175. D’Angelo & The Vanguard – Black Messiah (RCA) (2014)

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Black Messiah saw a rebirth in D’Angelo’s career. Working with The Vanguard to present an eclectic variety of compositions, the 2014 project gave rise to a funk machine with relentlessly mobilised energy. With swirling revelations and kooky vocals that put the spirit of belief back into you, Black Messiah was conceptually cutting-edge in its Afrofuturistic elements. (DA) (LISTEN)

174. Chromatics – Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better) (2012)

Opening an album with a sultry cover of a Neil Young classic might not sound like the most daring thing to do, but it was a perfect overture for the Portland group’s most fully realised album to date. Chromatics’ familiar sense of Lynchian foreboding and nocturnal dread was now transformed into something grandiose on the likes of ‘Kill For Love’, and the sequencing made it feel more like a soundtrack to a non-existent film. (LISTEN)

173. Four Tet – There Is Love In You (Domino) (2010)

After a prolonged silence that lasted the latter half of the Noughties, Kieran Hebden started the new decade by effectively hitting the reset button on all perceptions of what Four Tet was. There Is Love In You pared the music down to the bare bones, consisting of soft sound effects and tones, muted beats, and simple, twinkling melodies laid over the top, and it added up to his most inviting and accessible collection yet. (LISTEN)

172. Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch The Throne (Roc-A-Fella / Roc Nation / Def Jam) (2012)

It seems crazy to think it now, but in 2011 both Jay and ‘Ye needed a little something from each other. Despite its brilliance, Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had mis-fired outside the US, and Jay needed some renewed credibility after the sell-out of The Blueprint 3. Working together for Watch The Throne gave them both what they desired: Kanye the exposure, and Jigga the street cred. It also helped that it was a great album, filled with earthy, back-to-basics beats and bedroom production and embellished by compelling flows delivered by two of rap’s greats reconnecting with the founding principles of their art.

171. Floating Points – Elaenia (Pluto) (2015)

Having been hailed as one of electronic music’s most forward-thinking new talents for a number of years by 2015, British producer Sam Shepherd wrong-footed many with his debut studio album. While it was undeniably slighter than the early EPs and singles that had made his name – almost entirely free of beats, for a start – Elaenia was a fluid, dream-like and extraordinarily beautiful experience encompassing chillout and modern classical music that couldn’t be pinned down to any one genre, with the upshot that fans of many styles found something to love within its grooves. (LISTEN)

170. My Bloody Valentine – m b v (m b v) (2013)

In the history of long-awaited follow-up albums, there are long waits, and then there’s My Bloody Valentine. m b v took half a decade longer even than the legendary Chinese Democracy to materialise, coming a full 22 years after the group’s visionary Loveless which had changed the rules about how guitar music could sound, the foundations for which were laid in the years before their original break-up in 1997. Kevin Shields picked up the thread a decade later and reassembled the band, and spent a further six years putting the finishing touches to it, with a perfectionist’s eye. For once, the lack of a discernible shift in direction was comforting, as it was evident that MBV’s talents had been immaculately preserved. m b v was a dense, intoxicating whirlwind of distortion, of tremolo guitars that one minute sound like bagpipes and the next like angels sighing, and an exemplary addition to the back catalogue of one of Britain’s most influential groups ever.

169. Sun Kil Moon – Benji (Caldo Verde) (2014)

Mark Kozelek’s music is something a tad short of comfort, a bit more abyss-like, swallowing and overwhelming you but heartbreakingly beautiful nonetheless. On Benji, Kozelek deals with grief and lack of meaning, motherhood, narrates all the women that contributed to his sexual life and other deeply personal experiences in an ode to Ohio, all adorned with carefully curated melodies and plucks of string, resulting in one of his most notable and celebrated works. (AS) (LISTEN)

168. Solange – When I Get Home (Columbia) (2019)

Dropped by surprise at the start of 2019, Solange’s dreamy When I Get Home followed A Seat At The Table much like its hazier, more abstract, impressionistic cousin, filled with Southern pride, love for Houston and Afrofuturism, meditating on home and identity whilst embracing a looser stylistic and conceptional form. (AS) (LISTEN)

167. Angel Olsen – All Mirrors (Jagjaguwar) (2019)

Undeniably one of the most recognisable voices in indie of our decade, Angel Olsen loves change and dodging easy categorisation. With All Mirrors, we met Olsen at her most grand and dramatic. Embracing big sounds, she employed an orchestral set-up of 14 performers, with quivering strings and booming drums, letting her voice echo and blend with the unsettling instrumentals. The tracks are nothing less than cathartic, with Olsen at the eye of the storm, refusing to relinquish her integrity in order to please others, still struggling to navigate the waters of life and love, but carrying a different, newfound confidence in oneself. From operatic to something quite hazy, as if from a Cocteau Twins record, Angel Olsen revels in these musical outfits to sing her truth. (AS) (LISTEN)

