The 18 eclectic tracks hang together because of a gleeful joie de vivre, and are the best songs of the band’s career.

Somehow, the lighter Hospice gets, the heavier it hits.

That Helm had less than a year to live obviously lends his performance poignancy, but as epitaphs go, Carry Me Home isn’t really one suffused with what-might-have-been melancholy: it’s too exuberant, too vibrant for that. It sounds more like a man going out in a blaze of glory.

These are timeless songs of renewal, not sadness, underpinned with quiet, steely resolution and the knowledge that emotions and loves arrive like those four seasons, to be savoured while they last.

This taut, turbulent piece of work is the Roots' best yet.

It is an ambitious album that can turn from hedonism to hope on a dime. And with its genre-hopping ethos, bold orchestral choices and pleasing tunefulness, it is the first truly boundary-pushing record of the 2020s, cementing its creator as a daring virtuoso.

For all that the album self-evidently has one eye fixed on the States, you never get the sense of an artist subjugating his own personality to succeed abroad. It’s not just that the lyrics throughout are dextrous and sharp and funny, although they are. It’s that even his most virulent braggadocio is underscored by a very winning, very British kind of bathos.

Shivering with tension, Trouble the Water is an exciting and urgent call to come together and kick off – at once a reflection of, and a cathartic release from, volatile times.

The music is the same stew of beautifully played blues, rockabilly, folk and country as every Dylan album for the last 12 years.

Even at its most melodious, Playing Favorites still sounds fierce and raw, an object lesson in altering your sound without losing your essence.

Nevertheless, the album is really a reprofiled Streisand set for her fans, rather than an unexpected ­diversion for jazz ones.

These wonderful recordings provide yet more evidence of his colossal talent, and, tantalisingly, it appears that there are still more to come.

Blunderbuss is White at his most strange, contradictory and unfathomable, and therefore at his best.

Magnificent, all told.

Those with a low tolerance for winsome male falsettos may wish to steer clear, but anyone who loves the strain of American pop that began when the Byrds started branching out in 1966 and 1967 should rush to hear this delightful confection.

The question of whether anybody would listen to Love more than once if the original Beatles albums were available in equivalent sound quality is a nice one. But it doesn't seem to matter much when you can almost feel the spit flying from John Lennon's mouth during Revolution, or when A Day in the Life's orchestral swell comes surging from the speakers. After all, it's hard to ask questions when your breath has been taken away.

FlyLo's albums tend to be slight, and this is no exception: these tracks feel less like fully fleshed-out compositions than lightly drawn sketches started, but not always finished, from a spontaneous jam session.

It's a spirited distillation of three decades of leftfield rock tactics that has its pretty moments and its fearsome ones.

On the whole, this is a terrific step forward.

There is a sense of urgency to this latest offering, as if last year’s fey and breezy LP Paper Mâché Dream Balloon acted as a process of blissed-out creative rehab.

Wonderful 14-tracker. Their pure, alternating voices compliment each other perfectly, and when they come together in harmony, the results are glorious.

After a decade apart, Be Your Own Pet are a far better band: explicit, tight, even more inventive.

With the rise of R&B classicists in the form of Jorja Smith, Ella Mai and Mahalia, Nao presents a compelling alternative to the mainstream.

Bleak or bleakly funny, Lanegan is in the form of his career.

It’s testament to the power of their original vision that it all still sounds so fresh.

The Boys' trademark nerdy raps are as inimitable as ever.

It's packed with neat touches.

They manage the rare feat of melding pop and politics into a potent mix, and continue a tradition--begun by the likes of Smith & Mighty, Tricky and Massive Attack--of reinterpreting pop, hip-hop and soul through the filter of black British life.

A collection of polished, precociously accomplished pop that doubles as one of the most gratifyingly undignified breakup albums ever made.

Such shorthand descriptions are hard to avoid entirely, and music buffs might still want to play spot the influence with Skying--one reviewer detected seven in the opening song alone--but that would undersell this marvellous record, which should be every bit as exciting to a listener who knows none of those reference points.

An unlikely but often brilliant comeback.

On this collection of futurised soul and funk, Bruner shows skills as a songwriter too.

It's hard to say that any specifically Iberian influence is audible here – this album's sound was more or less in place on 2008's much-admired You & Me – but it's nonetheless another lovely record.

There are stories of religion, guilt and loss, matched against a bittersweet, adult love song, Close the Door on Love, and a bleak treatment of Bruce Springsteen’s Factory that perfectly fits the mood of this intimate, pained and powerful set.

