From prog cabaret and joyful jangle-pop to a pop star who will drag you to the club, here are the year’s finest LPs as decided by 30 Guardian music writers
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Marcus Elliot Brown, AKA one-man project Nourished By Time, has a classic R&B singing voice in the style of Freddie Jackson or Luther Vandross: warm, earnest and with every word enunciated as if to express his keenness of feeling. But his music is quite different: a slippery layer cake of samples, multitudinous keys and lo-fi pop production, with Brown singing of a world where “the ebb and flow isn’t ebbing right”, be it in love or civic life. There is still room for an instant-classic R&B ballad though, in Tossed Away. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Everything is just so on the British Canadian producer’s sixth album: expensively plush deep house suggesting club lights low, gleaming mirrors, potent looks igniting across the dancefloor. As much as the cold beat and ballroom flow of Ladida or the slapping “body, body, body” incantations of On 2 Something suggest a steadfast commitment to abandon, Jordan maintains impeccable poise and control throughout, whether in diva mode on Words 2 Say, breaking hearts on Bite the Bait, standing up for her needs on Doing It Too (“I’m not too much / You just give too little”) or patiently waiting for a frustrated lover to see the light on Ladida. Commanding, wise and committed to atmospheric excellence, party hosts don’t come better. Laura Snapes
