NME's Albums of the Year 2017

‘Drunk’, as out-there as it can be, is an album totally high on its own unique ideas.

It all adds up to the most serene, stylistically varied album Marling has ever created – and that’s surely the point.

On ‘I See You’ we meet a new tactile version of The xx. They’re relaxed, warm, joyful even ... They find a balance with the old xx though. Fragility and self-doubt are still themes.

The Moonlandingz have turned fiction into semi-reality by making their debut album… and it’s brilliant.

These songs revel in their spaciousness, like three- minute drivetime anthems from 1986 set free from their radio edits to muck around with 2017’s oddest noises for seven minutes at a time.

These heartfelt, confessional apologies are delivered via Jay’s most concise, straightforward album in years. 10 tracks and 36 minutes long, this is a filler-free return to form after 2013’s patchy and bloated ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’.

To see a British band forging their own hearse-driven path in a theatrical, grandiose way – last seen with My Chemical Romance’s ‘The Black Parade’ – is thrilling.

The bequiffed high priest of desert rock has always imbued his full-throttle stoner sound with a certain amount of hip-shaking sass, but on ‘Villains’, he truly lets his dancing shoes take the floor.

‘For Crying Out Loud’ is chockablock with massive tunes that make an instant impact.

While ‘Reputation’ packs heavy artillery that was almost entirely absent from ‘1989’, it’s actually a helluva ride.

The Canadian art-rockers are bigger, bolder and more fearful of the future than ever on their colossal fifth album.

Backed by a supporting cast of R&B superstars and bright newcomers, it’s a record of long, lazy summers; sitting back and staring at the clouds.

The lawless, world-altering scenario ‘Humanz’ presents us with is not a poorly attended inauguration but a massive, cross-genre party, composed largely on an iPad by Albarn and illustrated by his mate Jamie Hewlett.

‘Big Fish Theory’ is one of the most ambitious, dazzling hip-hop albums of 2017 so far – neck-and-neck with Kendrick’s ‘DAMN.’.

The south London grime don delivers a knockout debut that’s brash and pensive in equal measure.

This is music as catharsis, with much of the sonically laid-back album dealing with family, loss and friendship, over lived-in J Dilla and Tribe Called Quest-worthy beats.

Annie Clark gets personal on a clutch of tales about power and lust.

With features from current genre dons Devlin, JME, Frisco, Flowdan and, of course, Skepta, it feels like a celebration of all grime achieved in 2016.

‘American Dream’ delivers, point by point, on everything you could want from an LCD Soundsystem album.

Father John Misty’s third album is a beautiful, illuminating masterpiece ... Musically, we’re on pretty familiar territory; a little soulful Jackson Browne, a smidge of acoustic Neil Young and even a touch of piano-tinkling Elton John, as well as a gospel choir thrown into the mix, but this is a record that sets itself apart by virtue of its lyrics.

The triumphant Compton MC might have cut down the number of tracks on his fourth studio album ... but the ideas, thoughts and feelings it contains are massive, weighty things, from sexual tension to deep, dark depression.