Tundra is a techno album as contemplation, not in in the sense that it is soft or gentle (it most certainly isn't), but in the way that it allows you to plug in with your surroundings, letting the earth and sky open up around you.

This is an album significantly more than what it seems to be, at first, on the surface. To some, it will sound like just another melodic punk album with a predilection for pop--an angry retort at the grievances of being in your twenties--but it’s the kind of record that will stir and inspire you during moments of existential crisis.

The Frenchman leaves enough space for everything to live harmoniously together. Melodies and countermelodies run free, but nothing ever feels overblown or unnecessary.

Much more the clenched fist than Gish, their second effort saw an increase in intensity, ballast, grit, ambition and sheer scale.

This is the pop we need; considered, vital, comforting, spiritual.

Mind Trap is a triumph of feelings over ideas, of making sounds bigger and more mobile than the spaces (or heads) that contain them.

A musical punch-up from start to finish, Goldblade choose their targets well as one blow is delivered after another. You might want to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.

From The Sea To The Land Beyond (whether encountered with or without the moving image) is a potent and poetic exploration of our own human mortality in contrast with the unyielding permanence of nature and the sea.

Man, It Feels Like Space Again is grandiose in the delivery, quixotic in the extreme, but, most of all, it's a helluva lot of fun to listen to.

Perhaps the finest distillation to date of the various elements that comprise the group's distinctive sound.

Most importantly, as the band builds momentum on track after track, they never miss an opportunity to draw unexpected emotion from their grooves. Time and time again, they excel at finding and seizing every opportunity to fully capitalise on the underlying beauty of these compositions. Likewise, they never undervalue or underestimate the sheer power of gentleness.

It's a work that, while being their most accessible to date, is still dense enough to reward patience and repeated listens.

In sharing her experience of doing this, James’ most exploratory album also proves to be her most open-hearted.

This is a remarkable record--it is wildly experimental and as comforting as a soft embrace. The most interesting art almost always has a sense of duality, and Slowly Paradise is no different; where it radically differs is in the lack of combat between those opposing forces.

Deeper Woods comes wholly recommended to fans of House And Land, likewise the reverse. While the two projects recall differing subsets of folk music history, they both sound relevant and vital, no matter how many decades back they reach.

This new collaboration is a wonderful demonstration and crystallization of the best aspects of [Burger and Voigt's] combined canons.

Its huge, cocaine-pricked melodies remain present and correct throughout, but the tracks themselves are among his best so far.

Sleaford Mods' eleventh album is a remarkable leap on from 2017's English Tapas, a record of consolidation that addressed the strange situation that the duo found themselves in--going from a niche concern more accustomed to playing alongside noise artists suddenly given column inches and selling out massive venues. This progress has come hand in hand with a keener knack for more fully developed tunes to bolster Williamson's hectoring. It is also, frequently, a hilarious record.

Previously, Brian Leeds made music that you could dance to. Now he makes music to lose yourself in.

What’s heartening about the first part of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost is that this formula has not become tired. Rather, the band are adding to it incrementally and progressing into ever more interesting territory.

Healing is a Miracle is easily Barwick's most intimate – and intentioned – foray in years.

Herein lies Róisín Machine’s beauty at its most uncomplicated: every single one of its songs implores you to dance, and in doing so implores you also to forget the human fragility of which you are so incessantly reminded. Vicariously through Róisín Murphy – be she god, machine, person, or something floating between them – we can forget our fragile bodies, losing ourselves in a blissful utopia, even if only for an hour.

From first note to last, The Fiery Margin is a recording that exudes complete confidence.

Mantras build and collapse on themselves, choruses rise and fall, and enveloping you with a rich seam of guitar pop.

The voices are huskier, the music juicer, the innocence of yore starting to chip away as Paradise sees them explore the dark side of vice and life. They're are all the better for it.

Where Have You In My Wilderness faithfully stuck to pop structures and verse-chorus-verse dynamics, Aviary appears through-composed, as though its songs were written purely according to whatever felt like the right thing to do next, and not dictated by any of Holter’s more traditionalist habits. This doesn’t make it a difficult listen, though--this is an album steeped in beauty, a celebration of sound.

There’s plenty of intricacy in the intimacy of this record. In the end, though, The Age Of Pleasure is an easier ride. Less densely packed with ideas but it’s no bother.

Restless Idylls doesn't transcend, or greatly advance the template set out by Tropic of Cancer's past work, but it refines that template to its purest and most evocative expression to date.