As moving as those songs are, The Smile are more intriguing when they shift slightly further away from Yorke and Greenwood’s established palette.

After 11 tracks, this return feels well-earned, but it’s equally refreshing to know the next song we hear from Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever might not be so predictable.

Yeah, that’s a decent album. Flags towards the end, sure. Some rippers on there, though. Glad I stuck with it.

Van Etten gives us what is, quite possibly, her strongest album yet. And that sense of breakthrough, of sheer lift, is prevalent right from the start. ... There’s a powerful sincerity and confidence to her vocals throughout the record, as she weaves and bobs around her deceptively simple and emotive melodies, often hitting notes that sounds for a millisecond like they won’t quite work, and then suddenly, they do, as on the final heavenly note of “Darkness Fades”.

It’s retreading old ground and shouting at clouds, but also genuine and at times beautiful in its crystalline synth-pop nostalgia.

This is frivolous music best enjoyed as such. The trick to Sofi Tukker’s success is not to take them too seriously, even when they do so themselves.

Girlpool have finally escaped the contours of twee indie rock with their fourth album. It’s not your typical evolution; this record has always existed for Girlpool — they just had to begin to find themselves first. Forgiveness is a riveting glimpse into that ongoing process.

These 12 songs are denser in their instrumentation and production than Hatchie’s previous work. ... Regardless, the album is still imbued with Pilbeam’s established touches of enchantment and sensitivity.

Like all the best songwriters, Tomberlin doesn’t act like she has the answers to the big questions, but knows that simply by being inquisitive she will eventually figure out her own truths, and she’s passing that wisdom along with this record.

The record is about opposition: it haunts but soothes, it repels while drawing you in. As you listen, this unbridled exploration of sound will become part of your own dialectic subconscious rather than a soundtrack on your dancefloor. You have to listen.

Nothing here quite reaches the fizzy highs of something like “Come Together” or “Hey Jane”, and he can’t quite recapture the slow, sad, and syrupy balladry of past tracks like “Broken Heart”. But he can still kick up quite a storm when he wants to, and though perhaps a bit too streamlined for some fans, this is another fine album in Pierce’s and Spiritualized’s repertoire.

Despite being almost twice the length, It’s Almost Dry very much adheres to the wisdom of its predecessor: there isn’t an ounce of fat on the lean, mean machine that is the album, with every second aimed with a precise, sinister purpose.

Every song on this record is carefully crafted, and the way they’ve perfectly balanced the intimate bedroom atmosphere with the crystalline sheen of modern mainstream has created a set of unmissable pop pearls.

With Skinty Fia, Fontaines, D.C. continue to position themselves as one of the more emotionally broad-banded and nuanced acts to emerge from the latest post-punk wave. Soundscapes are evocatively sculpted and frequently galvanic, melodies and lyrics consistently enrolling.

The album’s overwhelming atmosphere invites you to pore over the tracks, to take in each detail the light reaches, then comb over them again for everything you’ve missed.

Tilt is the music they are dragging you onto the dancefloor for, and with most of these songs playing over the speakers, you’ll happily join them.

Tilt is the music they are dragging you onto the dancefloor for, and with most of these songs playing over the speakers, you’ll happily join them.

While it may prove inconsistent to some, the experimentation and exploration ensures the album remains exciting, as you never know what’s arriving next. If the intention of this album was to show a rebirth, it succeeds, as Banks seems reinvigorated and ready to fearlessly conquer the demons that dare cross her path.

This is music for the mercurial bunch in need of a break from their own chaotic lives, who need to experience someone else’s even if it’s momentarily. It’s something the genre was intended for, and bands like Duster will continue to provide it for years to come.

We have heard many albums about the pandemic and life within it, but this is more about about life after it; how to pick up the pieces of the lives we had before it and transform them into this new life that just relentlessly goes on. Vile’s music is attuned to the unrelenting progression of life.

With Erickson’s arrangements augmenting his tales at every beat, they become immersive emotional explorations. Not every entry is gripping, and their mileage will depend on how much time you’re willing to settle in and let them wash over you, but overall it’s an impressively graceful skip into a new era for the songwriter.

His voice is consistently stroking it throughout the 16 tracks, ensuring it’s one of his most revealing bodies of work to date. A true and honest portrait of a complex human being.

All the arrangements feel organic and overflow from track to track. Rossen’s crafted a purposeful exploitation of his emotions as always, but this time it’s fully under his control.

There’s so much talent and story hidden behind the mask, but this album isn’t Orville Peck at his truest.

Its fragmented nature is tied to its accessibility; each track stands alone on its own merits, albeit at the expense of the record as a whole. The more oblique lyricism allows for the possibility of wider interpretations here, where previously they have felt out of reach.

In many ways, it’s Wet Leg’s small imperfections that make it the perfect debut – an impressive, tantalising exploration of their core talents that leaves just enough room for improvement.

It’s far from a miserable affair, it certainly passes the time, it’s just hard to imagine how so much talent in a room didn’t arrive with something that didn’t feel so staid.

Their punk spirit is still there, but has been buried a little under the weight of heartfelt emotion, bolstered instrumentation and sugary harmonies – all of which work beautifully for these songs. Camp Cope have made an album for themselves, to bring some unity through honesty and self-expression. They can certainly be proud of that.