Conflict of Interest, his third studio release, has both cinematic scope and tear-jerking moments.

While the songs on Glowing in the Dark might be less immediate than those on 2018’s Marble Skies (particularly that record’s thrilling title track), the hooks are still there – they just take a few more listens to sink in.

It’s good – but could have been great.

If the interplay between the band’s instruments makes gleeful mincemeat of genre, singing guitarist Isaac Wood’s equally remarkable lyrics regularly float to the top of the mix. Half-spoken, half-sung, they riff on granular scene references (“I told you I loved you in front of Black Midi”) and Gen-Z witticisms, but pack in plenty of timeless tenderness and anomie.

This is an album whose bone-deep grief sits inside music that’s very easy to tap a toe to.

With its silky delicacy, percussion that plays with everything from trip-hop to neosoul, and that deft voice gliding through sublime imagery, this is a quietly enriching and powerful first album.

Songs such as Maid Marian’s Toast are both clever, easy-going and gilded with just the right amount of feedback and mouth organ.

Her anger is buoyed up by a sample from Kelis’s Caught Out There, a throwback trick she tries again less successfully on the bratty, Avril-referencing L8r Boi. It feels like a cheap gimmick on an album that manages to avoid novelty even when its tongue is placed firmly in its cheek.

Andrew Fearn’s deathlessly inventive compositions stare you down, defying you to find them simplistic – the title track’s turbo-charged electro, and the pointillist electronics of Top Room, are just two cases in point.

Justin used a sparer musical palette than Earle Sr, often with a rockabilly feel – the celebrated Harlem River Blues, for example – but the Dukes, a tough, road-worn outfit, tend to iron out their variety. Earle’s vocals, growling and gravelled these days, deliver the songs straight, only occasionally letting a sense of loss intrude.

At a time of such division, it’s a startlingly brave record and all the more necessary for it.

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

There’s much to discover here, making it an immersive and rewarding album to go back to again and again.

Lush, cavernous record.

If Disc 1 has more room for unreleased fun – a terrifically roiling live take on the sprawling Last Trip to Tulsa, a standout from Young’s self-titled debut album - Disc 6 doubles down on introspection.

The best that can be said is that Trotter’s singing is warm and assured. Elsewhere, though, this veteran polemicist is on fire, his learned invective weaponised to meet the present moment. ... The rest of the track-listing has both power and nuance, taking in personal relationships (We Should Be Good), autobiographical pain (Fuelt) and references to TS Eliot (Ghetto Boyz N Girls), with Trotter barely pausing for breath before landing the next masterful rhyme.

[An] endearingly careworn debut.

Frontline and My Family are among the best singles of the year, and there are three more just as good here.

While there’s nothing here as instantly memorable as Can’t Get You Out of My Head or All the Lovers, Disco benefits from a consistent sonic palette, and one that nestles neatly inside the Kylie comfort zone. Free of the pressure of big singles in a streaming era that often sidelines “heritage” acts, the album also feels relatively filler-free.

A concept album about death and grief during a pandemic? Now there’s bravery. Fortunately, Tunng bring a characteristically light touch to these tender, if not taboo subjects.

Confetti is more potent than 2018’s spread-betting LM5.

Grande laid bare may well be seen as a stopgap in her canon, using taboo to checkmate her past trauma, but it does pull off the rare feat of at least sounding effortless.

It feels like there’s one last great album in him, even if this isn’t quite it.

This first album in 20 years proves an inspired tribute to the master.

A strangely cogent album for wildly unstable times.

In truth, Letter to You is cheesier than a Monterey Jack, shameless in its embrace of cliche. ... Conversely, then, Letter to You is exactly the album some people could use right now, a sledgehammer of succour and uplift, a heroic E Street pile-on of the kind fans and guitarist Steve Van Zandt have been lobbying for, for years.

Even when the tempo – and urgency – of these songs occasionally drops, they are rescued from mediocrity by Herring’s affecting lyrics: several songs contemplate the wreckages of toxic relationships with unflinching honesty.

Lush and exploratory, April / 月音 swirls Cantonese vocals, singing bowls, and samples of Hong Kong traffic lights into Moss’s folk-pop, and is all the more stirring for never really finding a safe resting place.

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.

She describes herself as a pianist who also sings, and when she’s doing both with her quartet there’s no one to touch her. For proof, listen here to Just You, Just Me, That’s All and Almost Like Being in Love.

Loving the Spice Girls today is an exercise in childhood nostalgia; Melanie C honours those fans – and herself – as adults worthy of hearing themselves in vital pop.

The song structures of the demos here don’t differ radically from those on the finished album, but shorn of the string section and piano that embellished the final versions there is a more intimate feel.

Tthe magnificent Sugar weighs up the power of cliche while seeking its sweet reward; and America recoils in horror from, well, America. But the rest of the album returns to the spiritual and physical passions of previous, myth-heavy Stevens works; his penchant for classical and biblical allusions recalls Bob Dylan’s.

