All last year’s singles plus a dozen new drops here add up to an excellent, if exhausting, mixtape. Sensibly, songs confine themselves to three minutes or less, and there’s a wild joy to their commitment to entertainment.

A brace of great tunes make the case: Rhododendron nods at Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner, somehow making wildflowers sound gloriously disreputable. Saga, meanwhile, is a traumatised ballad that channels David Bowie, but with acoustic guitars and horns.

It’s testament to the structure and variety of Once Twice Melody that it never lags over 18 tracks, its gradual release paradoxically validating the album format as one still worth surrendering to, totally.

The Dream is another enjoyable stroll around the band’s latest curiosity shop.

The result is their most varied and expansive record to date.

To get the full effect, listen to the album from start to finish, over and over again. It’s a blast.

This is an album that wrestles with the sisyphean slog of remaining engaged – with love, with work, with life. And you can dance to it.

Even when the tempo drops, the quality doesn’t, the rich imagery of Trick Out the Truth being a case in point. Effortlessly classy.

The decade this outfit have spent in other bands pays off in a record that’s raucous and fun, incisive and – as it winds to a close – profoundly heartfelt, as vocalist James Smith apologises disgustedly for the sins of British foreign policy.

Alexander is better channelling any introspection into songs that reflect the morning after, with late album highlight Make It Out Alive giving Night Call a narrative arc via a post-big-night-out soother.

Sick! emerges with musicality enhanced, full of strings, soul samples, arpeggiating pianos and vinyl crackle – sometimes, as on the immersive Vision and Tabula Rasa, all at once.

Musically, Dawn FM mirrors Tesfaye’s disquiet, its buffed electronic sheen ruptured by moments of discord, as when ballad Starry Eyes teeters on the brink of implosion. It’s a state that Tesfaye seems to relish, with often stunning results.

With less dissonance and psychedelic experimentation than Jon Hopkins or Four Tet, Fragments may be too care-home comfort for some, but it’s brilliant, wondrous work.

Caprisongs collates a set of more ephemeral pop tunes in which twigs broadcasts selfhood 17 ways, finding unexpected common sonic ground with artists such as Grimes, Charli XCX and Self Esteem.

Parker’s third solo album for the International Anthem label is a meditative gem that breaks with the more fully fleshed out style of his two previous outings.

Recorded straight to tape with no overdubs, Still Moving proves a thrilling, spontaneous affair, switching between the laments and love songs of southern Italy and the gritty blues of North Africa and North America.

The voices of Callahan and Oldham provide a through line in what can occasionally be unexpected stylistic forays. Least best is a version of Billie Eilish’s Wish You Were Gay: High Llama Sean O’Hagan’s flippant, tinny beats point to a grave generational misunderstanding of digital pop. But almost everything else succeeds in having revelatory fun with old favourites or hitting the listener hard– or both.

This is a Crazy Horse record that is both raucous and highly tuneful, saturated with in-band bonhomie.

Recalling her early experimental work, while hoovering up dance genres at will, KicK iii is imbued with a joyous sense of freedom.

Throughout, there is so much going on that it takes many listens to absorb everything. But persevere and a tour de force of botanical rock takes form.

The Algorithm’s concept is too boring to explain, but thankfully the music isn’t.

What worked a treat then continues to work now.

This is an album that (once again) quietly demands to be heard, and enjoyed, as an inseparable whole.

30 overreaches for the rafters a little too often. But the sophisticated interplay of Adele’s nuanced vocal and the Garner piano sample here lingers long in the mind.

Songs such as The Wheel and Stockholm Syndrome offer thrills that can’t be denied, a preposterously exciting scrapyard soul.

[The two previously unreleased songs] comprise a fascinating companion piece for two classic albums.

The Solution Is Restless is an album that worms its way under your skin, reminding you of half a dozen records you love while sounding unlike anything else around.

All in all, it’s a rich, absorbing work that rewards immersive listening.