Spencer.’s gift is in how he has made a coming-of-age album on his own self-assured terms. His observations on how love can both crumble and blossom within a city as storied as New York are immediate and self-aware – and most importantly – endearingly hopeful.

The world he now paints seems bigger, brighter, more sensitive and compassionate. His songs have grown out of the warrens of his pain, and instead have bloomed into joyous epiphanies.

The result is both brutally honest and joyfully exuberant, as the band get comfortable and cathartic in their own skin – and invite you to do the same.

This record carries some of Phoenix’s most intimate and approachable songs in years.

It’s sonically brave and lyrically obstinate, a rare delight that stands out from its counterparts.

Unlike Shears’ 2018 heart-on-sleeve solo debut, it’s pure escapism and his most effortless-sounding set since bursting out of the traps nearly 20 years ago.

‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ – despite its slightly macabre title – is consistently charming, while offering enough range in sound and scope to hint at Chinouriri’s future ambitions. She has worked hard to make it sound this easy.

Wild Beasts have undergone a sea change, and this beautiful album is a treasure that deserves plundering.

From a less skilled artist, such a disparate-sounding album might morph into a collage of loose touchstones. Hayley Williams, on the other hand, draws clearly from other artists but retains her voice at the centre. Her frankness cuts through across Petals For Armor.

The powerhouse metal sound that’s earned them a religious following in every far-flung corner of the globe remains firm. But here, they take things further; ultimately letting imaginations run wild in an album that’s more confident and idea-packed than ever before.

The result is a densely orchestrated record that is as solid as it is sprawling.

There’s plenty of fun, filth and frills to go around with McHale’s latest venture.

Not to be outdone by US stoner-rock peers Sleep and Earth, who have records out this year, the Dorset satanists have spat out this eighth album.

His debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ scratched gently at the surface of a songwriter of real detail and skill, but second time around he digs real deep for a wiser, weightier record stuffed with sax-soaked rock epics that touch on life and death, love and heartbreak, rage and regret.

Ekstasis reminds us that music can mean so much more.

It’s an impressive display, but the contrast between the two sides is so vast they could easily be two different records.

With ‘Projector’, the band have escaped their modest confines of a studio where pipes leak onto amps and delivered some of the most compelling new guitar music around.

A smooth gear shift from 2013’s ‘The Best Day’ and 2018’s ‘Rock and Roll Consciousness’, ‘By The Fire’ manages to stand out with ease. Here Moore elegantly channels his sense of poise and calm in a word going to shit, easily proving why he remains a hero in the world of alt rock.

Part II is an altogether more personal and laidback affair, concerned with romance and emotions.

Energy, desire and that indefinable cool that any great rock band must have burst from every angle. This album feels like a celebration, and Sheer Mag sure deserve one.

The TNGHT EP packs five explosive instrumental hip-hop tracks, every one dripping with each producer's trademark sonic flourishes.

It’s a high-quality project, but we lost Mac way too soon, and that’s hard to accept. So while it’s hard to listen to him talking about self-deterioration and how he spends far too much time in his own head, it’s a privilege to hear him share his inner most thoughts over a bed of sweeping, inventive sonics. This is the album Mac Miller was born to make.

July is a career high.

Where his previous projects felt sprawling, ’uknowhatimsayin¿’ succeeds in feeling compact while delivering a powerful project that is expertly produced and concisely executed.

This isn’t merely a record by a good band. This is a record by an important one that is now teetering on the edge of greatness.

When the album proper kicks in with ‘Totally Fine’, it’s clear that PUP are still trading in the same brutally pissed off but unassailably catchy blasts of self-loathing. And, yes, it’s still as much fun as ever.

If the best country music has always been about storytelling, then on ‘Cruel Country’ Wilco are delivering it in its purest form.

Swans' bleakness is beset with great beauty, black wings to another world.