• 50		Sinkane Dépaysé City Slang
  49		Flamingods Levitation Moshi Moshi
  48		Iggy Pop Free Loma Vista
  47		Rosie Lowe YU Wolf Tone
  46		Gruff Rhys Pang! Rough Trade
  45		Stephen Mallinder Um Dada Dais
  44		The Comet Is Coming Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery Impulse!
  43		Hayden Thorpe Diviner Domino
  42		Big Thief UFOF 4AD
  41		Some Bodies Sunscreen Funnel
  40		Velvet Negroni NEON BROWN 4AD
  39		Nick Cave Ghosteen Ghosteen Ltd
  38		Thom Yorke ANIMA XL Recordings
  37		Jessica Pratt Quiet Signs City Slang
  36		JOHN Out Here On The Fringes Pets Care
  35		Doomsquad Let Yourself Be Seen Bella Union
  34		Angel Olsen All Mirrors Jagjaguwar
  33		Gong Gong Gong Phantom Rhythm Wharf Cat
  32		Death And Vanilla Are You A Dreamer? Fire
  31		Little Simz GREY Area Age 101
  30		Lapalux Amnioverse Ninja Tune
  29		Black Midi Schlagenheim Rough Trade
  28		DIIV Deceiver Captured Tracks
  27		Maija Sofia Bath Time Trapped Animal
  26		Josienne Clarke In All Weather Rough Trade
  25		The Hold Steady Thrashing Thru The Passion French Kiss
  24		Cigarettes After Sex Cry Partisan
  23		Purple Mountains Purple Mountains Drag City
  22		The National I Am Easy To Find 4AD
  21		Drahla Useless Coordinates Captured Tracks
  20		Metronomy Metronomy Forever Because
  19		Blanck Mass Animated Violence Mild Sacred Bones
  18		FEET What's Inside Is More Than Just Ham Clapped Records
  17		Michael Kiwanuka KIWANUKA Polydor
  16		Whitney Forever Turned Around Secretly Canadian
  15		Dave Psychdrama Neighbourhood
  14		Big Thief Two Hands 4AD
  13		Kim Gordon No Home Record Matador
  12		Jerkcurb Air Con Eden Handsome Dad
  11		Common Holly When I say to you Black Lightning Dalliance

• 10	The Specials Encore UMC It’s been 37 years that we’ve been waiting for this. The veteran ska-punk band’s return addresses Brexit, Tory austerity, Black Lives Matter and mental health. Encore is filled with tracks that cut deep into the malignant tumours of society, looking to heal them by brutal and frank exposure.
  9	FKA twigs MAGDALENE Young Turks The half-decade since twigs’ debut album has been plagued with an unwanted publicity through two high-profile relationships. Her new album is an ode to all of these people – a breath-taking, shapeshifting vanguard of modern pop music. Weird bangers for when we all live in outer space.
  8	Sharon Van Etten Remind Me Tomorrow Jagjaguwar Sharon Van Etten’s fifth album is her most atmospheric, emotionally haunting album to date. It’s an angry and asphyxiating ode to cleaning up your shit, fuelled by a steady self-belief whilst working through a new-found identity as a mother. It’s a pat-on-the-back, a to-do list and a firm grip over a ‘getting there’ kind of life.
  7	Slowthai Nothing Great About Britain Method If grime has always existed in Northampton with rappers like Slowthai, you have to ask why London’s been getting the publicity. His debut is a lo-fi, grungy and hilarious portrait of the nation, featuring glue sniffing, League Two football and faux-aristocratic choruses of God Save The Queen, accents and all.
  6	Hot Chip A Bath Full Of Ecstasy Domino An oddly moving and existential dancefloor record. Hot Chip’s seventh album is our favourite they’ve released to date. A colossal, sprawling gospel-sampling title track hits with all the purity of early the xx, with the psychedelic whizz of Cassius’s late great Philippe Zdar on production feeling as hallucinogenic as it does epic.
  5	Anna Meredith FIBS Moshi Moshi A nervy, chaotically-controlled embodiment of contemporary uncertainty, that few pioneers of contemporary electronic and classical music come close to. The Scottish composer already had an MBE after her name not one album down, and this collection of sweet little lies underpins her as somewhat of a precarious modern visionary.
  4	Fontaines D.C. Dogrel Partisan The year in which Dublin took over our ears really started here. Fontaines D.C.’s spitefully poetic rock ode to Ireland’s capital scurries through Dickensian streets and back alleys. There’s the IDLES lineage, the blistering post-punk brawl that runs on anger and adrenaline, but there are tender moments too; love songs to the city that brought them together, a nod-of-the-hat to revolutionary folk music. This is an essential, communal listen.
  3	Sampa the Great The Return Ninja Tune The Melbourne rapper’s breakout album brings everyone in: it’s an epic suite, from beats tinged with jazz, ‘90s R&B, gospel and hip-hop, to lyrics bereft with Sampa’s heritage (born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, residing in Australia), her ideas of home, being an exile and overcoming a perpetual “othering”. Have this on repeat from now until New Year, and you’ll still find something new come 2020.
  2	Sleater-Kinney The Center Won’t Hold Mom + Pop Two headlines took over this album’s narrative when it came out: that St. Vincent’s sleek production opened it up to a new sonic world for a band entering their third decade together, and that it would be the last record featuring co-founding drummer Janet Weiss. The Center Won’t Hold is a record picturing a beautiful collapse, politically and personally, that looks back to riot grrrl roots with a new balletic and discordant edge.
  1	The Murder Capital When I Have Fears Human Season As the captive thralls of twenty-nineteen settled into some strange paralysis, there was one record we kept coming back to. The brooding and confrontational debut album from Dublin five-piece The Murder Capital is the kind of art-punk that might take its name from a John Keats poem, but ignites the pawing intensity of Joy Division’s drum tattoos and the old Pixies trick of quiet-and-loud. It’s beautiful, menacing, and our Album of the Year.