The great thing about this album is that you can choose to fall down a nerdy rabbit hole with its creators and dissect all the movie themes. Or, you can just let it wash over you while you catch the odd breeze of reference here and there. And though it lacks the direct gut-punch of one of Stevens’ best solo records, it’s infused with the warmth of real friendship.

The skirling electric guitars have been replaced by acoustic instruments which, allied to the ageless, weary but unbowed character of Ibrahim Ag Alhabib's voice, enhances further the bluesy nature of their music.

Like Starboy, there’s a hefty Eighties influence here, although for the most part, After Hours abandons the danceability of its predecessor in favour of moody introspection. This is the music you listen to when the party’s over.

Mutual Friends, a loose song-cycle, is entirely winning.

Mark Lanegan's darkly knowing interpretation is one of the highlights of this compilation tribute.

Fascinating, enjoyable and original.

It’s a break-up album that’s perhaps a touch too unremittingly bleak for the closing resolution of “Another Train” (“I’m moving on, through the past, through the pain, waiting on another train”) to completely convince.

A brilliant, nigh-on faultless work from an acknowledged master.

Norwegian musician Thom Hell’s eighth album is an inventive meditation on growing up.

In a career spanning more than two decades, Elbow have always taken things at their own pace, and this shows in Little Fictions’ pleasing rhythms.

Weeks’ haunting lilt is perfect for embodying the magic and fear of creating a life, whether writing letters to his unborn son on “Takes A Village”, mooning over 20-week scans on “Blood Sugar” or finally tucking the nipper in on “Milk Breath”. It’s gorgeous, but expect more gin and screaming on the follow-up.

Though it could stand to sound more consistent throughout (at times The Staves sound like they’re throwing that proverbial spaghetti against the wall), Good Woman successfully demonstrates that even through life’s lessons and uncomfortable liminal states, family is the most stabilising force.

This is by no means an easy record to fathom, but it does show – even after so many years – you’ll never catch Albarn resting on his laurels.

Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.

He's keen to please, but what's remarkable about The Lady Killer is that he manages to avoid all the bubblebath boudoir-soul cliches that litter most R&B albums.

While the songs here lack the scuzzy charm of her debut, Tell Me How You Really Feel is a weightier, more direct record.

["A Little Bit Of Everything"] is a thoughtful, mature conclusion to an album that seems to summarise one of the more welcoming trends in American rock

Americana is the kind of concept album that Bernie Taupin might have written for Elton John; but being Ray Davies, it’s not so much comprised of fond, mythopoeic imaginings as the more specific (non-political) relationship that still subsists between Britain and America.

Flamagra--a playful yet melancholic, skittish yet meditative 67 minutes of cosmic genius--is one of Flying Lotus’s most accessible releases.

It’s an enjoyable, occasionally virtuosic romp, fronted by Thundercat’s smooth soul harmonies, which lend proceedings the lustrous sheen of Earth, Wind & Fire.

With Golding’s expansive, questing lines riding Boyd’s rolling, polyrhythmic funk, the duo set displays a focused musical intimacy, while the band set is immediately more incendiary, thanks to Parker wailing wild over Golding’s more rooted part in “Valley Of The Ultra Blacks”.

Vessel is a return to form for Kline: bringing the sincerity that was threaded throughout her Bandcamp releases to the forefront once again.

The result is an engaging, youthful and thoughtful folk-rock.

It's a brave and sometimes baffling album, broaching difficult themes; though faced with a series of such unforgiving electro-sonic maelstroms, one may hanker for the touches of folksy pastoralism that lightened earlier AF albums.

The Long Sleep is more concerned with the lifecycle, the existential, and, in parts, is more sonically expansive.

It seems like they just ran out of interest, and gave up.

Although their go-for-broke approach furnishes ideas to spare, the unwitting effect is a set of lurches from impressive to hopelessly ill-integrated, often over the course of a single song.

There's a consistency and homogeneity about the 11 tracks (seven from The Red Shoes, four from The Sensual World) which echoes her work on Aerial, and which lends the project a character entirely its own.