So, while highlights such as Ghosts' glam-rock gallop or Tomorrow's saturnine dream-pop make gripping use of frowny minor chords, slab-like synths and frostbitten vocals, the relentless severity becomes a tad oppressive.

Body Music sounds like a potential hit, rather than an intriguing curiosity.

Something in them seems to have been exorcised by the change of scene, because Twist Again, BoW's third album, is a calmer, more controlled affair than either of its predecessors.

It's thoughtful, sincere, weighty stuff, tackling subjects from African poverty to the diamond trade without sounding preachy or schmaltzy.

It’s the full-bodied and fiery tunes Dangerous and Shot Clock that shine through, with their honeyed yet passionate vocals, pointedly candid lyrics, and throwback instrumentation modernised with dark synths and percussion. These are better signs of Mai’s authentic R&B star potential than any millennial slang.

They ape the cons as well as the pros of 70s rock: longer-than-necessary songs, a weakness for cliche and, inevitably, unabashed retroism.

This is one for speakers, not headphones, a great dense whoosh of music that makes you feel like the bloke in the old Maxell tapes advert.

No matter that he employs every possible cliche (and none more so than in the violin-choked Upside, in which he patronises immigrant labourers): once the guitars get rolling and Booth scrapes the sky with his tenor, you find yourself weirdly hooked.

As usual, he’s at his best when things get a little weird.

The dance duo extend the decade-long dilution of their canon with their new record, which is as technically accomplished as ever, but creatively exhausted.

Monotony is a problem on Ullages--you long for Eagulls to move beyond the confines of their soundscape and extend their emotional range.

An album that delights as much as it disappoints, leaving the listener not celebrating the rebirth of one of England's greatest songwriters, but slightly confused.

His seventh is his strongest in years: funky, focused and rooted in the present.

Entertaining on its own visceral terms, but not wholly convincing.

It's certainly a mixed bag but one that fans of all-American rock won't be disappointed with.

Unique--and not bad, either.

Tthe Joy Formidable are at their best when they switch off their default setting.

Tops are now up there with Phoenix as the masters of modern soft rock – just don’t go changing.

Together, they have crafted a succession of enormous, swaggering grooves and mostly ­compelling raps about rock and rap staples such as sex and drugs and cash.

There are some fine songs here, from the bluesy, harmonica-backed You’re Right, I’m Wrong to the stirring folk-gospel Tell Me Moses and the gently pained country weepie You’re Still Gone.

Kidsticks is a real reinvention: not so much a return to her electronic roots as a bold exploration of fresh territory.

Once or twice they really hit the spot--No Waves could hardly be catchier, and Black Out Stout could have the Black Lips looking over their shoulder--but more often they don't.

Trust's songs are often strong, though, and work best when Alfons manipulates his vocals towards higher pitches, allowing his melodies to shine and the music to stand out from the synth-pop crowd.

This might be the single most tasteful record of the year.

Avalanche proves a middling followup to that first collection of airy, experimental R&B.

Byrne is too instinctive a songwriter to ever totally miss the mark, and his melodic gifts certainly haven’t left him--but this album often tends towards a ghastly dystopia of kitsch.

Anthemic, challenging pop.

Thankfully, his shot-to-pieces, Joe Cockeresque rasp entirely suits songs that seem to give more of themselves with every listen.

Golden Smog never entirely equal the sum of their parts.

Sensibly, Burgess has abandoned the curious falsetto of 2001's Wonderland in favour of his trademark (or Ian Brown's trademark) nasal whine, while the band have responded with some of their finest rollicking grooves.

While a lot of '64-'95 works, much of it appears to arrive sporting ironic quote marks.

Rochford, who leads magisterially as both drummer and prolific writer. He's a proper jazz composer, whose themes are spare, colourful and strong enough to frame and support extensive improvisation from his talented crew and guests.

Some may shy at his slushier lyrics about girls in clocktowers and lovers wanting to fly into each other's arms, but there is enough strength behind these sentiments, and enough muscle in the band's heady harmonies, to make this an inspiring meditation on exile and return.

As with the rest of My Way, highlights and lowlights alike, you listen to it struggling to think of anyone else who would do this. And perhaps that's the secret of the most mysterious continuing success story in rock.

The result is a set that will impress fans of his laidback, often deadpan style.

Forty-four years on, Fairport Convention are still in great form, even without their former superstars, Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick and the late Sandy Denny.

Her bravest, most original work to date.

Jodie Marie's velvety, bittersweet touch suggests the emergence of a female Richard Hawley, the wonder being that a 20-year-old can weave such an intimate spell.

