It is eminently danceable, but not braindead. Funk bubbles away down below, but the lyrics are well worth tuning into.

There’s a mixtape energy in Smith’s relentless invention.

Endless Arcade dwells on the end of love, as hymned on multiple TFC albums; on stoicism in the face of this emotional catastrophe, or – on Raymond McGinley’s songs – our tiny place in the cosmos and the importance of eking joy out of everything.

It gets better with every play, mixing punk with glam with fuzz guitar, recalling everything from the Rolling Stones to Jack White. It is just heavy enough, and it is also meta.

With archaic language updated by transatlantic twang, it's a winning addition to the canon.

Underpinning everything are the Watkinses themselves, especially the agile vocals of Sara, who outshines California art rockers Tune-Yards on a cover of their Hypnotized. But it’s not a competition, just a great night out with a ringside seat.

Hazy and mellifluous, theyesandeye possesses a Nick Drake-like attention to detail.

A bravura showcase.

Album of knotty nuance bathed in melodic succour.

Everything feels like it is pulsating away within an amniotic sac – in a good way – as instruments wander across the songs, as though orchestrating themselves.

The urban electronica of 2014’s In Each and Every One is sidelined for a spacier, more minimalist sound.

Anyone pining for the arch twig-insect dandy of old, preening over driving beats and gyrating to wayward early electronics, will find much to love on this album.

What’s new, though, are the traces of Talking Heads-style funk and a wistfulness prompted by parenthood’s demands. “I’m sorry if I’m ever short with you,” sings David to his wife on the closer, Stay Awake, while the touching The Morning Is Waiting possesses a depth hitherto absent from their work.

There remains a palpable feeling that with Coriky, one of American music’s foremost consciences is very much back in business.

The more you listen, the more Planetarium recalls Stevens’s glitchy, Auto-Tuned The Age of Adz album. Myth and science, astrology and astronomy, the personal and the political, religion and the profane commingle.

Where WIMPIII’s songs don’t cleave as closely to any of the album’s declared narratives, there is still much of interest going on.

Multi-Love is a squelchy, seductive update of UMO’s nagging groove, now with added whoa-factor.

Lazaretto, named after a place of quarantine for sailors, hurtles between moods and tempos, often within the same song.

The whole thing makes you want to punch the air--or maybe even strip off.

The melodies are simple but lovely, often spelled out on tumbling acoustic guitar, as on Like Water, before being taken up by the group. It’s wonderful to have them back.

It's his strongest album since Love and Theft in 2001, and still there's no pinning him down.

Overall there’s an abundance of grade-A pop on offer--just keep a tissue handy.

More thrilling are the metallic scrape of Swill and Wildeye, the skittish robotic choir on Hold, and Salt Licorice, which features Robyn, synth melodies that appear to be disassembling themselves and lyrics about “Scandinavian pain”. More of this, please: Jónsi suits the shock of the new.

Powerful and affecting, this is as good as anything Gahan has done in the last 25 years.

Coexist is yet another masterpiece of lush asceticism.

Biophilia is no clever-clever cacophony. Like the natural world from which it draws inspiration, the album has structure and convention. And there is always the anchor of Björk's voice and her words, which conjoin emotional forces and elemental processes.

A collection whose understatement allows different facets of Lamar’s talent to shine.

Each song on this engaged but accessible record memorialises a figure from the African diaspora--often lesser-known poets, or figures like Miles and Basquiat.