Brimming with intensity and the analgesic hypnotism that is Pierce’s signature, And Nothing Hurt would make a suitably majestic final Spiritualized album.

Glimmers with fantastic, layered production. Instead of merging sounds so they become indistinguishable, each chime, each clatter of percussion, is given its space – as a result the whole album feels remarkably fresh.

Just when you think it's done, it finds another gear through the ingenious addition of a subtle offbeat that kicks the groove up a notch--the kind of sly, brilliant touch that suggests Rudimental are worthy heirs to the likes of Soul II Soul and Basement Jaxx.

With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.

This is a record that expands the idea of what Sleaford Mods could be.

If you’re looking for smooth guitar riffs and auto-tuned vocals, you won’t find it on I Don’t Run: Hinds thrives on their imperfections and that’s the point.

It’s their best album to date.

There is a brilliant album among the 18 songs, if only it had been pruned it a little.

As with their debut, this album feels as though you’re being allowed a brief but intense insight into his self-contained world. Yet the vein of humour that ran through those earlier songs has been replaced by a deeper sincerity.

Guilt, sickness, depression and death have their haunting power acknowledged. The optimism of a songwriter who sees the world’s love and beauty through his own sometimes deep pain rarely falters.

Despite the limited instrumental palette, there’s a broad variety of approaches.

Through 14 tracks, Jordan and Harley offer a fast-talking, witty and well-meaning account of day-to-day life for sharp-eyed British youth.

Alicia Keys’s musicality is far superior [than Solange's]: whether developing swaying gospel fervour on “Pawn It All”, threading balofon through the two-part reflection on African-American queens “She Don’t Really Care/1 Luv”, or riding a perky Latin shuffle for “Girl Can’t Be Herself”, her work is grounded in a melodic appeal that’s almost magnetic.

David Bowie releases the most extreme album of his entire career: Blackstar is as far as he's strayed from pop.

[Ventura] streamlines .Paak’s sound, making for a tightly packaged, melodic and danceable album.

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

Thea Gilmore's 70th birthday tribute takes the form of re-recording her favourite Dylan album in its entirety, triggered by her acclaimed 2002 cover of "I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine", which sustains its solemnity despite the inclusion of congas.

I Slept On the Floor is a marvellous, and intense, debut.

For all its gloom, Merrie Land is an entertaining and theatrical album, with vocals that capture the social observation of early album Parklife. It’s also an immensely clever feat of word painting, never relying on lyrics alone to reflect the sense of anxiety.

It’s a proud, forceful demonstration of the strength and variety of modern African music, brilliantly combined by producer Liam Farrell into arrangements where funk, afrobeat, desert-blues, dub and congotronics swirl infectiously around the women’s voices.

Prass confirms her unique, tremulous contralto mining depths of despairing devotion on songs clearly triggered by romantic crisis.

It's all delivered with customary warmth and swing from Miller's home studio.

Smith’s new record does feel like her most personal. Her lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, as though she’s in the middle of composing a message to a friend or partner. The delight she takes in performing these songs is palpable.

His richly soporific new album – his first new material since 2012’s Tempest – plays like an extension of that [2016 Nobel Prize acceptance] speech: a folksy recitation of literary and pop references sprawling over long, ramshackle songs with minimal (mostly acoustic) melodies that sway back and forth behind him like curtains in a light breeze.

Costello has always been an exceptional storyteller, and this is one of his most evocative albums.

With Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys co-producing, Olive has captured the flavour of 1960s Brit-blues on the cusp of spreading into druggier, more exploratory areas.

The emotional cohesion the record loses in its shifting cast of singers/songwriters/genres it makes up in DJ-savvy textural variety.

The UK edition of their debut has three extra tracks recorded in a church, which damps things even further. But there is still much to enjoy here.

Two Ribbons is another milestone for the duo. Their third record finds the inseparable pair separated. Written mostly individually, it explores the small fissures beginning to show in their friendship as they’ve grown up and grown apart. The result is remarkable.

Young's best album in some while.

Instead of a too-many-cooks situation, which this easily could’ve been, Dessner and Howard find cozy nooks for everyone. The singer’s reedy voice is the drawstring that ties it all together.

