of desolate and broken works, like Skeleton Tree and Purple Mountains. It’s also an album whose rewards have to be worked for, and that makes it a challenging listen.

What Saint Etienne articulate across I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is that thirty-one years into their career, their propensity to completely envelop their audience is as palpable as ever. Without hesitation, their latest offering is amongst their finest work. One that will certainly sound and feel as resonant and elevating over the next three decades and beyond.

Change is musically daring but familiar – the austere yet affective electronic backdrops elicit Broadcast in their prime, or High Scores-era Boards of Canada.

They leave a lot of room for the listener to complete the work. A choose your own adventure where we stay safely this side of the page, sipping our coffee. ... Your mileage may vary but for me the second half of the album contains the better music.

Every track on this album has its moment in time, its place in life and its meaning in itself.

Moot!’s frill-free tautness makes it anathema for casual listening, while repaying your commanded attention not with the spectacular structures of build-up, breakdown, or resolution, but with a sustained, flattening tension which would be dissatisfying were it not so completely gripping.

While Queendom isn't the most impactful musical project of the year, it is definitely enjoyable - a light song sequence that follows the classical traits of the 90s and 00s western pop, when celebrating yourself and talking about mellow love through R&B-pop compositions (like 'Hello, Sunset') were part of the playbook. And it is full of simple, catchy and relatable lyrics with well-thought-out hooks.

It's menacing, calming, earthy and completely otherworldly. And an appropriately unnerving conclusion to a project that, for all its bruises and emotional scarring, find a way to be flawless. And which confirms Lorde as continuing to inhabit a space-time continuum entirely of her own devising.

The Old Fabled River is an exceptional record, a powerful example of a living folk music based on exchanging stories and remaking cultures in the process.

While perhaps not as original or unpredictable as their previous monoliths, Infinite Granite is undoubtedly another epic, engrossing and engulfing piece.

This album sneaks up on you. It swiftly moves from easy-listening to music to obsess over. If you listen to it through cheap earphones on a crowded train, the intricacy of the production behind this album could be missed. It’s only when you invest attention, time (and good speakers) that you truly begin to revel in its wonders. To be able to relate with the messiness of Gartland’s emotional journey is to feel at one with a talented artist.

Still Slipping Vol. 1 bounces effortlessly from one style to another, from the intricate 2-step of 'swag' to the melancholic house of 'better'. There's a nod to '80s post-punk on 'playground', and gloriously throaty verses from James Messiah and Goya Gumbani on 'swag' and 'playground' respectively. Rather than a bold new direction, the mixtape feels like a peek behind the curtain, turning the dancefloor monolith into somebody we can all relate to, with Mum calling up to be sweet about something she doesn't quite understand.

For longstanding Mega Bog fans, Life, and Another immediately stands out as one of Birgy’s finest records from start to finish. There’s a maturation to the stylistic choices and general trajectory of the instrumentation.

The majority of Sinner Get Ready unfolds in beautiful, regal form that belies the sheer horror of the words. ... Hayter saves the most accessible moments for last, almost like a reward for those who have trekked through the excruciating stories that have preceded.

By far the most approachable Liars record in years. While there's a lyrical focus on looking inward and notions of personal development, inspired in part by Andrew's recent exploration of microdosing psylocybin, it's less insular and abstract than the previous record.

Happier Than Ever is a record of many layers and nuances. It is primarily a deep dive into the dark side of overnight celebrity and the internet’s industrial-scale objectification of young stars. But the project is also is a study in loneliness and a baroque, at times almost gothic, picking apart of adolescent melancholia. It’s Lindsay Anderson directing an episode of HBO’s Euphoria. Or Edward Gorey illustrating Judy Blume.

The beauty of Sling is immediately apparent, but it is so much more than ‘pretty’, Clairo is letting us in to her safe space and reminding us to nurture one another. She is creating songs that throw an arm (or paw) around you and share the weight of your experiences.

Some of their most accelerating work across their career path thus far. ‘Forest of Your Problems (Outro)’ offers a friendly, until next time. A great third studio album.

To my ears, the songs here still feel like detailed, unfolding odysseys rather than studio happenstance but, no matter their method, the results catch lightening in a bottle, again.

Mirror II sounds so much more sophisticated, self-assured and, dare I say, grown up.

