MOJO's 75 Best Albums of 2021

It's a subtly sophisticated piece, but it also creates space for Sanders to showcase his tender, measured, lyrical phrasing, abstracted scatting and, 34 minutes into this 46-minute marvel, a brief sputtering blast of free saxophone energy that proves, at 80, his fire remains potent.

It's masterful stuff: a full conceptual realisation, filled with great melodies, deep grooves, colourful characterisations and sonic detail that reveals itself over repeated plays ... Even if its heart is in the '70s, Daddy's Home is a keeper for the decades to come.

The intoxicating strain of California anomie that pervaded 2019's Norman Fucking Rockwell is still, thankfully, strong on Del Rey’s excellent seventh album.

After almost 30 years documenting the bittersweet mysteries of life, this one’s for the angels.

More than clashing sonics or soaring hymns or pervasive anxiety (and the quest to overcome it), the quality that best defines Carnage might be Cave's reckoning with the unknown, or his recognition of the unknowable.

Fat Pop (Volume 1), conceived and written mid-Covid clampdown, suggests Weller’s ability to write fizzing pop tunes, slinky soul anthems and weird dub-electronica hybridisations is inexhaustible.

While Coral Island's concept is unusually robust ... it's the melodic strength of its 15 'proper' songs that's the real mindblower.

It’s sonically deeper and more emotionally engaging, from start to finish, than any previous SOK release.

This edge of madness — а sense of a record that has stewed in itself, fermented, and re-emerged in a surreal form its creator had not planned — is a large part of what makes Fever Dreams the free-est, fun-est, most psychedelic Villagers record so far.

Boy From Michigan is Grant in panoramic mode, looking back and looking forward to create his biggest picture yet.

This is what Ignorance delivers: the document of an introvert empowered by the vastest crisis of passion imaginable.

While the band’s fury at corruption, incompetence and duplicity remains fierce, Spare Ribs is a strikingly layered response to harder times.

The young seven-piece have ... progressed at warp-speed, here passing the full-length test with confidence.

Cerebral, caustic: exhilarating John Parish-produced debut from art-schooled Londoners.

Three years in the making, with over a dozen sessions spread across seven studios, from New York to LA, I Don't Live Here Anymore is the most grounded War On Drugs record and the best: a calm space amid a world in collapse.

Idles are finding new directions home: the hallmark of a great band.

A searching, typically heart-warming record about middle-aged men somewhat adrift, yet ultimately anchored to people and place, Endless Arcade testifies to the Fannies’ endurance.

Their back-to-our-roots arc is hardly new, (cf the Stones’ Blue And Lonesome), but this music is timeless, alive, and about as good as it gets.

Another high water mark in Mogwai's irresistible rise.

An enthralling step on her musical voyage.

Prog-psych-punk sextet take satisfying third bite of the microtonal cherry.

Just like McCartneys I and II, III is a confounding cocktail of genius and misfires.

North Londoners get it together Traffic-style at lockdown Sommerset Airbnb.

As an album, I’ve Been Irying To Tell You works wonderfully on many levels.

Songwriter and 'sound carrier' hits stride with psych space-pop and a new direction.

Feted Indiana soul revivalists embrace the dancefloor and survey a nation in crisis on timeless, irresistible third album.

The Nearer The Fountain... may prove to be one of the most beautiful, tangentially produced artefacts of our strange and uncertain times.

Their first new album in over 15 years sees the reactivated Falkirk duo older and wiser raving against the dying of the light.

Loving In Stereo feels altogether more insouciant. They've gone looking elsewhere for vibes and are having fun.

There’s reassurance to be gleaned from that spirit of examination, and from the accompanying music’s audacity ... Their ambitious record is, in itself, an absolute tonic.

The excellent concept sometimes outshines the music, but if everyone's a tourist, this is the trip to go on.

Superwolves – like the best of the Bill and Billy songcycle – suggests that, far from going on hunger-strike to protest the non-availability of organic food in prison, the Shaman of alt-country might still have it in him to found a new republic in the ruins of Capitol Hill.