Skeleton Tree might be, to flip the phrase, a mile deep and an inch wide. The lyrics are often beautiful, and when he can be concrete, Cave conjures unforgettable, living images.

This album is littered with strangely beautiful imagery. ... Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is an exciting new milestone for Polachek.

Taylor might not have been coming for the crown of pop star of the year, but with Prioritise Pleasure she’s certainly taken it.

It's a fascinating second album from a band that feel genuinely unpredictable.

You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To exhibits a group confidently at their zenith with no signs of slowing down. Many predicted this could be the heavy release of the year – and it’s bloody hard to argue with that.

An album that captures the rise and fall of restless youth in a fluorescent, dazzling city.

Her voice is excellent throughout – defiant and unwavering over Littmann's production – and sonically it is patient, cinematic and hopeful. A refuge, perhaps, for anyone who has been on the receiving end of the confounding and cosmic world of grief.

This record, like the band behind it, repeatedly and successfully refuses genrefication in its ambitiousness.

If I don't make it, I love u is magnificent, the peak of their recorded output to date, the sound of a band solidifying and pushing forward into something genuinely their own. A truly brilliant piece of work.

The album is truly extraordinary – it is a once-in-a-career masterpiece that synthesises difference through abstracted self-observation. It is a vehicle for making meaning, an invitation to try again.

There is a timeless and timely feel to these tunes and it sounds as if something stately is stirring in West Kirby. Good health, indeed.

Converge may be slowing down in their output, but this is perhaps the band's best record since You Fail Me, keeping in mind the three albums in-between are not to be sniffed at.

That! Feels Good! is a revved-up hedonistic joyride that extols and celebrates the sensual necessity of pleasure. Jessie is firmly in her lane here, and it’s a satisfying drive from start to finish.

The results are unlike anything the band has produced before.

This is a carefully crafted, complex pop record that benefits from the production contributions of industry heavyweights like Nicole Morier (Britney), but undeniably it’s the new-fangled delivery and star appeal of Rina Sawayama that gives this album its sparkling essence.

On their debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, the duo show their beating heart, without sacrificing the chaos or creativity. ... It’s a labyrinth of a pop album.

Florist already feels like an album to live and grow with. It's a warm hug which asks the listener to smell the flowers every now and then.

Heart Under is an ear-piercing piece of intuitively crafted work.

All Mirrors retains a good amount of iconic devastation. Olsen’s timeless, musing lyrics are wise as ever, if perhaps more cynical than before. Yet there is a new, almost paradoxical, quality to the sound, as though it comes both from the past and the future.

The band’s excellent 2019 record Patience was full of self-flagellation, guttural outpouring and railing against abuse and injustice, but it ended on the hopeful budding of new love, a journey of breakdown and renewal. They continue on this record to wrap up extreme emotion in sonic confection.

It’s testament to Clark’s self-assured and enigmatic oeuvre: indeed, she still holds surprises for us yet.

These musical twists and turns can occasionally detract from Christinzio’s lyrics, which veer between gallows humour and vulnerability. When the latter half of the album gives his words more room to breathe, their impact becomes even greater.

As its title suggests, Chris is a supremely confident introduction to the next phase of Christine and the Queens.

She can’t do any wrong at the minute; this is timeless songwriting, and Tigers Blood is a worthy successor to Saint Cloud.

Pink Noise is a John Hughes soundtrack just waiting for its film to be written and it’s a bold return from an artist with a point to prove.

Meaty riffs, expertly orchestrated songwriting skills, arena-championing choruses, and delicate experimentation with metal nuances – this is Slipknot, and this is undoubtedly a Slipknot record. If you want We Are Not Your Kind to be heavy, you got it – but there’s far more craftsmanship hidden beneath the distortion.

This debut LP sees English Teacher beginning to consolidate and take the already-delicious sounds introduced on their Polyawkward EP to even greater heights.

When Bright Green Field follows in the footsteps of their best track The Cleaner – supercharging the banal and mundane with vigour and purpose – it rips, mixing genres like straight-ahead indie-rock with funk and jazz, and exploring ambient and textural backdrops which make their now-home Warp apt.