Shore takes all the complexity of The Crack-Up, Fleet Foxes’ 2017 outing, and unites it with the immediacy of the band’s classic self-titled 2008 debut.

Idles’ third studio album has all of the elements that made Joy As an Act of Resistance such a breakout success.

Over eight CDs (or a big download) is the story of one of the most intriguing partnerships in British music: the silvery folk-rock duo Richard and Linda Thompson. It is a tale worth retelling – and shelling out for.

This Tasmanian band’s debut is end-to-end faultless.

At times, its tonal shifts cause whiplash, but the real magic appears when Cook manages to coalesce these two sides in the same song.

Tracks like Maker or Ndimakukonda boast compelling African instrumentation and cadences, putting significant stylistic space between Anjimile and Stevens. Throughout, the production – also by relative unknowns – is pin-sharp and generous.

If he’s capable of writing stuff like this at 21 – and indeed of taking on the influences of the past without just regurgitating them – McKenna’s future looks intriguing. For the time being, though, he’s making the tricky business of shape-shifting and growing up in public seem painless.

Gold and Albarn have done great work on Lindé, mixing Bocoum’s desert bluesology with fuller accompaniments and adding a clutch of interesting guests. ... While the album cruises easily along, Bocoum’s subject matter is serious. Facing turmoil from poverty and jihad, Mali is, as Bocoum puts it, “on the ropes”. His response, calling for unity and hope, proves captivating.

Gold Record marks another stage in one of the most intriguing about-turns in recent American music. The curmudgeon of Callahan’s early records might now meet humanity with a wry chuckle and an observational benevolence bordering on empathy.

There are muscular funk workouts, like Virgin, studded with vocal declamations, but the album’s 76 minutes are a brilliant, shape-shifting matrix.

Owens’s is not the only voice elevating this album: Welsh legend John Cale contributes to the brooding Corner of My Sky. Alongside relationship breakdown and the death of her grandmother (the coolly arpeggiating Jeanette), climate apocalypse gets a workout too.

Eleven songs and at least seven of them could be hits. A sensational album. Consider your summer saved.

Though there are enough intricacies to keep you interested – ornate percussion, switches in pace and vocal delivery – largely this is a warm and easy listen.

Bradfield supplies his usual tender bombast. Some of it could be sketches for a musical, and there’s real intelligence and verve to the electronic, acoustic and orchestral arrangements, with surprising yet successful touches of prog and psychedelia.

Storytelling and suffering remain at the heart of this rich, gauzy and lush record, which, like Gaslighter, expands the borders of country while strengthening its core tenets.

Dig deep, stick to your guns, “be a lot less guarded”, runs the message of this nourishing dose of laser-sharp country-pop boosterism.

Many of Fontaines’ key traits remain: the ability of this young Dublin outfit to retread familiar post-punk ground but with a tensile urgency all their own; and the sardonic Irish tones of Grian Chatten, whose affected blankness speaks volumes.

As engaging as these songs are on multiple levels, 3.15.20 really excels when Glover experiments with form, texture and sensory overload.

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.

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.

B7 isn’t exclusively a trip down memory lane, but it does cruise past a few old haunts. Brandy’s trademark raspy vocals and sublime harmonies on Rather Be and Lucid Dreams are nostalgia-inducing for anyone who grew up listening to her acrobatic riffs and runs.

Heart’s Ease proves a more confident follow-up.

While there are still nods to the polite dinner-party soundtrack feel of her early work – the string-drenched Courage, for example – this is a much bolder statement of intent.

There is chemistry here, making for tight songs that prance insouciantly from genre to genre, scattering wisdom and swagger in their wake.

Unfollow the Rules marks a welcome return to the opulent orchestration of Wainwright’s early albums.

While the Streets’ Tame Impala two-hander justly set the internet abuzz, even better tunes lie within.

This is not the kind of sunset in which mortality looms, but where the gentler evening light casts everything in a fresh aspect. There is warmth and succour here, undercut with a playful scattering of mischievous sounds; orchestral soul with eloquent quirks; nuances that hark back to Weller’s second band, the Style Council.

Kitchen Sink is an album that slowly charms its way into your conscience, and is all the more pleasing for that.

Heady and rooted in lustful disco, this album proves that the singer is a cornerstone of contemporary pop.

KiCk I offers up an even broader palette than previously, while keeping up a steady diet of trademark dissonance alongside those slightly more overground ambitions.

Pleasingly, their debut album suggests there’s enough musical substance to back up their fighting talk.

The music is set to do-not-disturb, but Jones has found a nuanced, emotive way to discuss loss, lies, regret, indecision and depression, along with the value of protest and defiance.

Bridgers’s second album under her own name, Punisher moves forward confidently from her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps.

Here, beautiful songs are played with discretion and near-telepathy; a luminosity hovers above the slow miniatures.

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

In an increasingly fraught world, it’s an unashamedly sunny sound. It makes for a gorgeous record in which to lose yourself for 40 minutes.