It sounds less like a jazz album than anything the group has recorded, but in stepping away from a method they never seemed comfortable with, Portico have found a contemporary sound to thrill their fans and attract new listeners.

If he opted to waft round the world for the next three years only to return with another quiet little triumph like this, it would be perfectly acceptable.

These songs are atmospheric, but feel calculatedly so, especially set against the overwrought poetry of Tonra's lyrics.

It dishes up a glossy amalgam of the indie styles of 1991.

There are enough distinctive observations and neat turns of phrase to mark Oh Land as a peculiar part of the corps de pop.

It's all very pleasant, but the quality of her storytelling gets lost.

This genre-busting voyage hurls in everything from dark psychedelic electronic drum'n'bass to pastoral progressive rock.

The result is a lavishly produced, cheerfully upbeat set with the massed vocals matched against bubbling keyboards, guitars and percussion, and the Kronos Quartet and the Luxembourg Philharmonic somehow fighting their way into the mix.

While Mutineers doesn't totally shatter preconceptions, there's a rare comfort in hearing an artist in pursuit of joy; and unlike the throng of relatively inoffensive twentysomething singer-songwriters littering the charts, Gray's songs have a timeworn quality that's far more charismatic.

It was never going to be as scintillating as a clowncore remix of Lennon’s Lost Weekend, but the collaborative album with Field Music’s Peter Brewis is a peculiarly riveting listen.

The Fine Art of Hanging On is another capably written set, but turns its back on the band’s pared-down folk roots in favour of baroque-pop arrangements that reach for the heights of Rufus Wainwright and Illinoise-era Sufjan Stevens, but don’t always hit the mark.

For 40 wide-eyed minutes, it’s if alt-R&B never happened.

In an age where “indie” is a bit of a dirty word, it’s refreshing to hear something so seemingly guileless and uninterested in being blown by the prevailing winds. Perhaps, though, less would have been more: 10 tracks over 35 minutes might have left one wanting more; 15 over 47 minutes is rather too much of a good thing.

Take All My Loves is an uneasy marriage of classical and pop, on which the sonnets are often overwhelmed by Wainwright’s extravagantly theatrical arrangements.

The whole point of Hatebreed has always been to pulverise willing participants with simplicity, power and positivity. In that regard, the furiously precise likes of Seven Enemies and Dissonance amount to jolting shots of pure musical adrenaline.

Mirroring the black-and-white sophistication of the era the film was set in, Rhys only uses instruments available in that period, to create a mostly instrumental record that reminds the listener that beyond his role as the Super Furry indie kook icon, there is a truly maverick--albeit always understated--composer at work.

The songwriting is so comfortably strong and the production so toasty that you’re soon swooning along with them.

It’s not a sonically adventurous album, but Chaplin’s voice on tender songs such as the title track is as affecting as ever.

Genre fans will love it--it’s the perfect soundtrack to pulling on your Chelsea boots and black crew-neck sweater. Those who see don’t especially wish it was 1965 again may be less convinced.

Flying Microtonal Banana is occasionally pleasant but mostly pedestrian. If anything, it’s a step back from the experimentation of last year’s fierce Nonagon Infinity.

50:50@50 proves that the current lineup are great musicians with an impressively varied repertoire. The best tracks here are live.

Despite a few generic offerings (No Goodbyes is mostly just the singer breathily uttering the words “don’t go back” on loop), this is a solid pop debut that is high on summery nonchalance.

Lyrically, it’s what you might expect, with odes to the medicinal properties of marijuana (Medication), lamplit sweet nothings (Grown and Sexy), and a string of socially conscious lamentations.

Apocalyptic ballads No Sound But the Wind and Belong still sound like wading through ​molten Tarmac, and some experimentation doesn’t land, but for the most part, Violence is a thoroughly unexpected ​career peak.

Electronic sound underpins the album – Too Close is defined by its technically impressive basslines, while on Turn Off the Radio, Moore’s ethereal words overlap each other in a chorus of distorted vocals.

Disclosure seem largely content to stick to their lane. It should keep their career ticking over commercially until normal clubland service is resumed, and their lyrics seem less wistful.

Its retro sensibility and guileless tone means How Beautiful Life Can Be is the guitar music equivalent of comfort food: undemanding, slightly stupefying, but immensely cheering all the same.

The compilation highlights these artists’ attention to instrumental detail and their delicate fusion of popular international styles with new technologies to create the sound of a city. It is one that is both of its time and still repeatedly listenable today.

Fix Yourself, Not the World isn’t going to change the face of music, but nor is it going to do anything to impede the Wombats’ latter-day progress.

