Reflective, immersive and, in a more subtle way, euphoric, this is the record to put the art into The Avalanches’ party.

It retains their signature blend of folk-rock songcraft and miasmic guitar-drone textures, but in a more purposive manner.

With strong, clear-eyed subtext, overlaid by compositions that touch on every influence from TV on the Radio to Prince, Childish Gambino and Radiohead, Smiling With No Teeth is not so much an album as it is a memoir – a story both unique to Owusu and universal to anyone who has ever felt “othered”.

For the most part Gold Record is a deftly woven and cosily feathered little nest of songs. Settle in.

Happier Than Ever is full of things most of us don’t have to deal with – NDAs, interviews, paparazzi – and yet Eilish weaves them around universal woes, with such a knack for sharp, insightful lyrics that it never comes across like her diamond shoes are too tight.

It's long (nearly 100 minutes), strange, disturbing, uncomfortable, challenging. But it never fails to fascinate.

Here, deprived of Crazy Horse and Young’s tectonic lead guitar, “Powderfinger” assumes its natural form as an antique folk ballad, while the haunting “Pocahontas”, minus overdubs, is likewise more nakedly vulnerable.

It’s an album fuelled by southern heat, with plenty of grit to boot. Their best yet.

An album heralding a talent as intriguingly fully-formed and distinctive, in its own way, as Marling, Mitchell and Bush.

Few songwriters can juggle seriousness and whimsy as adeptly as Paul Simon on Stranger To Stranger, his best album in several years.

A surprising meditation on fatherhood, family and friendship. Kendrick Lamar’s work has always been introspective, but Mr Morale and the Big Steppers – with guest spots from artists including Florence Welch, Beth Gibbons, Summer Walker and Sampha – has a delicacy and tenderness to it that is unprecedented for the father of two from Compton, California. Because of this, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers is most redolent of Lamar’s second album good kid, m.A.A.d city.

The result is a lush, immersive work which is sonically more homogeneous than her earlier albums.

Paul Simon's ruminations here on love, age and encroaching mortality have a valedictory flavour about them.

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 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.

Sleep Well Beast, like all The National’s albums, occupies troubled territory. These are songs about the fleeting impermanence of joy, compared to the lingering bruise of despair, and how hard it is to live in this unfairly weighted emotional space. It’s a struggle embodied in Matt Berninger’s enervated, murmurous baritone.

Despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours.

They are exciting precisely because they refuse to reveal everything about themselves, and because there is an ambiguity to be found in lyrics that come across as bluntly personal. It’s a talent that was present in their first two albums, only this time, they’ve let the light in a bit.

The subtle melodies of Midnights take time to sink their claws in. But Swift’s feline vocal stealth and assured lyrical control ensures she keeps your attention.

With Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes triumphantly deliver on the promise of their popular debut, the album that helped establish folk-rock once again as a formidable commercial force rather than just a fringe interest.

Chaos is incoming. Yet the Welsh artist’s sixth album never fully unleashes that chaos; she restrains it, wrestles with it, and in doing so exacerbates its sense of unease. Written in complete isolation in Cardiff, Pompeii demonstrates Le Bon’s flair for the surreal, while exploring themes close to home: religious guilt, family, death.

One of the truest, wisest albums you’ll ever hear.

There's a maturity about Rumer's delivery that sets her apart from all the Duffys and Adeles.

Right from the lolloping big-beat Goth motorik of “Vessels”, there’s a confident, low-life muscularity to the album, partly recorded with Sean Lennon at his upstate New York studio.

This fourth album is produced by south London’s Paul White, and a shared taste for Talking Heads and especially Joy Division (the LP is named after their song, more than JG Ballard’s novel) takes it way off the mainstream hip-hop map.

When pondering gets this skilled, and this fruitful, the dividends far outweigh the misgivings.

Equal parts Jean Genet and Hellboy, it’s a magnificent oddity, exultant in its uniqueness, both personally and musically.

Overall, Smother finds Wild Beasts hurdling that difficult third album with some aplomb.