What makes Busy Guy extraordinary is its scorched-earth intimacy. Fretwell’s voice rarely rises above a whisper; his guitar playing consists largely of skeletal fugues so minimalistic it’s as if they are barely there at all. Yet oceans of pain and lifetimes of regret are packed into an LP that hooks a cable to the listener’s soul and cranks the voltage all the way up.

This album is a demonstration of how BigHit Music’s in-house producers and TXT members' composing skills blend smoothly to experiment with sound in clever but relatable narratives. ... The Chaos Chapter: Freeze is a surreal album in which a mix of sounds, music genres, and metaphorical lyrics seem out of shape – until you step to the right distance to appreciate the whole painting.

The Get Up Sequences Part One has its moments of unrestrained incandescence, it is true. However, a tremendous melancholy comes gusting through too. ... And it confirms that, for those who wish to splice up their life, The Go! Team are still masters of cut ‘n paste heartache.

Their 2018 debut, Not With That Attitude, was a winning combination of bile, big hooks, and a great sense of humor and, although they didn’t need to, the band has expanded their palette on Contender and it’s paid off handsomely.

Things crunch, grunt, and whinny with much effort and abandon, the band’s gurning labours hitting a sweet spot somewhere between Mudhoney and The Groundhogs. Occasionally they stretch so far for Earthless-like levels of jam band transcendence that you might be able to hear their vertebrae pop – were it not, of course, all so frighteningly loud.

The result is a suite of textured deep space drones haunted by existential anxieties.

Fatigue deserves to be listened to in succession. It needs you to sit down with a cup of tea, it needs to be envisioned and thought through. You need to let it embody a change for you, and take you somewhere else, where you can sit in the duality of your own emotions. Each song is preceded by an interlude to piece the emotions of each track together.

Former Things indicates more ambition, comfort in shifting tones and overall sophistication in its production which ultimately proves a more rewarding listen. A thought-provoking and reaffirming record.

In Outlaw R&B, Night Beats staple their genre-binding sound across eleven great tunes.

Black Metal 2 ends at an uncertain crossroads, while sonically the record is perhaps Blunt’s most easy to engage with.

It is electronic music unencumbered by genre rules and the specificity of signification. It is at once completely familiar and pleasingly fresh.

The album isn’t uplifting in a simplistic sense. Often, it’s blotted with shadows. In her lyrics, Zauner has a fondness for zig-zagging from ebullient to devastating, often when you least expect it (“With my luck you’ll be dead within the year / I’ve come to expect it,” she croons on ‘In Hell’). And yet at a molecular level, Jubilee is a rush.

The ground covered on Black to the Future is immense. The visceral passages really slash deep, the moments of unbridled energy are exhilarating, and the meditative moments reach crescendos of total beauty.

WINK is CHAI’s most comforting listen to date, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left behind the fun or the bold, animated bite of it all. Instead, it’s a record that builds on everything they’ve done before, understanding their strengths together as a group and then growing something more immersive and insightful from it – all while remaining deliciously joyful.

Each track is a universe of its own, doing what art should do: using its own virtual space as an experimental testing ground to try those limits of taboo and impossibility that remain limited IRL. ... Cavalcade may prove to be one of the most accomplished albums of 2021; future classic of a happily undefined now-core genre. Humanity, level up. If they are giving us any taste of the immediate future, let the roaring twenties roll.

There’s a few too many repeated melodies, and too few differing musical moods. Still, this is a reliably impressive package from a man who knows his business, and crucially still has something to say. It’s Prime Numan in his prime.

A gradual unfolding of creative consciousness in real-time, long evolving in a psychotropic loop of self-invention, her journey culminates on The Tunnel and the Clearing in hard-earned clarity.

The collaborations are abundant throughout Reflection too and mark some of James’ most assured offerings: her skills as a producer (particularly on drill tracks) are especially impressive. Through working with other creatives from afar, James starts to arrive at something that resembles peace.

‘Wited, Still and All…’ is a soft and broken, but strangely discordant cut, while ‘Of This Ilk’ and ‘Vital’ allow the more musically daring sides of the group to surface, with start-stop rhythms and razing riffs fencing the mass of metal aftershocks. As the album nears its end, there is a sense of something huge moving past just beyond the reach of senses, leaving a trail of subtle melodies behind. A way forward where there was none before.

Overall, this is a rewarding and captivating body of work. The Waves Pt.1 is a testament to Kele Okereke’s adaptability as an artist.

The nine tracks on Frontera isolate Fly Pan Am’s part in the project, yet taking the multi- out of multimedia doesn’t dilute the themes seared into the music.

