The 20 Best Albums Of 2016

Billed as a "visual concept album" with an accompanying 60 minute film, the music on Beyoncé's sixth record could easily have suffered under the weight of such grand aims, but was instead an out-and-out triumph.

The 12 tracks on the release include collaborations with James Blake on the reverberating and haunting 'Pray You Catch Me' and Kendrick Lamar in the trippy anthemic 'Freedom' which dealt with civil unrest in America ("I'm a riot through your borders call me bulletproof"). This, plus the bouncy power-pop tracks like 'Hold Up' and 'All Night' make Lemonade a perfectly balanced delight. 

From the lacerating, state-of-the-nation jeremiad of 'Europe Of Lost' to the loopy shoulder shrug towards hedonism 'Whoops', Kate Tempest's tale of lonely Londoners was stuffed full of wit, wisdom and beauty - as you might expect from an award-winning playwright and poet who also happens to have some awesome tunes. Let Them Eat Chaos confirmed Kate Tempest as the worthy successor to Mike Skinner as Britain's most astute and sensitive chronicler of everyday life. The definition of an album that rewards repeat listens it is, lyrically at least, the best album to come out anywhere in 2016.

Sam Parker

It is apparent, listening to The Colour In Anything, that one-time dubstep darling James Blake took his time over this release. Clocking in at 17 tracks and 76 minutes, you might ask if he could have cut to the point a little. But despite his habit of maudlin self-pity, singles like the collaboration with Frank Ocean 'My Willing Heart' lie in that great space between ambient and electronic where he remains unequalled.

'Forever' shows the strength he has with his voice and a piano alone and remind you of that old 'Limit to Your Love' cover. It may not be a huge departure from previous work, but then it didn't need to be.

For a man who wanted to be remembered for vitality not infirmity, Blackstar was intended as a parting gift from Bowie to his fans. The benchmark for reinvention right until the end, Ziggy Stardust said his last release was influenced by Kendrick Lamar and features percussion from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy.

'Girl Loves Me' with the repeated refrain of "Where the fuck did Monday go?" is a busy collection of percussion and his vocals in closing track 'I Can't Give Everything Away' talk to you with painful directness. A master to the very end.

Determined, as ever, to eschew conventional marketing practices, Radiohead didn't promote their new album until a week before it was released. But what is intended to look slung together is in fact a painstakingly thought out and executed collection from Thom Yorke's quintet.  

Lead single 'Burn The Witch' was in the works for the band as far back as 2000 but the anti-authoritarian track appears proper now, perfected with rising percussive strings at the centre of the song. Whilst 'Daydreaming' doesn't feel like more than exactly that, both 'Present Tense' and 'Glass Eyes' drift through you with morbid lyrics and delicate trills of piano keys and guitar strings. The album doesn't fit together perfectly, but that's just as they intended.

Another great musical mind claimed by 2016, Leonard Cohen also left a parting gift to fans. You Want It Darker is as lyrically dense and philosophical as Cohen's most poetic music with stirring lyrics like "Your crazy fragrance all around, your secrets all in view" and "They ought to give my heart a medal, for letting go of you" in the warming, folky 'On The Level'. The title track is more foreboding, with husky Biblical vocals from Cohen who mutters, poignantly it turned out, "I'm ready, my lord." 

Hypnotic, heavy production and seductively tuneless vocals rightly keeps MIA among today's most daring and original musicians. There's the love song "Ali r u OK", a paean to a lover who's too busy to hang out: "Ali, I haven't even seen you since we left Calais…" Oh wait. Well, there's the ode to bezzies, "Foreign Friend": "I'm gonna be your foreign friend, all the way to the end". Maybe not. 

Even the zany "Bird Song", which namedrops cuckoos, eagles, turkeys and more, breaks down into a menacing chant of "Watch the sky", so the metaphorical subtext of overhead observation and warfare becomes clear. AIM is a smart and provocative record, and if it has saccharine tendencies, there's a clever aftertaste of arsenic.

Of course the new DJ Shadow album begins with what seems like a sample: a chipper, echoing "Hi!", backed by stylus-on-vinyl scratches. DJ Shadow himself begins and ends with sampling. Shadow's greatest skill aside from mining old music is turning a song on a sixpence brilliantly, changing mood and genre, in such a way the switch is surprising yet perfect. 

The near-instrumental "Three Ralphs" is a beautiful stereo head-mash, and "Bergschrund" has huge beats over the industrial-classical trademark of guest artist, German producer Nils Frahm. But, this album, despite its many disparate elements, is unmistakably the work of one man.

Paul Wilson

Jacklin has a voice made for alt-country music — she can coo like a turtle dove and trill like a lark — and used to sing in an indie-Appalachian folk band. Don't Let the Kids Win has further nods to US culture: notably the end-of-the-prom lull of singles "Pool Party" and "Leadlight". 

But where the album really shows its strength is in the subtle experiments with genre and sound: the driving indie-pop of "Coming of Age" contrasts beautifully with the drowsy reverb on the title track. 

Jacob Stolworthy

It has been three years since the Canadian synth-pop trio first made waves with their critically acclaimed LP Perpetual Surrender, and much to our delight, they're back and sounding better than ever.

Their second album, Familiar Touch, transcends boxy genre-constraints with a shimmering blend of Eighties style alt-pop and soul, and features songs that wouldn't be out of place on a John Hughes soundtrack.