It’s a happy surprise to find a fresh, shiny energy-driving CWPHF. The tunes are sparkier, tempos more varied and the sonic textures cheerier, as though the band were given a clean shave and a hot lemon-scented towel.

The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia. Its influences span decades; Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar and Bobby Womack are all recalled.

Standouts include a heartbreaking cover of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and the haunting murmur of "More".

There's a simplicity about these previously unreleased demos that's utterly beguiling, the spare settings allowing the sweeter side of George Harrison's character to shine unencumbered by studio blandishments.

On John Paul White’s Beulah, the dark emotions of tracks like “Fight For You” and “Hope I Die” mingle with the bitterness of “The Once And Future Queen” and the low self-esteem of “I’ll Get Even” to create a strangely subdued portrait of emotional turmoil, couched in Southern folk and country modes.

Great fun, from first to last.

Punisher ends with a thunderstorm of manic, discordant brass and drums and a pained scream, the physical culmination of the undercurrent of doom that has lurked throughout. But you emerge feeling not deflated but purged. Punisher has the effect of a particularly pummelling massage.

This is music that sounds as fun to make as it is to listen to. The energy here is thrilling, the strong rhythm section provided by former Detroit garage band The Greenhornes’ bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler. ... Help Us Stranger has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

Walls is unchecked, indignant and raw, and though it ends with a note of despondency, it is a triumph.

Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things.

As a songwriter, Steve Earle is blessed with two apparently contradictory gifts: the ability to animate fictional lives, and a streak of cussed, lefty sincerity that gives bite to his truth-telling.

Hubcap Music finds Seasick Steve back on form, with an album steeped in gritty boogie and even grittier attitude.

Her own third album suggests she’s every bit [Damien Rice's] equal in tracking the heart’s mysterious emotional undercurrents.

A typically diverse collection.

Emmaar is a typically impressive blend of the emotional and the political from Tinariwen.

Lighting Matches is polished soul and swing with a sharper edge than some of his contemporaries have managed.

Live albums, never quite being able to replicate the atmosphere of a show or the cleanness of a record, can be hard work--but Springsteen on Broadway is an enthralling listen.

It's an absorbing, sometimes harrowing ride.

Not that the usual soul belters are entirely absent from Long Live The Angels. Tracks like “Every Single Little Piece” and “Highs & Lows” are big, radio-friendly chartbound anthems, ebullient and eager to please; but the more interesting aspects of the album are to be found in less formulaic arrangements, such as “Give Me Something”, which opens with an acoustic guitar flourish pointedly recalling “The Tracks Of My Tears”, before settling into a folk-soul setting clearly influenced by Tracy Chapman.

It’s a fascinating oddity streaked with sex, violence and sorrow, a sort of seedcorn of the Robert Rodriguez aesthetic, presented complete with the lithographs that accompanied the original, albeit in cramped CD size.

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

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.

MDNA represents a determined, no-nonsense restatement of the Madonna brand.

Well-made mid-American roots-rock by a young Oklahoman, who may harbour legitimate Springsteen/Fogerty fantasies.

Slightly laconic, slightly ironic, ["No Problem"] makes for a brilliant contrast with the production duo's galloping stutter-riff groove, heralding a run of crunching fuzz-guitar riffs that brings to mind the UK big-beat heyday of The Prodigy.

It’s a fitting record for the global unease of the past few months, but one that’s characteristically intimate.

The hodgepodge of ideas can make for challenging listening towards the end, but Lamp Lit Prose feels like Longstreth’s back having fun, playing with ideas, every listen offering up something new to discover.

It’s Robinson’s soul-scorched vocals that hold everything together, his relaxed charm shining through whether he’s engaged in perplexing, mystic narratives or offhand, recreational encouragements to “relax your mind”.

Fame may be fickle, but Vollebekk’s dedication to improving his craft is anything but.

In a Galaxy is a record that takes you far beyond the borders of the world you’re familiar with, and into something altogether more colourful.

This River is surely the most accomplished album yet from Florida-based songwriter JJ Grey.

There’s a strange, comforting beauty to Romano’s sombre baritone.

What’s impressive on 7 is how they show a fascination with genres that should have no business being on the same album, but without the “smash and grab” attitude of so many Western artists. When it comes to music, 7 is is cast-iron proof we all speak the same language.