Medieval Femme plays to its strengths, with only a couple of disjointed cuts amongst an excellent collection, and even those keeping a tight ship on runtime.

There is not a song on Build A Problem that does not deserve its place on the album. They all have the potential to be favourites, depending on the day, your mood and what you want from a song. Smoothly woven from dodie’s most intimate moments, Build a Problem has it all.

While at times Flat White Moon struggles to match the awe-striking levels of the album’s opening track, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

Made Out of Sound might be one of the finest things either Corsano or Orcutt has done, which is no mean feat.

If you want to think about grubby late mid-century New York, go and read Just Kids or something. If you want a high-production, catchy album that’s cheesy, fun, and occasionally a bit naff, buy Daddy’s Home.

A superhuman album celebratory to a soul very sad to have lost.

One of the finest debut albums this century. ... Bright Green Field is a brave and daring debut album that manages to mix experimental and avant-garde influences smack bang next to bouncy indie-disco post-punk motifs. I can’t get over how grand and great it is.

This record is full of deft brass lines, clever little melodies and memorable refrains. Because at the root of everything For Those I Love writes great pop songs.

It’s an exploratory, ebullient album from start to finish, and one that embodies the insatiable curiosity that led him to work with so many artists from so many different genres, a celebration of collective endeavour and of life itself.

Complex and sophisticated, if i could make it go quiet is one of the most enticing new albums I have heard in a long time.

In places, when compared to their earlier works, it sometimes feels like songs don’t get the space to grow and unfold. Other than that, this is a sublime and beguiling record, and a milestone in the evolution of a unique creative voice.

Very programmatic, AAI allows Mouse on Mars to fully flesh out their ever implicit techno-humanist sonic philosophy, a certain anarcho-progressivism with a tech-utopian bent. The record serves as a magnifying glass to their career-long preoccupations.

a softer focus feels like a breakthrough: simultaneously freer and more composed, closer and more abstract, sweeter and more caustic.

The constant sense of apnoea and claustrophobia saturating all his previous work is gone, leaving space for a rediscovered breathing. Sprouting, springing, beaming, the lyrics follow the course of the seasons, paralleling the introspective thoughts of a man’s healing and the ever-beguiling cycle of nature. There is a light that filters through the notes, irradiating the sonic landscape like sun rays at dawn.

Make no mistake, this is gloriously hypnotic stuff, a fall into a rhythmic vortex that unscrews your head so it can pop your brain in the fridge. And, as the album progresses – most notably on the seductive ‘One Two’ – the realisation creeps in that what was originally considered abrasive has become a soothing form of chaos. An odd mix, for sure, but one that comes as sharp relief to the trying tedium of lockdown life.

It’s sombre, yes, but it’s also calm and reflective – a moment to pause and consider where those of us opposed to the systems that have created our current crises go from here.

With Deep England, she drills into the marrow of a nation that in 2021 doesn’t really know itself and possibly doesn’t want to. The result is a fever dream splicing of Pan’s Labyrinth and a cider binge beneath an underpass that has got out of hand and turned unexpectedly nasty.

William Doyle’s Great Spans Of Muddy Time fuses the emotional honesty of 1960s girl groups with muscular electronica to create an atmosphere of absolute sincerity and uncertainty soaked in pop yearning. It is an album that truly sinks in.

You won’t hear a better pop album this year. I doubt you’ll hear a better rap album this year.

It astonished ... It is a celebration of sound at its finest and most pure: from the smallest scratch to cathartic crescendos, from spiralling improv to contemplative silences. Every note, whisper, bleep, and shift is significant. It is marvellously multifaceted but never obnoxious: a refreshing, one-of-a-kind conversation between jazz, classical, and electronic.

The density of soil has been scraped back, giving each song a lightness and an ability to breathe.

The group offers a dose of nostalgia for an era that never quite existed in this form previously in any case. Either way, this is medicine that you can imagine lighting up the most varied of settings. Yol is a transportive listen, offering portals to environments few could have ever envisaged.

The Art of Losing has been in the can for a couple of years now, delayed by the pandemic. It’s been worth the wait: this is a special record. They don’t come along very often. Quotable, immersive, moving, imaginative, delicate, and dramatic. A stellar achievement.

The thirteen tracks that make up the album are wonderfully wonky. They are also incredibly catchy, with subtle sci-fi tinges to them. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the South London post-punk outfit. On All Fours is the strongest release to date.