As on Power’s previous albums, there is a delicious tension between the ethereal succour offered by her voice and the turmoil these thrumming songs are processing. Often, wordless emoting is the only solution; Power’s tones flow like starlings above her mantric guitar and that of her partner and collaborator Peter Broderick.

While it is excellent in places, Sideways to New Italy doesn’t quite rise to the same heights as its predecessor.

RTJ4 supersizes their outsider aesthetic without squandering any hard-won authenticity. Icy disquisitions on the missing soul of modern America jostle with good-natured boasts from the golden age of hip-hop, yielding a remarkable hit rate.

Chromatica’s frank grappling with the vagaries of Gaga’s brain – and the way fame exacerbates them – ends up feeling much more real than touring dive bars with a guitar and a Stetson ever did.

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.

It’s all crowned by the confidence of I Got This, which reconciles Charlatans-esque country-soul Hammond to classy baroque-pop ba-ba-bas in a way that is unabashedly uplifting.

It’s far more satisfying musically, however, working as a good showcase for Jason Williamson’s stream-of-consciousness rants and Andrew Fearn’s unshowy but effective beats, from the frantic spleen-venting of 2014’s Jolly Fucker to the menace of last year’s OBCT.

Normally, you’d roll your eyes at such breathtaking derivations, but Marling’s record is so mellifluous and listenable, in part thanks to the unobtrusive string arrangements by Bob Moose.

If the grain of this album is purposely rougher-hewn, with boxy acoustics trading off with the odd sub-bass boom, the songwriting remains complex and elevated.

A low-key, slow-burn delight.

The production here is both crisp and sinuous; ethereal indeterminacy trades off with crackling attention to detail.

The standout track is Cruel Disguise, where Harvieu’s melancholy, powerful vocal combines with a lithe bassline and baroque rock stylings. And while the singer may no longer be flavour of the month, this is still an impressive set.

The trio’s appetite for drugs, women and money never wavers from first to last track. Yet the more introspective songs, such as the spectral Traumatised and thoughtful High Road, tell powerful stories about their journey to success, and prove that D-Block Europe’s imperial phase is far from its end.

There are so many good tracks on here that you want to say there is not a bad track on this outrageously fine pop record. But there is. Love in the Dark is a flaccid ballad [...] that almost undoes all the powerful work Reyez has done thus far. Almost, but not quite.

Electronics are very much to the fore. This feels like an analogue record, each note having a furry aura.

The palette of sounds she draws from on the long-awaited, and largely self-incubated, follow-up is familiar. ... She saves the most affecting song for last, Speaking of the End making its mark with just understated piano and her unadorned voice.

Aware that any language barrier can be overcome by a plethora of hooks and a prevailing atmosphere, Balvin adds a playful embellishment to each of the album’s 10 tracks, be it Amarillo’s kazoo-assisted beat, or the twinkling glacial percussion that tickles closer Blanco. A riot not just of colour, but of ideas too.

It’s never as transcendent as 1997’s When I Was Born For The 7th Time, but when Tjinder exhorts “amplifier to the echo chamber… mixer to the microphone” on St Marie Under Canon it doesn’t sound like a tired old rocker glumly gazing round the studio for ideas, it sounds like liberation, celebration.

The Long Goodbye can feel heavy-handed: even those phoned-in messages from famous friends (Mindy Kaling, Asim Chaudhry) sound jarring. Ultimately, though, Ahmed delivers, offering up some clever writing on this powerful concept album.

Heavy Light confirms a major talent.

Virile is the undisputed centrepiece of this stunning first section of græ, a sumptuous track in which Sumney’s falsetto, allied with waves of lavish instrumentation and pugnacious rhythms, breaks down ideas of masculinity.

Miss Anthropocene is a deep, dark trip – shame the climate crisis bit isn’t also part of Grimes’s wild imagination.

The final refrain of “please complete me” carries a powerful sense of hope – an end befitting an album that finds King Krule hitting a new stride.

As The Slow Rush builds, you have to hold on tight to the idea that, despite the musical lengths Parker used to go through to camouflage his lyrics, he is actually one of our most intriguing confessional singer-songwriters.

The slightly leaden climax to Rearview aside, there’s barely a second wasted in Honeymoon’s 25-minute running time.

Pick of the bunch is Obongjayar, whose ode to the ongoing cataclysm befalling black youths, Dancing in the Dark, gives Dark Matter its moral high ground. Best of all is 2 Far Gone, where Ezra Collective’s Joe Armon-Jones arpeggiates magnificently on keys while Boyd shakes the rafters.

Green Day deliver everything with such panache that the songs’ limitations don’t really matter, especially when they manage to make tired old tropes seem fresh, as on the swooning brilliance of Take the Money and Crawl and Meet Me on the Roof.

Full of unexpectedly bittersweet horns and electric guitar, his mellow confidence here eschews clutter and bombast.

Once again the songs are all traditional, while Lee has skilfully intercut some and “rewilded” them with the odd flourish – the “Old Wow” of the title is his name for an awestruck sense of nature.