Nas sounds as energized as ever in his current era and he’s dealing some serious bars across the 15 tracks composing Magic 3. At the same time, it sounds as if the Hit-Boy partnership is finally losing steam--something evident in a record that is stretched thin (cough 15 tracks) and inconsistent, capable of reaching commendable heights and consequently worrying depths.

Laugh Track makes several welcome adjustments to their present-day formula, but it’s hardly a wholesale reorientation – and make no mistake, the National are still very much in need of one.

There’s no other band out there that can write such hopeless lyrics while also managing to make me feel so alive.

Following the explosive opening, there are a fair few standout tracks and moments in the likes of "Chasing the Drum" and "Tioga Pass", but the stylings and influences begin to blur together into something of an easy-listening haze, the sequencing becomes a bit stop-start, and momentum flags.

End is better than passable - I’ve heard far worse even in its genre. But, as things are, this record feels redundant. Explosions in the Sky, at this stage of their careers, need to give us a whole lot more in order to really deliver. Maybe that’s not fair, but let me tell ya somethin’, kid: life ain’t always fair.

The good-not-great quality of much of The Land… is at once its strong and weak point, enhancing the highlights but exposing concrete shortcomings. Simultaneously, this album is a highly productive move for Mitski, opening up a wide array of new possibilities for future endeavours.

If you’re the type of music fan who loves every facet of their music to be vacant of genuine emotion, creativity and expression, this album will satiate your cravings, you hungry listener.

On SOUR she was a budding superstar; on GUTS, her sound has fully bloomed.

Bird Machine impresses both as an unexpectedly resurrected album with that classic Sparklehorse feel, and as a distinct entity which sees the project move in a comparatively polished and refined direction. Even without the mournful context of its release, it’s one of the best indie albums of the year.

everything is alive feels practically self-contained, like a Slowdive record blissfully unaware it is a Slowdive record, most likely for the better. Simultaneously, the fact that everything is alive could have been a very different album is hard to dismiss. The songs that contain explicit traces of this minimal electronic framework are easily the strongest cuts and, most importantly, feel like a productive midway point between “Slowdive Slowdiving” and whatever Pygmalion worshippers keep hoping for.

Perfect Saviors probably could have been the quote best rock album ever. It should have been bigger. It should have been better. It could have been everything.

Appaloosa Bones demonstrates that Gregory Alan Isakov remains standing as an essential voice in the folk scene.

Not that his previous POP songs weren't POP, but never before has he sounded so confidently chart-ready in a chorus of his. Likewise, "Justify Your Life" features trip-hop beats, slabs of chillwave layers, and a reverb-full soundscape in an uncompromisingly banging way.

Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 ends up a glorified, if very welcome, double-single as such: its satisfaction lies less in an end-to-end listen and much more in the binge mileage of its cornerstone tracks. Aphex Twin's sound is in as vitalised as it's ever been, but this release also suggests that a little contortion is more vital to his matrix than some may have thought.

This band’s tedium, their mercilessly polished tones, their big bucks mastering, their humourless refusal to spotlight any glorious points of absurdity within their own writing, their algorithmic combination of the most derivative parts of how many separate genres into a no less unremarkable whole - it all makes for one of the most irksome feints at artistry I’ve heard this decade and feels oriented towards an impressionable audience with sickeningly calculated precision.

The Loveliest Time is the most B-sideular ‘album’ experience I’ve found in my paws so far this year: its consistency is gaseous, its stylistic hopscotch is even more erratic than that of its sister album, it is a product of the same sessions, and - most importantly - it contains a large chunk of the weakest Carly Rae Jepsen tracks to date.

Pure Music is transparently imperfect but remarkably enjoyable, while showcasing a lot of creativity, delivered in a spirit of wild abandon. True to form, Strange Ranger aren’t resting on their laurels. Who knows where they’ll go next.

At once exquisitely beautiful and deeply tragic, and imbued with a bucolic sense of a rural England full of villages and country lanes and woods and fields, I Am Not There Anymore is a journey that you won’t readily forget. Flaws and all, it’s both a worthy comeback for an excellent band and one of the year’s finest releases.

This record nourishes Oxbow's most morose tendencies more generously than ever, and the fruit they bear is oh-so-flatteringly proportioned.

It’s a record so entrenched in referencing other music that it ceases to be artistic expression, and is entirely separated from expression as a concept, floating in its own sterility. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for whichever craven startup CEO cooked this one up in the experience machine; you won’t be able to unplug fast enough.

The Ballad of Darren presents itself as probably the most humble collection in the band’s catalog. With considerable pretentiousness stripped off, we catch a glimpse of sustained vulnerability rarely seen on their records. The sound is familiar, yet miles away from previous efforts.

The bulk of EVERGREEN does little more than yeeting a distorted riff at you, copy-pasting vocal melodies on top and subsequently repeating a few lines by way of a chorus (and, if you’re lucky, this is the part where Gunn’s vocals get a little grittier, yay!). While this affords the record an inherent sense of cohesion, none of the songs here are particularly memorable or uh, good.

As a piece of esoteric yet engrossing art, I Inside The Old Year Dying marks one of Harvey’s finest creations yet.

It may not contain anything that the casual Swift listener or average radio-goer will be breaking down doors to hear, but with Speak Now (Taylor's Version), she delivers an admirable and very intimate effort that will be extremely rewarding to her most devoted fans.

Pastel is exchanged for matt, or maybe gloss, via 27(!) instruments, all played/recorded/produced/mixed by our BOI, not that you could tell he’s been that busy. “Memory Palace” is simplicity itself, Melotron and Mustel celeste sneaking betwixt bashful oaken strumming.

In The End It Always Does is a mixed bag, but I wouldn’t describe it as a minefield; it’s more like a diamond mine and a minefield are engaged in a land dispute. Amber Bain’s ethereal vocals and meticulously crafted melodies make this an album that I certainly recommend checking out, if only for the allure of the stronger tracks that constitute a little over half of the record.

Chaos for the Fly might be morose, but it’s also very touching, and full of delicate little moments which make the record more than just the sum of its parts. Frankly, my biggest gripe is that its thirty-six minute runtime is a little too trim, and an epic five-plus minute storytelling track would’ve definitely enhanced the experience.

As far as contemplative, comparatively low-energy releases go, this is one of the finest in years, carefully-crafted and delicate but full of nuance and color. However you’d like to classify Aspirin Sun, it’s a damn good record.