Gold Rush Kid gets better the further it moves away from the standard blueprint, into emotional territory that, if it isn’t exactly dark (happily for him, Ezra seems to inhabit a world where every problem comes with a resolution) is certainly more overcast.

No wheels are being reinvented here but it’s another tune-filled, uplifting, solid winner.

Self Hell doesn’t always successfully navigate the difficult terrain between pleasing a hardcore following and broadening a sound, but the band certainly aren’t standing still.

King's songs are mainly to blame, sugary sub-Lisa Loeb numbers that have arrived 10 years too late to soundtrack Dawson's Creek plot twists.

There’s something understandably confident about Colores, from its grand concept album status (every song is named after a colour, although the lyrics seem conceptual only in so far as they largely revolve around how sexually irresistible Balvin is) to its brevity.

For all its musical diversity, Turn Blue never sounds incoherent.

At times, Enter the Slasher House feels like a carbon copy of Animal Collective, replete with effects-soaked hazy vocals mashed against high-tempo art-pop.

His songs are gloriously, unabashedly pop: it's hard to detect anything studied or knowing about them or their musical references. Instead it sounds like the gleeful, inspired work of a man who's recently undergone a Damascene musical conversion, possibly at the hands of his producer, Paul Epworth.

Another skinny indie kid singing about love and the human condition might not sound essential, but Omori has decided to take the high road and craft something special.

Growing Pains gets two great chorus melodies, while I Don’t Want To resolves very satisfyingly. But there is some production that sounds suspiciously like focus-grouping, from post-Winehouse soul to xx guitars, and the ersatz digital instrumentation is as featureless as an overly filtered Instagram post.

While there's plenty here to keep heads banging, there's not much to challenge the grey matter inside them.

It stands as a dire warning that even the most gifted writer can't inject anything new into the worn-out topics of on-the-road excess and celebrity ennui.

The result is a low-end-heavy collection that lends an air of mystery and menace to Hynes's tales of love and loneliness.

Realism [is] an unexpected surprise. Merritt seems to have abandoned the overarching concepts, allowing him to concentrate on the actual writing and his enviable ability to wrong-foot the listener with emotional handbrake turns.

A wonderful album, packed with stunning melodies and brilliant lyrics.

her first solo album after 30 years in the business is a mostly uplifting affair summed up by Into a Swan's confident, stomping beats and lines such as: "I feel a force I've never felt before."

It’s an album that won’t frighten the horses, but provides enough fresh interest to keep the band ticking over: for the Foo Fighters, you suspect, that means mission accomplished.

Their mainstream audience should flee now, but Congratulations is more than mere commercial suicide. Their perversity has produced a sonic adventure, with lovely moments.

Carolina Chocolate Drops are a gloriously energetic and adventurous live band, but this set mysteriously fails to demonstrate their range.

An encouraging move into new territory.

The best songs are either relatively untouched or given a major overhaul; one can’t help wondering what might have happened had BSP been even braver, and simply asked the orchestra to play their music.

This sounds like togetherness put on, not poured out.

A person of a certain disposition might feel the will to live seeping from them at the very thought of a U2 song called Cedars of Lebanon, but it turns out to be one of the album's biggest successes: a beautiful, downbeat coda to a confused and confusing album, one that can't decide whether it's ironic or sincere, experimental or straight-forward, and instead attempts to be all things to all people, with inevitably mixed results.

It's never an essential one, however: that air of self-deprecating resignation seeps into the music, which shuffles along unassumingly, occasionally enlivened by a rock'n'roll rhythm or a shimmer of soulful horns, without betraying much character of its own.

Although he has always shown a willingness to borrow from himself, Working On a Dream never feels overburdened by those Springsteen mannerisms that have become cliches.

Olympia is only the Roxy Music singer's second set of new material since 1994. However, he's busily assembled an all-star supporting cast – guitarists Nile Rodgers, Jonny Greenwood and Dave Gilmour, Mani and Flea on bass, and most of Roxy, including Brian Eno.

The album touches upon economic issues without dwelling on them, and it captures the spirit of the times with an unerring precision.

It’s another fine effort from a band who are gradually building up an absorbing catalogue.

Slayer seem unwilling to ditch the nu-metal tendencies that have made much of their recent output so resistible.

It seems a faintly ridiculous thing to say about an album that's so clearly busting a gut to sound 40 years older than it actually is, but it feels natural rather than forced or calculating.

Beneath the sludge and churning distortions, however, is a characteristically generous squaring-up to life's horror and humanity that is worth excavating.