Though at times songs and sentiments blur a little forgettably, this is an impressive statement of intent.

The poem isn’t great, but the music is as electrifying, unpredictable and chaotic as ever.

If Swimming felt contemplative, Circles feels even more like a singer-songwriter album than a hip-hop joint – a tendency most likely amplified by Brion’s treatments.

Bevan has jettisoned the sleep paralysis pop of his early work for something even more dissociated and peripatetic. You might head for the vicious rave of Rival Dealer or Nightmarket’s sumptuous, pealing melody first, to swerve some long, austere, beatless passages, but this is a compilation of rare bravery and beauty.

The spaciousness, punch and depth of these productions is telling, but it is a mark of the album’s artistic integrity that Stormzy manages to transcend genre (again) without sacrificing his core griminess, or losing too much in the way of accent, word choice, content or theme.

The trio remain in a tradition of avant gardists such as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane and Can, but totally of the now. One of 2019’s best.

It’s an album that draws you into Diamond’s world, full of real, 3D emotions.

Its 10 songs are stark but powerful, their anguish and insight given a deft, minimalist treatment by producer Kenny Greenberg. ... An aching, moving testimony, beautifully realised.

Once the lyrical sorrow and apocalyptic visions hit home, Hyperspace is revealed as a bleak, spacey R&B tour de force.

These tunes relish their flutes and organs, horns and strings. Crucially, hope plays off against the bleakness.

Magdalene is a much starker, more emotionally direct album than 2014’s LP1, most noticeably in twigs’s voice, which moves with sleek power from delicate operatic acrobatics to muscular intimacy. It’s also bracingly frank.

The endeavour has clearly proved liberating, and prompted a renewed sense of creativity.

You relish every syllable as their dizzying flow piles dazzling images, metaphors and puns on top of each other.

There is certainly greater focus this time around: only the eco-aware She Showed Me Love breaks six minutes, and it revels in the space it’s afforded.

Beautifully crafted, Crush unsettles with its quiet, fervent chaos bubbling beneath its surface.

It’s the knockout closing pair that illuminate the band’s mastery of dynamics, unbearabletension and cathartic release.

These punishing, three-dimensional soundscapes connect 70s No Wave with the mischievous end of contemporary digital production: quite a feat.

Giants of All Sizes is not an album to be filleted and squashed into playlists; it’s the sort of deeply serious and carefully crafted work that would sprout a beard and a cable-knit jumper if you turned your back on it for a second.

Two Hands is more earthbound than UFOF – in that there’s nothing here that quite matches that album’s astonishing peaks.

The result is a brief but serious retrospective treatment of five pieces, going back as far as 1958. There are two versions of Naima and three of Village Blues, but they’re all different, and every performance is complete, no odds and ends.

It all adds up to yet another winning set from a band still to release a subpar album in a 25-year career.

Ultimately, all are visions, alternately haunted and comforting. Subtle evolutions in mood and instrumentation come to peaks that are made all the more stunning by their scarcity.

Brown’s storytelling is as witty as ever, with pungent bars that pop like pimples, spattering tracks with quotable filth. His best work by a distance.

The result is a clear-headed amalgamation of their two eras, veering from stomping emo (opener Hold My Breath Until I Die; I’ll Be Back Someday’s Avril-isms) to sleek, synth-led pop (the pogoing You Go Away and I Don’t Mind).

There’s so much to take in that it requires many listens before all of Metronomy Forever’s charms reveal themselves, in part because of the palate-cleansing interstitial drones spread across the album. It’s worth the wait.

The National’s busy polymath Aaron Dessner is producer, bringing this excellent album, full of fear and succour, into focus.

Charli, her third official album, finally hits a noisy, sweet spot. It is, hands down, the best iteration of XCX yet, the one where Aitchison’s pop capabilities line up most persuasively with her avant garde ear.

While there’s nothing here that quite matches the highest highs of their first pass, this is a welcome return for a singular and important band.

Overall this excellent album’s clarion-clear narratives about knife crime and the importance of good times – exemplified on Can’t Hold We Down – are delivered not just with anger and pathos, but humour.

Paul’s soft voice, washed by reverb, recalls the dreamscapes of Beach House, and there are reminders of Sharon Van Etten in the enveloping swells of drums, grungy guitars and spacey shifts of rhythm.

It’s hard for any artist on their fifth album to cause you to sit up and pay attention as much as Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell does, let alone for an artist who is such a past master of the disengaged, dissolute swoon.

Like previous Jay Som records, Anak Ko might seem slight at first listen, particularly Duterte’s winsome coo, but the payoff for lingering in her evolving dreamspace is hefty.

It feels like he’s aiming for a 21st-century version of classic albums such as Sign ‘O’ the Times and What’s Going On and, on astonishing, soul-scraping laments This World Is Drunk and Kings Fall, he almost gets there.

