MOJO's Top 50 Albums of 2017

Pure Comedy is quite a leap, both lyrically, in being an extended treatise on what it means to be human in 2017 and musically

Before The Dawn is glorious and confounding – in other words, pure Kate.

In conception and execution, Concrete And Gold stands as Foo Fighters’ most beguiling record to date. There is much to admire here as they grind rock and pop’s tectonic plates together in a deliberate gamble to widen their sound.

Sampha’s solo debut sits somewhere between the ghostly avant-soul of Frank Ocean and James Blake’s emotionally wrought electronica.

The album’s music is intimate and reflective. Drums rarely figure alongside the acoustic guitar, piano and string arrangements which motor gently, and a compelling consistency of mood makes Mental Illness easy to get lost in.

Fans of Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell should fall for Bullet Proof and Easy On The Thieves, and throughout Moonshine Freeze there’s a similarly gratifying sense of a capable artist raising the alt-folk bar.

Detailed with offbeat twists and turns, it warrants celebratory Appletinis all-round.

It’s not until she stares clear-eyed at those closest to her that the way is clear: she’s to honour her Latin and Caribbean roots in story and sound.

His confidence positively gleams across dexterous modern-day parables whose fierce reflections, anxieties and grievances jab but never jar and rarely miss their targets.