166. Julien Baker – Turn Out The Lights (Matador) (2017)

Off the back of her magnificently received self-released debut Sprained Ankle, the prodigiously young Julien Baker got snapped straight up by prestigious indie Matador for her second album, a move that came with the kind of pressure that has done for many fledgling artists. Not so for Baker, as Turn Out The Lights was confident and accomplished, full of disarmingly frank statements of personal struggle and defiance which even the bravest and most sincere people would often find hard to presents to others. (LISTEN)

165. Beach House – 7 (Bella Union / Sub Pop) (2018)

The truest torch-bearers of dream-pop, Beach House’s seventh studio album, appropriately and simplistically titled 7, is about as perfect an album of the genre as one can get. Upon release, it even garnered comparisons to MBV’s Loveless, and for good reason. While not nearly as literally heavy, the songs and all their ambience loom over and around you, taking you someplace else entirely, without regard to your actual surroundings. (EW) (LISTEN)

164. Vampire Weekend – Contra (XL) (2010)

Having made one of the most spectacular debuts of the noughties, Vampire Weekend offered up the new decade’s first great album just eleven days into 2010. Inverting the normal rules of second albums, Contra was successful precisely because it didn’t tinker too much with the established formula, recognising that there was still demand for their sound. The sense of sonic discovery and passionate, articulate and intelligent interpretation of their diverse influences was still intact. ‘White Sky’ and ‘California English’ were the strongest statements of their chamber pop-Afrobeat aesthetic yet, while they retained their ability to let rip and indulge themselves on the likes of ‘Cousins’ and ‘Horchata’. Above all, Contra was fun. Just like their debut, Vampire Weekend laid all their cards on the table and turned on the charm. (LISTEN)

163. A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic) (2016)

Against all odds, A Tribe Called Quest returned in 2016, 18 years after their last album and a legacy seemingly already set in stone, with We Got It From Here…, an album that is surprisingly not in any way a worse re-hash of their greatest hits from the ‘90s, a cheap cash-grab, or trading in any sort of nostalgia currency. It is, by every conceivable measure, a true ATCQ album – commenting on the current socio-economical state of the world while maintaining an effortlessness in their lyrical and production virtuosity that only a decades-long career and practice of your craft can attain. (EW) (LISTEN)

162. Rosalía – El Mal Querer (Sony) (2018)

Spearheading a welcome trend of increased visibility for Latinx artists in the American mainstream towards the back end of the 2010s was Rosalía. Revolving around the evolution of a toxic relationship, her sophomore studio LP El Mal Querer – fuelled by the luxurious ‘Malamente’ single – not only completely decimated the Latin Grammys with its flamenco-pop hybridisation and collision of modern and traditional styles, all condensed into a snappy half-hour, but swept countless year-end lists too. (LISTEN)

161. Iceage – Beyondless (Matador) (2018)

After releasing two of the best punk albums of the millennium and then completely overhauling their sound all within the space of five short years, Copenhagen’s finest were never going to rest on their laurels. Even in the four-year gap between third effort Plowing Into The Field Of Love and Beyondless, frontman Elias Bender Ronnenfeld rattled out three albums with his supergroup side project Marching Church and then returned with this. Beyondless is a product of this breathless pace, anxious and itchy, but also broader in its influences than any previous Iceage album: strings, brass, Americana, with less personal songwriting and a more mature, attuned punk group who were still at the top of their game and producing some of the best songs of their career. (LM) (LISTEN)

160. The xx – Coexist (Young Turks) (2012)

Having effected the last indie music revolution of the noughties with their debut xx, the London trio were understandably tempted to leave things much the same the second time around. But Coexist was one of the rare instances in pop where “more of the same” would do: The xx were such a brand of music (the simple, stark artwork reflecting the music inside) that to attempt anything radical would have satisfied nobody. That said, there were subtle differences in the sound of the record despite the familiar themes of heartache, longing and loneliness. Jamie xx had incorporated some of the tricks he’d learned as a DJ and producer in the intervening three years, including live percussion instruments amid the programmed beats and MIDI triggers, which meant that Coexist is, if anything, even moodier than its predecessor. It amounted to another highly engaging take on the concept of the duet. (LISTEN)

159. IDLES – Brutalism (Partisan) (2017)

The album that begun IDLES’ unstoppable rise to the top of the British indie scene received fairly little coverage upon its release, but it didn’t take long for the traction of magnificent singles like ‘Mother’ and ‘Well Done’ to make Brutalism impossible to ignore. Concerned with grief and addiction and dripping in sardonic bile, whilst the Bristol group’s debut didn’t do anything we hadn’t heard before, you’d be hard pushed to find a better collection of tense, righteous, bitter post-punk music released this side of 2010. (LM) (LISTEN)