Not surprisingly, many of the highlights of his fourth solo album – a treatise on capitalism and loss – nod to Power’s better-known band.

The English songwriter’s spacey, super-melodic, immaculately produced pop casts a wonderful spell when it works, particularly on lead single Religion (U Can Lay Your Hands on Me) or the swooning, filtered coda to The Stage, as endless as summer seems in early July.

Hackman flits between self-reflection and self-loathing with ease (“You’re such an attention whore”), starkly unpicking her anxieties over fuzzy guitar on her most accomplished record to date.

Bon Iver have imperceptibly moved from requesting close listening to requiring it, and i,i spins a mesmerising web of superficially insubstantial yet intensely majestic music. Listen closely and you can hear the language of pop being redrafted in real time.

Magnificently, songs like Taste or The Fall are only energised by these diverse sonic signatures. The double-drummers are key, too: Segall’s in the left-hand channel, while frequent collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Charles Moothart is in the right.

Burna Boy’s fourth album lands in this powerful spotlight, continuing the singer’s boundary-hopping mixture of laid-back Caribbean swagger, Fela Kuti swing and multilingual communiques on a range of concerns.

These 11 songs ping confidently around the post-genre electro-pop landscape.

As with all the best sets, it’s coherent but not repetitive, the ghostly Auto-Tune choir, which features on most tracks, sighing and whispering encouragement behind Banks’s increasingly empowered words. There are shades of Bon Iver and Billie Eilish in her layered, subtle sound, but also a rare, steely delicacy all her own.

Egoli is a party album almost end to end, an update on Buraka Som Sistema’s Angolan-Portuguese rave dynamics and more like a Gorillaz record than anything you might normally file under “world music”.

The voice has weathered like timber, but his timing is impeccable, his Tex-Mex guitar flurries thrilling. The cowboy sage (and Beto Democrat) remains unique.

Throughout it all, Trash Kit continue to find new ways to help you to shrug off the bullshit and dance.

There’s plenty of promise here.

It’s a Rorschach blot of a record: you can find whatever you’re looking for here, from loose stoner ambience to shamanic virtuosity, with album closer WZN3 turning into a loose, swinging, Tuareg-derived rock out.

Although Yorke sounds refreshed, the results here don’t vary wildly from the Radiohead frontman’s instantly recognisable musical signatures, evolved over 20 years.

These nine new songs see the band’s gift for melody and grasp of pop’s dynamics tweaked into transcendent shapes by the late house master Philippe Zdar and xx producer Rodaidh McDonald.

An always thought-provoking record.

Springsteen sings brilliantly throughout, gritty on Hitch Hikin’, Orbison-operatic on the more elaborate pieces, and though the high notes can prove elusive, he retains the cadence of a born narrator. Brave and intriguing.

Here, straightforward prettiness often abounds, particularly on the country-leaning tracks, some with the odd female backing coo.

N’Dour sings with accustomed majesty throughout; sometimes commanding, sometimes anguished, an always urgent force of nature.

The follow-up is even better, delivered with a greater confidence and urgency, and featuring a handful of songs that almost match up to his late-70s output.

Fussell is alive to the fantastical edge to a fishmonger’s sales pitch, the extraordinariness of these ordinary songs. Subtle left-field touches take these pieces somewhere special, not least the instrumental 16-20.

Madame X is certainly a fluid album, but one tempered by Madonna’s solid confidence in her own aesthetic decisions.

Ignorance Is Bliss handles the MC’s next steps with authority and, crucially, popping production.

Atlanta Millionaires Club nails the perfect balance of the singer-songwriter’s sleepy, intimate balladry with the rich musical history of her home city.

This is an accomplished full-length that, while not a game-changer, certainly slots neatly into the burgeoning UK canon.

It’s a curious mixture, but by no means a job lot. They all have something new to reveal.

What lingers is the beguiling honesty beneath the fury, and the thrill that he’ll get even better, given time.

Full of morphing grooves and moods of imminent revelation, it’s a quicksilver delight.

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.

The continuity stressed between body and tool, folk history and future, like the work of Meredith Monk or Björk, lures the listener away from the twin traps of techno-evangelist complacency and technophobic retreat with sweet inspiration.

Full of subtle charm, it’s an album of deceptive depths in which to immerse yourself.

It’s an album that exudes warmth and no little sonic familiarity, while reflecting what is a radically altered set-up.

The record is a joyous listen, which will only be enhanced on their forthcoming tour, and a confident assertion of Ezra Collective breaking out of the once-restrictive jazz enclave.

A non-religious religious album might seem like a conceptual dead end, but this is another accomplished set from a master songwriter.

Each of the tracks released from Designer so far has been engrossing – The Barrel, with its opaque lyricism (“show the ferret to the egg”), the equally gnomic Fixture Pixture, with its Air bassline.