The most potent and inventive electronica album I've heard in ages, a masterclass in punchy bleepscaping right from the low-register throb that opens "Lowly".

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

It's all as ludicrous, graceless and unlovely as the "sport" it hymns, yet there's an anachronistic boot-boy charm to Haines's depiction of the milieu that's genuinely affecting, as well as amusing.

All in all, a difficult task accomplished with no shortfall of style and invention.

The result is a dark, steamy sound that comes crawling from the Louisiana swamp like a mean-tempered 'gator.

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

Their latest effort is a much-welcomed return to form.

The King of Limbs sounds like the bastard offspring of dubstep and Nico Muhly, the brilliant composer whose string and choral arrangements inhabit the open spaces between contemporary classical and art-rock.

Zeros is the sound of an artist pushing his creative development, and enjoying himself as he does so. Exciting stuff.

Traveling Alone sounds like her best album yet.

Harrison has a knack for narrative and a snagging vocal that lifts potential mediocrity of this vibe into a warmer and more engaging experience. He’s at his best at his most British, when he channels the conversational intimacy of The Streets’ Mike Skinner.

Caer shows that Twin Shadow’s limitless approach to pop suits him just fine.

To the delicate folk of their earlier work has been added a robustness that takes the Brighton-based six-piece in the direction of Blur.

With Stone Rollin', he broadens his outlook to take in various other R&B styles, without shifting more than a few years either way.

Tricky plumbs the deepest fathoms of despair. But from that he’s created something beautiful. This is one of his best, and truest, albums.

The only constants are Albarn’s drowsy presence, shuffling through songs as if shot in the neck with a tranquiliser dart, and the stout melodicism that makes …Strange Timez the finest Gorillaz album in a decade.

[Title track "Mars" is] a rare misstep on an album that looks to both East and West, and reaches simultaneously into the past and the future.

The Pop Group’s signature mode of deviant funk, with dub effects and tangled guitar distortion wielded with razoring disregard for polite taste, is still disconcerting and the focus of their anger is still sharp, albeit refracted through allegory and apocalyptism.

On False Alarm, though, they offer something that proves they’re still worth paying attention to.

Imaginative and innovative in equal measure.

A late-career Exile on Main Street? Their best since the Seventies? Arguably, but such hyperbole undeniably rests on the broad shoulders of the seven-minute “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, the album’s spectacular spiritual crescendo.

By reflecting on the personal issues that first inspired him, Murdoch has reminded his band what they’re made of and sparked a loving surprise: their most expansive, exquisite mission statement since 1998.

Rina’s mini album may have marked her out as one to watch, but SAWAYAMA stakes her claim as one of the boldest voices in pop today.

Blake clearly revels in the invention and freedom of the exploit. “Fall Back” comes across as a very organic, found-sound kind of ambient concoction, as if someone has worked out how to recycle DJ software out of firewood and hemp.

He sounds cleansed of old complications.

To these ears, album closer “Serpentine Prison” bears an uncanny – if stripped-back – similarity to “Friend of Mine”. But for the most part, this is a Berninger record, and it’s very good.

Backed by a band who vigorously play to his timeless strengths, he sounds as sprightly as ever.

Hip young American male/female duo Cults look to classic 1960s pop history for the 11 bite-sized pop nuggets of this impressive debut.

Musically progressive, it’s Shires most ambitious work to date; nasty, stomping Southern rock sits next to poppier fare and several moments of quiet introspection.

Throughout, Jones’s characteristic optimism holds true, in songs such as Binky Griptite’s latter-day civil rights anthem “Matter Of Time” (“It’s a matter of time before justice will come”) and especially Crispiano’s “Come And Be A Winner”, whose light country-soul stylings and rhythm guitar seem to channel Curtis Mayfield.

Yes, it’s all cheesy as a vat of fondue. But it’s also a lot of fun.

Sometimes, her influences are obvious but her exploratory enthusiasm is ultimately winning, and her vocals layered in a way that pivots on the cusp of the sensual and the spiritual.

Complex, involved and engaging, her music’s exploratory inclinations are tempered with a distinctive melodic charm.

Feist here cements her position as the poster-girl for intimate US indie rock, with songs that peel back the skin of the human condition.