158. Father John Misty – Pure Comedy (Bella Union / Sub Pop) (2017)

Following his breakthrough solo success two years before with the broadly romantic I Love You, Honeybear, Josh Tillman decided to double down and deliver his magnum opus. A massive 75-minute album that took in human political and social progress, technology, fame, ageing and human connection – all filtered through the simultaneously self-aggrandising and self-effacing filter of the FJM conceit – Pure Comedy was a sprawling triumph. (LISTEN)

157. Adele – 21 (XL) (2011)

You might be a bit surprised to see such a commercial album on this list, but 21 was a success on such a stunning scale it’s now very difficult to conceive of anybody replicating it, other than Adele herself. Sharing the same folk and Motown soul influences of her 2008 debut, she also reached out for a handful of new ones – American country and blues music, most notably. Quite apart from the sales figures (it was the biggest selling album globally in 2011 and 2012) and the sheer power of Adele’s heartbroken voice, what was striking is how understated and minimalist the arrangements sounded, in comparison to so much of the artifice of the contemporary music industry. This gave it a thematic singularity and cross-cultural appeal that eluded her debut. (LISTEN)

156. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Piñata (2014) (Madlib Invazion)

Laden with rich soul samples and gritty street narratives, the nuanced interplay between rapper and producer on Piñata screamed instant cult-classic louder than most albums this decade. Affirming the infinite love for sample-based hip-hop, the effortless genre-splicing by Madlib paired with insight into Freddie Gibbs’ memoirs of a seasoned hustler further cemented the former’s gargantuan legacy whilst elevating the latter to a cult-level MC. (DA) (LISTEN)

155. Stella Donnelly – Beware Of The Dogs (Secretly Canadian) (2019)

When she penned ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ in 2017, which some regarded as the unofficial anthem of the #MeToo movement, many compared Stella Donnelly to her Australian compatriot Courtney Barnett. But that lazy comparison did her a slight disservice – her debut full-length Beware Of The Dogs was fizzing with unique insight and attitude, generating a collection of songs that was angry, articulate, beautiful and funny in equal measure. (LISTEN)

154. SZA – Ctrl (Top Dawg / RCA) (2017)

A much anticipated debut in the music industry and which grew by word of mouth subsequently, SZA’s Ctrl is a statement of personal worth, boundaries and intimacy, embracing genre fusion and refusing to submissively take on emotional abuse and hypocrisy. With notable features and witty Nineties references from Drew Barrymore to Forrest Gump, it was SZA’s personal triumph of 2017. (AS) (LISTEN)

153. Sky Ferreira – Night Time, My Time (Capitol) (2013)

Although its release was delayed for nearly three years due to creative differences and budgetary wrangles with her label, Sky Ferreira’s much-anticipated debut was a successful stylistic collision of Eighties pop and Nineties alternative rock. Controlled yet deliberately unrefined in her delivery, she sung of conflict and failure while flitting between self-confidence and self-loathing – a tension encapsulated in Ferreira’s vulnerable yet defiant gaze on the controversial front cover. (LISTEN)

152. Wild Beasts – Smother (Domino) (2011)

Kendal four-piece Wild Beasts began the new decade in very similar fashion to how the ended the previous one – at the top of their game. 2009’s Two Dancers won an avalanche of plaudits with its warm, intelligent music and sexually suggestive lyrics and, if anything, Smother was even more sensual and rhythmical. It was weighted slightly more towards synthesisers than guitars, with tracks like ‘Loop The Loop’ and ‘Reach A Bit Further’ gently working themselves into resplendent peaks of ecstasy. Wild Beasts are one of the few British bands left who understand the power of patience, tension and restraint in indie music – providing little universes for us to lose ourselves in. (LISTEN)

151. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker (Modular) (2010)

One of the most critically acclaimed debut albums of 2010, Innerspeaker achieved the first of many peaks in the decade for Tame Impala. Critics particularly praised the lyrical talent of lead singer and songwriter Kevin Parker, who gave a modern twist to Lennon-esque pop psychedelia, and the deliciously retro blend of hazy guitar hooks alongside clever vocal deliveries, all of which resonated in the context of this socially atomised decade. With the assistance of Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev producer Dave Fridmann, they perfectly captured an intuitive, original psychedelic sound which lies outside the boundaries of modern rock. Innerspeaker was a beacon for the burgeoning Australian psych scene, influencing bands such as Unknown Mortal Orchestra and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. (LISTEN)