‘Future Times’ is a comforting record, delivered by a highly-skilled musician taking on the epically harsh world of the 2020s, and facing off against the dark forces with the pure power of mind-melting music. That kind of optimism is in short supply and we need more of what Plankton Wat has to offer us: mind expansion, inner calm, and irresistible fuzz.

As well as being aware of frequencies in our immediate surroundings, deep listening observes cosmological energies. Angel Tears In Sunlight seems to resonate with Oliveros' observations by interweaving distant galaxies with her own rapturously intimate sonic sphere. One of Oliveros' greatest assertions is that is not only the ear that listens – you listen with your whole body.

Hidden mysteries of not, it’s impossible to be anything but charmed by this record.

There is a confidence in their songwriting here that was missing on their debut. More risks are taken – mostly lyrically – and it pays off. The downside to the album is that It’s all subtle shades of the same colour, without much variation. At thirty-two-minutes long this doesn’t grate too much, but the inclusion of a slower ballad or another upbeat instrumental would have been a nice addition.

While there are many masterful qualities to what Tamara Lindeman has created with this record, more of the introspective numbers such as ‘Trust’ and ‘Robber’ would have made for a more sonically rewarding body of work. Otherwise, this is a vivid and vibrant return.

Revisiting these deep-cuts from their catalogue and presenting them to audiences in an official capacity some twenty years later reaffirms an appreciation for Stereolab’s inimitable innovation. ... In many ways, delving into Electrically Possessed is akin to experiencing The Wizard of Oz for the first time. Initially, the aural stimulation is overwhelming, much like the shock of yellow bricks set to guide the audience through the fantastical world.

Rather than sounding phoned-in, Melvins make this louche lack of effort seem joyous and energetic, and though it can indeed feel uncomfortable, there is a sense that that’s what they want. They were making in-jokes for themselves, and the fun sludge bits were just by-products. Nonetheless, this record works, and those who vibe with the arrogance and the spikiness of Buzz and co. will warm to being joshed a little.

Where in the past, Cave used artistic practice to escape "whatever it was that was pursuing me," on Carnage, he and Warren Ellis confront it head on. The result is a record that sometimes collapses under the weight of that task, but is nonetheless a remarkable demonstration of their artistic power.

It’s smart, angry, and visceral folksong, and perhaps exactly what we need just now as the trappings of our hypermodern culture fail us and the world starts to burn. A record that shows us our errors and pulls us back to the land makes for a fruitful medicine.

Mogwai’s attitude towards experimentalism shows in the darker corners, the nooks and crannies of their sound where little glow worms of ideas grow and decay. Elsewhere this is well-orchestrated, subtle and playful, with the confidence to indulge both themselves and the audience.

From start to finish, A Common Turn takes you through Savage’s liberating highs, all whilst throwing you her turbulent lows – a raw and emotive album, to say the least.

TYRON feels like a necessary release for the controversial rapper. Even though he’s placed himself as the centre of attention this time around, there is still plenty of societal commentary to be gleaned from his autobiographical missives – and it’s no less urgent or energising.

Moving at a satisfyingly glacial pace, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings is an album that reveals its rewards over multiple listens.

Warm and inviting, produced with precision and a glossy, futurist sheen. Largely written on the road before lockdown, it winds between moods, never settling on a single tone or genre. For the most part, it's joyful stuff. ... A couple of moments don't quite stick.

Carpenter, Cody and Davies have united to form an extremely tight, polished and powerful piece of thematic music with the third volume of Lost Themes. With much less to focus on then a full-length feature Carpenter really elevates and draws the most out of the fewer ingredients he works with and in doing so, truly distils the essence of his craft.

Chapter 3… is a record that has their trademark sense of restless grandeur and tough tunefulness.

A powerful, impressively unconventional, predominantly instrumental suite, linking sludge and doom metal with a desolate reading of jazz.

While Murray's lyrics are consciously evoking images of old timey Americana – desolate arcades, voodoo rites, thunder in the mountains – your mileage will vary on whether you find it charming or cheesy. Regardless, The Last Exit is a road trip worth taking. Murray’s sultry croon is effortlessly affecting.

It’s not one for complacent listening as they are quick to pull the carpet from under you. Songs have a tendency to morph into storms. It’s turbulent, but also exhilarating. You can not help but feel rejuvenated after listening to it. With this record there’s certainly a good time to be had.