Staples called this his most personal record yet. Perhaps it’s this new vulnerability that makes the album so great. Or maybe it’s the whip-smart one-liners. Or the vivid storytelling. Staples will say this latest triumph is just a dude doing some different things.

Occasionally, the meandering nature of Mvula’s song structures can leave you grasping for more melody, but the moods she creates are always clearly defined.

While the production here is as slick as IGOR, though, there’s less of a through line. IGOR was the devastating pieced-together parts of a broken relationship. CMIYGL plays fast and loose with its subjects, relying instead on the music itself to carry listeners through. ... Tyler, the Creator continues to defy expectations.

Dacus’s warm vocals are as rich and full as ever, between upbeat album singles like “Hot & Heavy” and yearning, piano-driven ballads (“Please Stay”).

Quietly Blowing It feels like the first steps into bold new territory.

A record that finds the 52-year-old Grant on his most romantic, melodic form, as he looks back on the pleasures and fears he faced growing up as a gay kid in America’s Midwest. ... A lovely, generous album.

Peace or Love, their first album in 12 years, is perfectly pleasant and familiar, the tracks tracing the well-trodden vicissitudes of love in tones so subdued that they’d seem hushed even when played at maximum volume.

The album doles out small doses of riot grrrl nostalgia but for the most part, on No Gods No Masters, Garbage stretch beyond the gilded cage of their Nineties icon status to reach for something new – often, but not always, to effective ends.

Many of these songs are hip hop-lite, incorporating bland trap beats as Levine delivers lyrics in the kind of stutter pioneered by early Soundcloud rappers.

Imagine Killing Eve in audio form. They’re still that kick-ass. That sexy. That much fun. Put this album on your to-listen list, pronto.

Soberish is a record of push and pull, of doubt and regained confidence. ... Phair is the queen of rock reinvention, and as this album proves, she’s got a few lives left.

Traverses Eighties-indebted dance, swirling alt-pop and homespun lo-fi across a tight 10-song track list. There are reprieves – where the energy quietens to syrupy, fluid ballads on which Zauner’s voice lolls as opposed to skips – but the emotional journey is always upward.

As with Visions, this third album sees the band hopping between styles – folk, garage rock and shoegaze – only now they’re steering deeper into the corners and controlling the skids.

This album is unlikely to win him any new fans. But, for the many millions whose lives intersected with the original music, Reprise offers a graceful and nuanced opportunity to take stock.

On Cavalcade, black midi feast on a smorgasbord of influences but the result at times can leave their sound meandering aimlessly.

Despite its 16 tracks, not once does Long Lost feel crowded. The pace is unhurried, the phrasing exquisite.

Across the album she stretches her voice into familiar, hushed shapes – but the record marks a clear evolution of an artist done with being called pretty.

At times, it feels as though the polite, considered Rodrigo could push ideas, emotions and melodies a little further than she does. ... But this is an incredibly impressive debut from a singer who’s only just learning to stretch her wings.

It sounds – for the first time in a decade – like Clark has slipped out of her high heels and found an equal strength in this barefooted soul.

Never once do Sons of Kemet compromise on their fiercely individual sound.

Delta Kream is a soundtrack for those hot and heady nights of late summer. It’s brilliant.

His tendency to hurl the same emotional intensity into every syllable (loud, soft, high, low, new idea or repetition) gets wearing. It doesn’t help that the melodies are often simplistic to the point of forgettable and the production seldom leaves a space unfilled.

Latest Record Project Volume 1 might be a grievance-heavy sprawl, but if you’re a Morrison die-hard it’ll be a worthy, timely addition to his catalogue.

This is proudly shape-shifting, genre-defying music.

The Australian artist sounds like a brand new person, ready to make up for those years she played it safe. Produced by Thomas Bartlett and Annie Clark (St Vincent), Sixty Summers is a celebration of newly claimed liberty.

The riffs are better, arrangements more textured, harmonies more interesting (there’s a great contribution from some female backing singers on “Oblivion”). Then there’s the surprising closer “All We Have is Now”, a poignant moment of calm after the storm. Royal Blood have finally found their own voice.

Faithfull lifts them from the page with a compelling combination of crispness and tenderness. She doesn’t use that soporific “poetry voice”. Instead, she can make 200-year-old visions of beauty, love and death feel as urgent as the latest true-crime podcast.

His barnacled baritone steers a steady course through Moog-soaked covers of favourite songs, with sombre lines about dark oceans, soulless days, and skirting a skeleton coast.