Sara Macauley

The continued existence of Peter Doherty, both as a musician and as a human being, is something of surprise to many, perhaps including himself. 

His second solo album, Hamburg Demonstrations, recorded in that same German city over six months, has Doherty applying his appealingly tuneless, loose-dentured yowling to socio-political angst (one track is about the Bataclan attacks) and Anglo-centric intellectualising ("Kolly Kibber" is inspired by a character in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock) wrapped up with rollicking guitar jams and some welcome forays into reflective folk. It has flashes of brilliance and flashes of indulgence. Which will win out in the long run? Who can say.

Metronomy's fifth album sounds inspired by Outkast and David Bowie with rich, layered pop songs and the help of producers of both (Neal Pogue and Bob Clearmountain respectively) for turns at the mixing desk.

There's also a strong whiff of Discovery-era Daft Punk: no bad thing. The single "Old Skool" is a speedier "Radio Ga Ga" with LCD Soundsystem's (or Will Ferrell's) cowbell, and upliftingly catchy. Ditto "Hang Me Out to Dry", with guest vocals from Swedish singer Robyn, which would make Brian Wilson proud with its championing of driving in cars with girls. 

He's remixed for Aphex Twin, Amy Winehouse, Massive Attack and Radiohead, and now his first album using his real name is Under The Sun. Mostly instrumental, it reflects his less-banging back catalogue: moody, melodic mini-masterpieces The Weeknd wished were his; cuts from forgotten video games; opening-title music for foreign sci-fi films. 

Thom Yorke is on the haunting "Beautiful People", and a Julie Andrews children's ditty is sampled on the title track, but you don't have to know that to be uplifted. Next time you're driving through a city at 4am, with the drizzle and pre-dawn light in the air, this is what to play.

Post Pop Depression, the album on which that track appears along with eight others, is full of lament, but also the piss and vinegar with which a rock legend who will be 69 in April really should be spilling.

Iggy co-wrote the album with Josh Homme, who also produced and played bass. They started work on it early last year, so "German Days", reflecting on Iggy's time with David Bowie in Berlin and Munich, is no post-mortem. But they haven't made a misery record,  on "Vulture", about the bird with "evil breath that smells just like death", he belts out a war cry as rousing as that first time he demanded to be your dog, 47 years ago.

For Junk, the seventh album under the M83 the 35-year-old Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez has taken on big-name collaborators, such as Beck and rock guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. There's a sci-fi spine to his new record, but not so cold and knob-twiddling that listening to it is a sterile experience.

Gonzalez is equally at home with the down-tempo — "Moon Crystal" could back the bit from a VHS erotic drama where a shoot with a top fashion photographer goes all raunchy — as he is with bangers like "Do It, Try It". The latter track is as good as anything by his confrères Daft Punk and Justice, and if blasted out from a 'Vette, top down and jacket sleeves rolled up, all the better.

Jacob Stolworthy

 Justin Vernon's Bon Iver project's following means he's an artist who can take an "if it ain't broke, fix it anyway" attitude to new music, knowing the faithful will hear him out even if he takes an unexpected turn. 

Certainly, 22, A Million, seems hell-bent on ensuring the Bon Iver project hasn't stagnated. There's sinister crazy frog sampling, noodling saxes, pacing that's so loose it sounds like songs might stutter to a stop, and even — shock horror — a lessening use of the falsetto that was so bewitching coming from a beardy in a trucker cap. But despite the experiments, it's still rooted in a bluesy, folky American songbook sensibility that's inherently beautiful and makes you feel something, even if you're not exactly sure what. Existential melancholy? Heartbreak? Whatever it is, you'll want to dive right in.

With the aptly named Everything You've Come to Expect, the two 30-year-old adopted Los Angelenos are still nodding at John Barry and Scott Walker, but there are also echoes of Beck, The Style Council and even yacht rock. 

The 11 new songs are mostly about the mind-bending effect of women on a man's head, heart and soul; those three elements are also plainly evident in Kane and Turner's collaboration. 

Jacob Stolworthy

He's been labelled as Ed Sheeran-with-synths, but that undersells something more interesting. For someone who has all the musical tools in his locker, Garratt doesn't use them all together all the time. On "The Love You're Given" and "Breathe Life", the production's to the fore. 

With "I Know All What I Do" and "My House Is Your Home", his vocal does the talking; the latter track, on which he accompanies himself on piano, sounds like a bedroom demo and is all the more engaging for it. Variation like this makes Phase a proper album from first track to last, and Garratt worth the hype.

Jacob Stolworthy

It's so old-fashioned it's positively cutting-edge: Suede's new album was made to be listened to "in order and all the way to the end". But this is an era in which a band cannot live by album sales alone, so Night Thoughts, the band's seventh, comes with a feature-length film.

It's easy to forget, with the stranglehold Blur and Oasis retain over Britpop's official history, how stunning Suede could be: combining pop savvy with urban melancholy and androgynous mystique as well as anyone since The Smiths. Two decades on, Anderson's vocal is even more haunting for being a fraction less powerful, and his band still do a fine turn.

All I Need is the follow-up to Louisa Allen'S 2014 debut, Glorious, which spawned three top 20 singles.  This year, she embarks on a less frenetic headline tour playing the new songs, which are a moodier, meaner upgrade of the pop tracks that helped make her name. 

Sadly, the hurt with which she forged them caused her to disregard one important consideration: "I don't know how I'm going to sing these songs live, actually."