Allen’s Parisian band explore each theme in detail, with some garrulous, impressive solos from the likes of saxophonist Rémi Sciuto and trumpeter Nicolas Giraud.

It’s rousing stuff, and with indie-pop producer Lawrence Rothman on hand, her vivid, intentionally raw fiddle-playing is balanced well with expressions of her softer side, seemingly taking inspiration from peers who are blazing trails beyond country’s traditional bounds.

Complex and jagged, Eye Contact unveils its charms slowly, but once it does, you'll want to immerse yourself completely.

Young Fathers have quietly constructed a strange and intoxicating musical universe that feels entirely their own, while no one else was paying attention.

Songs rampage from garage swamp blues to psychedelic Stooges rock. Guitarist Warren Ellis's bouzouki makes sounds you'd expect in an abattoir, not a studio. There are some terrific songs--notably the sublime Palaces of Montezuma and the epic, apocalyptic Bellringer Blues.

It's the voice that does it - all hazy smoke and dusty cotton, this time sounding like she's channelling Billie Holiday.

Not that they didn't crank out a generous dollop of highlights - I Zimbra, Life During Wartime, Heaven, And She Was et al - but stuff from the debut album now sounds irritatingly thin and scratchy, while material from their last couple of albums, True Stories and Naked, is the sound of a band reaching the end of its tether.

A useful addition to a genre that prizes brain over brawn.

Each listen to New Amerykah brings fresh rewards: it demands to be explored.

Hidden is not just the most original record to emerge from Britain this year, but the most unfathomable: an immaculate enigma.

Gunn’s voice is so mellow that the songs’ words fade into the background at times--but then the guitar is the frontman here. This could be your next roadtrip head-nodder.

Tembo is undoubtedly an intriguing addition to rap’s increasingly rich tapestry – albeit one yet to land on a sonic palette as fresh and compelling as her perspective.

Painless is audibly a second album, the product of an artist with eclectic tastes spending their time focusing and refining their talent – as if its author has developed the confidence to decide that less is sometimes more.

There's an earnestness and weight to the album that simultaneously gives it its focus, but also makes the listener yearn for some light amidst the bleak post-breakup laments.

Fear Fun leaves his previous work in the dust.

Follow Them True marches forward. The musicianship is razor-sharp, direct and fantastic.

One of the most flat-out enjoyable rock records in a long time.

Redman and his partners seem to revel in spontaneous contemporary music-making rather than try to create a concept or a project, and they are some of the best-equipped players in jazz to do just that.

The closer you listen, the more unsettling--and yet enticing--it all sounds.

Releasing this material as a live album is a virtue – the audience’s roar after the absurdly pretty Turbines/Pigs has a thrilling note of disbelief.

It’s Jayda G’s own vocal work that ultimately unites Significant Changes, accenting hooks with fizzy ad-libs, steering tunes with sprawling falsettos and resounding in the deep.

This is her fullest and most colourful release to date, but it’s still a dense work that takes time to reveal itself. Casual listeners are unlikely to be rewarded.

Though not quite 2005's best hip-hop album - [Kanye] West retains that honour for himself - Be is a lean and vibrant masterclass in hip-hop fundamentals.

Postpunk, hardcore, krautrock and odd, spacey lounge-jazz are all sucked up and bent brilliantly out of shape over the course of an album that's abrasive but accessible, awkward but assured. Properly special stuff.

Even if the production job by Dap-Kings' frontman/bassist/chief songwriter Bosco Mann is too pristine, there is a crackle in the band's playing that, in the best songs, fans to a full-scale blaze.

The various elements are glued together by Minsky-Sargeant’s striking vocals. He doesn’t so much sing the songs as impose a persona on them in the manner of Jarvis Cocker, Grace Jones or Mark E Smith.

It's impeccably well done: riffs and basslines lock together as tightly as a highway-bound engine, but, like an American vehicle, the problem is excess.

Gone are the 13-minute multipart epics--the longest track here is just five and a half--yet there's a depth and darkness about The Hunter.

It’s an impressively varied and rousing set, if somewhat predictable.

At its most enjoyable, Surrounded By Time imagines a kind of alternative history for Jones. ... The other experiments are a mixed bag. ... That said, even the album’s missteps come with something oddly pleasing attached.

Every moment of the debut album from Wild Flag gives the impression that its makers--Mary Timony, Rebecca Cole, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss--are raiding their record collections for favourite sounds and having an absolute blast.

Repeated listening softens Swim's clinical edge, and when closing track Jamelia explodes with emotion, the thought occurs that if Snaith's next album picks up where this leaves off, it will be extraordinary.

