It’s a theatrical 10-piece song cycle that neatly extends their work, while nodding to what came before. At its best – opener and lead single ‘I Still Have Faith In You’ for example – it comes close to reaching the transformative peaks ABBA scaled all those years ago. Yet for a piece of fan service ‘Voyage’ remains confusingly slight.

O’Connell colours firmly between the lines. His ideas do not stray beyond the conventions you’d expect for each singer-songwriter outfit he puts on from song to song.

Always Inside Your Head is often a frustrating album, peppered with sparks of genius and disappointing dead-ends. Ultimately, though, it’s another example of an artist constantly – restlessly, you might say – developing.

Unashamedly broad, it can lack detail and punch; yet ‘=’ has something about it that is difficult to shrug off, while being hard to truly relate to.

‘Music Of The Spheres’ is never less than listenable, but rarely raises the pulse.

Spread across 18 tracks, Meek Mill's creative contouring isn't fully consistent, leading to some awkward moments; 'Love Train' and 'Love Money' feel insubstantial, while the mid-section loses its punch.

It hardly moves mountains as a standalone effort, but is moderately impactful and somewhat befitting of its lofty pandemic-era presentation.

When it punches hard, ‘Jose’ doesn’t miss. ... Yet ‘Jose’ – like Drake and Kanye’s efforts, previously – is led down by quality control. The creativity is undiminished, but it struggles under the weight of its 24 track span – clocking in at more than hour, the record at times tries the patience.

Aubrey Graham hands over his fifth project to cross 80 minutes, an hour and a half smorgasbord of all-new tracks. In his defence, the Drake cuisine is far too extensive and varied at this point, but this dilemma has been around for a number of years now and some sort of sacrifice for a better, more cohesive project has to be made if he wants to release another classic.

There are some real moments of beauty on the record - 'In Blur' aches and sparkles, whilst singles 'Great Mass Of Colour' and 'The Gnashing' showcase a band adept at building beautiful soundscapes even with the guitars turned down - but at a certain point, the album suffers from the lack of depth in Clarke’s vocals, or range in his melodies.

A bold gesture weighed down with excess, 'The Voice Of The Heroes' is a worthy experiment, one that feels destined to be a cult favourite.

Continual evolutions has pushed them away from their roots, feeling less like a band and more like a committee, marking out different strategies without truly owning one themselves.

Some good, many passable, a few questionable, to say the least. There's plenty here to pick out and enjoy, and that's all that will matter when the single songs are playing in your pocket, but after all the gems the label has given us over the years, 4AD deserved something better.

Hemmed in by their own ambitions, ‘The Battle At Heaven’s Gate’ is an oddly contradictory experience, one that finds Greta Van Fleet truckin’ on up a one way street.

Feels curiously unfocussed, and lacking in purpose.

Spanning an array of genres including worldbeat, jazz, classical, blues, rock and new-age, 'Duets' is an solid collection from one of the UK’s most prolific singer-songwriters.

The blistering debut is a collection of delightfully pungent tracks, delivered in all their unashamed, reckless glory.

The act of combining musical stylings that range from African tribal beats through to Talking Heads inspired synth pop, with lyrics that seek to overcome a divisive social culture is an intention nothing short of universal. It’s just in the execution where he falls short, leaving little to the imagination of the listeners on an album that strikes a rather predictable tone.

It's no secret that remix albums are often tricky affairs, especially when meshed with beloved rock songs. Luckily everything off Pony's dark twin is enjoyable, if not essential sounding. Overall, it’s a fun curio worth exploring and saving a few of its more ambient moments.

There’s a lingering feeling, though, that 2 Chainz hasn’t quite distilled exactly what to do with the opportunities being presented to him.

For the most part, it’s actually pretty entertaining.

'Extinction Level Event 2' is often bloated and monotonous, making its one hour (plus!) run-time challenging to endure. What could be a colourful and important album is unequivocally tarnished by the tedious, repetitive, and needless opening seven tracks.

Major Lazer’s best songs have always acted as overstimulating sugar-rushes - but the formula that was once fresh and boundary-pushing for mainstream pop now sounds outdated.

In ‘Love Goes’ Sam Smith has produced a flawed but decent return that mirrors the introspection of this strange, difficult year.

Herring’s blessed baritone vocals teamed with their trademark bittersweet synth and hefty baselines will continue to make for decent, honest albums for as long as the four-piece please, but the introduction of a faster, lighter tempo in tracks like ‘The Painter’ and ‘Hit The Coast’ could mark the beginning of a much-needed dive into uncharted musical waters.

Their interpretation of Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ and the mysterious sounding ‘Fever’ brings a different dimension to these classic songs and breathes new life into these and other legendary songs.

We’d be looking at an even better record had it allowed the space required for her often unrecognised jaw-on-the-floor vocals, but as a whole Melanie C has drawn from a whirlwind year to make a jubilant album that understands where she is right now.

Tracing the lush synth lines running through this album shows Epworth’s love affair with the retro electronics of the 1980s. But their pairing with the sensibilities of modern pop ends up feeling less like the 80s, and more like last decade’s 80s nostalgia.