Lu seems intent to immerse us fully, deeply, intimately into her gossamer creative vision--and she succeeds. An astonishing first album.

Serfs Up! feels like a giant leap forward.

Ultimately, it is Titanic Rising’s fusion of ancient and contemporary, 70s singer-songwriter tropes and electronic burbles, that convinces; the beauty Weyes Blood offers has its eyes wide open.

Here are evergreen contemporary songs in which gratitude and fortitude are exercised in no facile fashion, but with spittle and swagger. The love songs are present and correct.

The resulting album--Collins’s ninth solo effort--is a joy, brimming with ideas, but light of touch.

Fascinatingly ambitious, and often extremely fun, this debut finds pop in safe and thrilling hands.

Even the mildly satirical skits, which don’t quite work, prove her desire to create a proper album, rewarding repeated listening.

Her incisive storytelling is at the fore on Heads Gonna Roll, which describes a road movie with “a narcoleptic poet from Duluth”. Ringo Starr plays drums on it, such is Lewis’s back-channel clout. More gripping vignettes follow.

To Believe is heartbreakingly brilliant: a collection of exquisitely assembled songs that appear delicate from a distance before revealing a close-quarters core strength. ... A triumph.

This is hardcore music for a generation weaned on rave and grime, jazz’s cutting edge. The comet isn’t coming, it’s arrived.

It all culminates in Lesley, a staggering, 11-minute exploration of toxic masculinity and domestic abuse. “Tell a yout’, if you got a brain then use it,” he raps, early on; Dave’s doing that, but has much more in his armoury than just brains.

You struggle to comprehend how the extraordinary sounds near its inception are coming out of a tuba (via a wah-wah effect). On The Offerings and Radiation, Cross’s prowling tone is slung so low as to sound filthy. One can only hope his lips and lungs are insured.

It swings. It grooves. It’s not bogged down by a self-consciously poetic concept. And it feels like a record rather than a showcase, anchored by the production work of Simz’s childhood friend Inflo.

Andrew Fearn’s soundscapes, meanwhile, improve with each album. Particularly potent is the ominous post-punk bassline he deploys on OBCT; even what sounds suspiciously like a kazoo solo towards the end can’t puncture its sense of menace.

It’s the ghostliest songs that’ll stay with you, though, from the soft piano and slo-mo catastrophe of When the Family Flies In to the obsessive elegy for a dying relationship in Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You.

There’s no song here that would make an encore, but Hello Happiness is a vital calling card to remind everyone to come hear this unearthly voice, still sizzling with spice.

The standout performance comes from country singer Margo Price, who depicts living a life in fear of a vengeful God on the powerful Sermon (“God almighty’s gonna cut you down”). But Williams deserves credit too, for her impassioned take on Ode to Billie Joe, a 1967 US No 1 single drafted in here to replace the original album’s inessential Louisiana Man.

McCombs’ lack of interest in easy interpretations endures and, if anything, prettifies, on this engrossing record.

Kouyate’s playing remains at its heart, pulsing, ingenious and spellbinding.

These are 10 skillful and meditative instrumental acoustic guitar renderings that bear the weight of Americana--of contemporary America--lightly, but consciously.

Cardy’s lyrics are still a slight disappointment, however, consisting too often of ill-defined “us v them” sentiments (witness So What’s “They don’t care about us so we don’t care about them”). Still, that’s a minor quibble--it’s hard not to enjoy an album as full of energy as this.

Piano, the Jupiter 4 synthesiser and some elegant, spacious production courtesy of John Congleton replace Van Etten’s previous surging indie rock guitars. And yet Van Etten remains resolutely herself: possessed of a slow-burning seethe that builds to swirling crescendos, she is a consummate surgeon of relationships, keen on Bruce Springsteen

Located somewhere between a TED talk, an episode of VH1’s Storytellers and a confessional, it’s a hugely nourishing listen – not least because Springsteen, the boss of righteous stadium bluster, unveils a self-deprecating sense of humour.

Chasescene confirms Knox as a master storyteller, and is a record to settle into on dark nights, glad that you’re only a listener to its frightful tales.

Pleasingly, it’s Morrison’s new songs that impress most. ... Of the covers, Hooker’s Dimples is the standout, but in truth there isn’t a weak link here. Excellent songs, expertly rendered--what is there to dislike?

Overall, it’s not as gleeful as their last one, but melodic light relief abounds, as on the Belinda Carlisle outtake that is It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You). Those conclusions feel earned, not merely hashtagged.

Thirty years into his career, Warm shows that Tweedy is as absorbing as ever.

I Don’t Want To, Growing Pains, Comfortable and, particularly, 7 Days are all excellent examples of sensible-sweater, big-sister pop.

Maisha are no mere copyists, however; this is above all a celebration of young, eclectic Britain.

Wealth is a recurrent theme, but musicality remains to the fore.