That she has called this album Identity Crisis shows a grasp of insight sadly lacking on any of its self-penned songs.

Whether shouting, wisecracking or guffawing, [Argos] spends their entire debut album veering between irony and geekery.

[A] witty, wild and impressive return to his past.

When Anohni sings about mass graves and drone strikes, it doesn’t feel like a lecture. It can be strangely empowering. For all its bleakness, Hopelessness leaves you feeling anything but.

It's a refreshingly varied set.

It’s an often pained and personal set, with only one song not written by Akyol.

Her spoken words, songs and sighs give shape to this tempest of jazz, hip-hop and R&B, whirling together a who’s-who of Black classical.

A consistent album rather than a collection of tracks – or worse, a handful of big tunes padded out to album length with filler – Good Lies is filled with moments like that: you can spot the influences, but they’re always passed though a filter, presented in an original way.

Mostly, though, these elegant ­orchestrations of techno beats and ­sinuous, looped ­melodies ­suggest an aural equivalent to time-lapse ­photography – and seem equally ­revealing of our world.

The trend for disappointing follow-ups bucked with enviable panache, You Could Have It So Much Better leaves you eager, rather than concerned, about Franz Ferdinand's next album.

These are stadium-sized songs under a lone spotlight, and a stunning tribute to a light that went out far too soon.

At 59 minutes, it feels long, but that's the price you pay for experiments such as 'The Season' and charming oddities such as 'God?,' a bit of laid-back Americana employing sleigh bells. It's easy to see why they were a bit of a sensation at SXSW.

He sounds as comfortable in his musical skin here as ever.

Temporal, transforms music initially written for theatre and dance into standalone pieces. Often these are simple constructions--a looped bassline, a drone, a simple melody repeated over and over again – but the effects can be pleasantly disorientating, suited to an album that aims to explore temporality and motion.

Always soulful and forever in the groove, Okumu’s seamless genre switch-ups ensure I Came from Love finds strength in its multiplicity.

Tillman’s voice--which rarely gets mentioned in considerations of his success--is as wonderful as ever, clear and true, and warm and approachable, even if close examination reveals the deep damage beneath the veneer.

Throughout, Scott's old-soul narratives are reborn through Smith's atmospheric beats.

Frequent appearances of a quavering clarinet, hardly rave culture’s go-to instrument, further enhance the very particular beauty of his vision.

It's the force of Garbus's personality that holds these clashing parts together, her blunt promise that "I've got something to say"--and her surprising sense of fun.

Sitting somewhere between remixes and reimaginings, the songs on Jarak Qaribak illustrate the elasticity of this songbook, highlighting how its longing melodies can be reapplied into new voices, transmitting similar emotions through unusual settings.

There’s a Stone Roses-style naive melody on Friction, and Angie is the kind of epic that closed Britpop albums. But there’s also seething post-punk that recalls early Fugazi, and the lyrics--full of blood, spunk and dirt--are far too jaded and contradictory to make for easy indie-disco fodder.

Soused is surprisingly melodic, Sunn O))) provide a menacing but rich backdrop to Walker’s distinctive baritone.

It’s what an Australian rock record, at least one made by four men, should sound like in 2015.

[Bending Hectic is] one of the best things Yorke and Greenwood have put their names to in at least a decade. Like the rest of Wall of Eyes, it really doesn’t feel interstitial, like a placeholder until the definite article reappears. What that portends for Radiohead’s future – if anything – is arguable; the album’s quality is not.

UK hip-hop and albums bemoaning the current state of things are two crowded markets: The Long Goodbye is potent, original and timely enough to stand out in both.

Few Good Things sees Saba resurface, moving beyond the acceptance stage on an album that sounds and feels like one long exhale.

Futurology never feels like a pastiche, and sounds unmistakably like the Manic Street Preachers while sounding unlike any other album they've made.

This is easily the equal of, if not superior to, its illustrious companion.

It’s an album that creates a very particular headspace of desire, paranoia and possibility.

Pop music today is arguably more political than ever, but the very best pop songs offer either campy escapism or strengthening mantras. Petras clearly knows this. Her carefree hooks glisten like suits of armour.

Dixon’s fourth album tightens its lens: skipping by in 30 minutes, its songs possess a renewed urgency and velocity. But his writing is more literary and exploratory still. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (named after three of Toni Morrison’s most celebrated works) provides an embarrassment of imagistic riches.

Perhaps all will be revealed on repeated listens, but for now Star Wars sounds like a band having an absolute blast with both the pop music form and the ways in which we hear it.