On their third album Mommy, their blistering garage punk is finessed, their songwriting, sharp and sardonic.

There’s so much deliciously analogue texture to cherish here – all bakelite, mahogany, coconut shells and bougainvillea, with woodwind you could drink and percussion you could tuck behind your ear. It’s 2023’s hippest release. Get up, get down, kick back to it.

If such bittersweet reflections came packaged on a solo Albarn release, they’d probably be set to sorrowful, detached, acousto-electronic sounds. But his old friends have alchemised those sentiments into songs that elevate his suburban tristesse into moments of sheer ecstasy.

The past typically isn’t the most comfortable place to inhabit, but Swift embodies her younger self fully, imbuing these tracks with the same immediacy and emotional heft as she did all those years ago. Country twang or not.

I suspect that those who’ve always found Harvey a chore will find much to mock. But her fans will be all in for this mucky pagan whirl.

It’s an album that cools and shimmers its way through a delicious range of nuanced moods and subtly layered musical ideas. Delightful.

Some tracks on The Good Witch serve as incantations to manifest a better lover; others spit curses on past ones. All of them, though, convincingly set Peters up as the next musician to confidently march us into another sad girl summer.

Admittedly, with 15 full-length tracks, the record does run a little long. That said, there’s something alluring about such an unapologetic and candid album.

This new collection finds Horan moving towards the lusher production sound of his former bandmate Harry Styles. Laurel Canyon references mingle easily with Eighties synth-pop and Noughties guitar rock. It’s beautifully cohesive.

Clocking in at a scant 31 minutes, you could call The Age of Pleasure a quickie – but one that more than manages to scratch that itch.

As a tribute, and a farewell, it could hardly be better.

Council Skies is guaranteed to make the old fans feel right at home.

My Soft Machine is a punchier, poppier outing for Parks but the record shares a lot in common with its predecessor. .... It’s when Park veers off her own path that things get interesting. “Devotion” is a risk that pays off.

Gag Order comes loaded with deliciously weird and compellingly urgent hooks.

It’s realistic, reassuring, and rather soporific.

It’s an album that makes a church of its elegant electronica: all vaulting arcs of yearning melody and glimmers of stained glass that dance upwards, to the familiar urban spire of Thorn’s beautiful, hangdog voice.

72 Seasons may not see Metallica doing anything new – but it does find their old machine firing on all cylinders. Old and new fans alike will be headbanging happily throughout.

By the time her vocals roll in on “God Above”, you’re already caught in the slipstream of Drop Cherries. ... Marten dials back her sound to paint tender, intimate moments using only strokes of orchestral watercolour.

Most of them slot together with an appealing combination of simplicity and enigma – like those little puzzle cubes made of three types of wood. All the while, you can hear the careful questioning with which the songwriters have honed one another’s thoughts until they slot smoothly together to become satisfying tactile emotional experiences.

By avoiding clutter, both in lyrics and in instrumentation, each song feels like inhaling a gulp of cold, crisp air.

Her sweeping, layered ninth album is more ruminative than reactive: questions of family and legacy, memory and death swirl around one another until they’re one in the same.

A lovely long bask in Cyrus’s maturing talent.

UGLY is a powerful and direct transmission from a brilliant, beleaguered brain.

Food for Worms sees Shame confidently embrace their flaws and resign themselves to the messy, beautiful chaos of their live shows. It’s all captured within this bedhead of a record.

Signs that Cracker Island is designed to be a summer album sizzle though the heat-haze synths of “Silent Running” (featuring soulful contributions from Adeleye Omotayo) and the hip-sloshing dancefloor pulse of “New Gold” (feat Tame Impala and Bootie Brown).

After releasing all the pent-up adrenaline in the album’s first half, Paramore’s melodies lumber likeably to a sludgier, shoegazier speed after that. But the band keep things interesting by accessorising that sound with a synth flute (on “Big Man, Little Dignity”); a rattle stick tap (on “You First”); a twinkling keyboard; and low horn effect (on “Figure 8”).

A very brave, strong record. Hats off, Raye. These blues are smoking hot.

The older he gets, the better the conversational-confessional flow of his rapping, which allows him to stroll through a 10-minute bragathon like “Mel Made Me Do It” without breaking a sweat or losing the listener’s attention. He raps about trips to Dubai and giving up weed like he’s sitting beside you at a London bus stop.