Though freer than the critically acclaimed Ungodly Hour, it is also less focused. Her performance rises to greater heights, but her music doesn’t always rise with her. Still, it is a work laden with potential.

It is Depeche Mode’s most self-aware album in a long time – and their most memorable. At 50 minutes and 12 songs, the album is lean and humble, paying respect to the band’s past while also returning to the tension that made their best material so enjoyable.

Del Rey’s longest album to date by some distance – and not without the occasionally questionable choice. But the best moments, which abound, solidify Del Rey as one of the all-time greats.

With His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering, Mutinta completes her heroic triptych. Processing her own fury and the fury stashed in the world’s memory. ... Leaving us stunned, devastated, ecstatic.

If V betrays decadence, it doesn’t manifest itself as sprawl or poor editing – much less a notional narrative. Its languidness is actually its charm, a direct contrast to almost anything in UMO’s fidgety catalog save “Jello And Juggernauts” from the 2011 debut.

It never stands still and stops to rest – for better and for worse. It’s somewhat of a transitionary moment. Even if it remains to be seen what destination it leads to, there’s still enough interesting material here to fulfill its destiny.

While Fantasy is not a perfect return by any means, it’s a return that makes you remember M83’s power to combat the static void at the core of many of us. In place of that void, listeners are filled with the feeling that they’re part of something bigger and freed — free to fall in love with dreaming again.

This record – like most dark art – is not merely meant as an extreme experience, but a critique of structure that commodifies human bodies.

Though far from being a retread, Should’ve Learned bears some of the most evocative and affecting music of the quintet’s output thus far.

Radical Romantics offers enough detail, emotion, and vigour to tide us over until the next inevitable shapeshifting moment.

UGLY is surely his most intense, unvarnished, unrelenting personal excavation

nature morte is a wonderful, difficult album that requires patience and indulgence. The rewards are huge, though.

Cracker Island’s forgettable, milquetoast assembly line of tracks – though crisply and professionally engineered – proves that having it all shouldn’t always mean using it all.

It’s somehow arguably her most wide-ranging album (stylistically and topically) while also feeling remarkably of a piece; succinct even.

While Strange Dance is a rather nocturnal album, those broad and distant lyrics, aided by the atmospheric yet intricate instrumentation, mean there are many more moods and times that it can fit.

Food for Worms‘ greatest strength is to chronicle how incredible it can feel to be in the presence of this band, at this moment. It feels as if you could almost reach out and touch them, rip open their shirts and feel their sweat.

Algiers are unpredictable yet methodical, driving with eyes closed and reacting to the wheel’s vibrations instead of making it shake.

It’s one of the band’s biggest and best sounding records to date. The band doesn’t lack in sound traditionally, but Bayles’ production takes their grandest qualities and runs them through a meat grinder.

Another successful release from Khotin, an artist who, armed with just his laptop and a small home studio, has the ability to make you laugh, dance, reflect and space out all during the same album.

For those who can appreciate his brew of melodic honesty and sentimental openness, The Vivian Line provides one of the purest pop experiences you’re likely to have all year.

At times it feels maybe a little too familiar sonically or compositionally, but all in all, The Land, The Water, The Sky is a potent portrait of a musician who only gets more impressive with each release.

It certainly has a more present percussive beat than Eucalyptus, however its compositions are allowed to stretch out, with five out of seven tracks here passing the five-minute mark (only two of Cows’ 10 tracks did such). This approach lends 7s‘ centerpiece “Hey Bog” an epic effect, building slowly in tempo.

Each track on in|Flux has a soul and heart of its own.

It would seem then that Let Her Burn is Rebecca Black just flying overhead instead of victoriously soaring above the ashes.

The music, in all its messy beauty, hits like a sack of bricks to the head.

Albums like this are rare and special, highlighting pop’s capacity to sculpt our emotions and steer us towards something better beyond the horizon.

Because of the fractured, whimsical makeup of the album, it can become a bit frustrating for the listeners hoping to detect Half Pearl‘s beating heart. But listen close enough, and resolve is there beneath the rubble in the chopped jazz pop of “Wild Animals”, in which Liv.e struts to her own self-belief, untethered from other people’s expectations of her.

Norm plays with our emotions more than Wilds or The Neon Skyline did because Shauf’s writing from perspective of what could be considered a villain, and his impeccable storytelling takes liberties where others dare not.