More confident in their own musical skins, it all adds together to make Every Open Eye a second album even better than the first.

There’s a constant feeling that instead of edging towards going one bigger, this band have embraced their calling. And if Foals didn’t already have enough songs in their arsenal to top festival bills, they’ve just added ten more.

‘Blue Weekend’ is an album that revels in its feelings. The dynamics are constantly shifting, often moving from tender sparsity to luxurious sonic opulence in the same song, but everything feels like the absolute peak of what it could be.

Bad Contestant is a stunning debut with two very opposing personalities.

Handling pop punch with the same rightful care as punk rebellion, Sløtface aren’t indebted to any of their touchstones. Instead they’re mashing them to new, distinctive effect.

II is an advert to be a whole new generation’s Sonic Youth or Nirvana and on this performance, you’d be foolish not to buy in.

Change, escape and identity are not easy things to navigate, and ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ is the dark, unsettling, sprawling beauty that comes out of it.

Though some of their peers may have waned on their long, drawn out returns, Sleater-Kinney have only grown stronger in their time off. Ten years away has made them more essential than ever. Nostalgia be dammed.

Too is a big, dumb-smart, happy-sad, universally-specific beast of a record, then.

In its refusal to sound anything like its alt-pop predecessors, ‘With A Hammer’ is a breath of fresh air: innovative yet familiar, lackadaisically cool yet brave, a brilliant and sparkling window into the future. Its idiosyncrasies, consistently and wonderfully oxymoronic, are its greatest strength.

A record that perfectly proves how much strength is in vulnerability, it’s undeniably Hayley’s most powerful move yet.

The Horrors go several steps further. Fragments of the group's past link together and the future illuminates in unison. Luminous is the album they've been destined to make.

If Skepta’s ‘Konnichiwa’ was grime’s breakthrough, Gang Signs & Prayer is its blockbuster--an all-encompassing ride through human experience that’ll stand tall for decades.

Quite frankly, it’s a towering edifice of electronic brilliance.

In short, Night Time, My Time is stunning.

As a whole, Villains is the Californian filthmongers’ most danceable offering yet--and all the better for it.

Not just a return to form from a group whose recent catalogue has been somewhat patchy, but a true classic, ‘Saviors’ is Green Day at their musical and thematic best.

After Saturation's freewheeling spirit and an insatiable appetite for fun, Iridescence had to confront the past nine months, and make a statement as to how the band move forward. It does so emphatically.

Highlight ‘By Myself’ sings of relapsing after getting sober, but is set over a simply joyous ska-tinged musical romp - musical and lyrical contradictions are all over Almost Free, but it gains its power from dancing through the hard times with a massive grin on your face. The musical experimentation of the record continues throughout.

Along with the equally exceptional St Vincent which came before it, this is the moment that St Vincent enters the fabled realm reserved for the greats.

The power and ferocity with which they do so across the album--as well as its rollocking instrumentation and clear social conscience--makes it a triumph.

They’ve created a huge, rich, brilliant documentation of youth, one which will last for years.

It’s an absolute tour de force, a record full of drama and emotion and pleasure and pain.

‘This Is Why’ is a blistering melding pot of artistry.

Witty, sexy, confident, and charged with live energy, I’m Not Your Man is the sound of Marika Hackman making the album she always needed to make.

They have crafted a new geography of their own, pulling together all of their strengths and vulnerabilities.

Ratworld is that rarest of beasts--a debut album that’s got a backstory running deeper than all six seasons of Lost, but still sounds like it’s delivered without any requirement for effort whatsoever.

The quartet’s ability to instrumentally weave among each other has always been one of their great strengths, and here (with the addition of new bassist Holly Mullineaux) the band sound more unified than ever, able to spin strange sonic tales all the better as a result. A triumph.