[Seven Tears] builds gently, then feverishly, shivering with love. This whole album carries the same liberating feeling throughout.

An eclectic grab-bag of ideas that achieve varying degrees of success. When it hits the mark, you can understand why pop stars and left-field figures alike have been drawn into Skrillex’s orbit. But taken in one dose, it’s alternately exhilarating, frustrating and a little exhausting.

Over 40 minutes, it refines the sound of Pigs x7 and highlights the band’s strengths – presenting an unsparing induction into their mind-bending sonic vortex.

It’s not perfect – the title track is seven and a half minutes you might better use boiling eggs – but it is its own small wonder, as every Yo La Tengo album seems to be.

This Is Why stirs 00s alt-rock into the mix: the band have mentioned Bloc Party and Foals as influences. It’s not a combination that works without fail: there are tracks where the teaming of scratchy guitars and big pop hooks recalls the moment when the post-punk sound of 00s indie crashed into a Britpop-ish desire to make the BBC Radio 1 A-list, with irksome results – particularly on the single C’est Comme Ça. But you’re far more frequently struck by the deftness with which they weave the various aspects of their sound together.

Flamboyant on stage, behind the scenes he sought out, and achieved, a quiet, stable life. If that sounds boring, you should hear him sing about it. It’s not very rock’n’roll. It’s a lot more interesting and enduring than that.

My 21st Century Blues roars into life, hitting you with one fantastic song after another.

Luxury and gratitude are fine motifs, but without enough sonic distinction between tracks it gets boring fast.

You wish you got a bit more of the Sam Smith who was recently photographed for a magazine wearing goth-y platform boots, sock suspenders, tight blue satin shorts and an Abba T-shirt. They looked as if they didn’t care what anyone thought. It’s hard not to long for music with that attitude.

Playful, painful and loaded with hooks that worm their way to the surface, Honey feels ripe for bleak midwinter wallowing.

He’s abundantly talented, a singular and austerely powerful voice. But as Rap Game Awful proves, abundance can be a problem.

What Rush! lacks in heft – a couple of glancing lyrical references to sexuality and gender notwithstanding, not even Måneskin’s loudest cheerleader is going to claim it as a weighty album – it makes up for in enthusiasm. If that enthusiasm occasionally tips over into a cloying eagerness to please (Supermodel is a little too desperate to remind listeners of Smells Like Teen Spirit), more often it’s infectious.

Strays brilliantly rattles through country, psych and Patti Smith-style poetic rock’n’roll.

Although Space Man’s co-writers contributed to several other tracks, that song’s elegance is nowhere to be found among a litany of cliches and self-help guff so toothless it makes Ed Sheeran look like Nick Cave.

Moving far beyond the cotton-soft folk of her previous records, with Prize, Plain chooses to lean into her eccentricities – and the risk pays off.

Every Loser’s main flaw is that you’re left wanting more.

Coheed have been heavier and more forward-thinking than on Vaxis I, but they’ve never released an album with so many tracks primed to become hits. Rarely has almost an hour of sci-fi mumbo jumbo been easier on the ear.

These are beautifully elegiac songs, celebrating life’s transient joy, struggle, laughter and heartbreak, reflecting the fact that “sometimes the good die young, and sometimes they survive”.

Moin’s approach on Paste is barebones, but discerning – taking a craft knife to 80s and 90s indie music and using it to fashion their most fleshed-out release yet.

Much of this album sounds like a bleary-eyed afterparty, or the grey winter afternoon that follows, where your mind wanders back to an ex. It isn’t perfect, but it’s reflective, honest, funny. And Sorry only seem to be getting better.

She’s addressed the subject of mental health before in her work, but never quite as bluntly as on Broken, which shifts from a neat summation of depression’s ability to quietly get its claws into you. ... Meanwhile, the music business gets an extended kicking, particularly when it comes to its dealings with artists of colour. ... All of this is punchily, powerfully and, occasionally, wittily done.

SOS is very long – 23 tracks, well over an hour. It suggests someone continually adding to and augmenting a project, or perhaps throwing everything they’ve got at it, fuelled by the feeling that they might not do this again. The results are hugely eclectic.

What emerges are anthems of rebirth at the necessary end, in which we can count the constants. In this instance: fury, hope and fierce maternal love.

He’s clearly reached a level of celebrity where his audience are invested not just in the music but in Stormzy himself: if they’re willing to follow him down a more inward-looking path, This Is What I Mean is a good reward.

The record ends just as the party’s getting loose, with Londoner Josh Caffé commanding us to “Work! Serve!” over a deranged synth – more in this late-night ballroom house vein would be welcome.

Whatever havoc the pandemic may have wreaked on Mering’s already gloomy outlook, it’s done nothing to spoil her melodic facility. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow gently bombards you with one fantastic tune after another.

Made in collaboration with electronic producer Photay, Kalak is a beguiling body of work, enveloping the listener in undulating synth melodies, layered horn fanfares and vocal features – all driven forward by Korwar’s ever-present percussion.

He may have landed on a sound, but as an artist Tomlinson is still directionless.