Over 10 tunes, Regal and Petralli fashion taut, soulful pop nuggets out of jazz fusion licks, a sound not a million miles from Tame Impala meeting Thundercat, but gnarlier and different at every turn.

The magnificently eerie Four Kinds of Horses is the record’s peak, while maternal elegy And Still feels like the most open, vulnerable song he has ever sung.

Benjamin has woodwind form. He contributed flute to the soundtrack of Everything Everywhere All at Once and played clarinet on 2018’s epic tribute to his mother, Look Ma No Hands. New Blue Sun is more weirdly charismatic than either of those.

You don’t have to strain too much, either, to hear a plausible feminist reworking of songs such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, when Parton joins larynxes with Pink and Brandi Carlile. But overall, Rockstar is both a savvy commercial package and a fudged artistic opportunity.

The title track and single Tantor are decent, and Shakedown a warm beachside strut, with Brown’s lyrical ice shards speared through. Bass Jam is lovely nostalgia, shimmering harmonies surrounding him like ghosts of his former selves. Otherwise, the beats feel slightly tired, casting a pall greater than any of Brown’s recent misfortunes.

It doesn’t quite match the standard of late-career high point The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009), but the album is not without its moments.

Ultimately, Heaven Knows needed to move beyond PinkPantheress’s TikTok formula to break new ground, but is still stuck in the sounds of the past.

Integrated Tech Solutions is another assured slam dunk: a loose concept album about our dystopian tech consumerism with bouncy retro production that crackles with vim.

Party music looms large, thanks to tunes like Out of Luck, Ghost! and What Ya Know; range and depth comes in the form of Wasp’s husky R&B. But the feelgood moments, though nagging, can’t help but feel slightly anodyne compared with Maidza’s more lethal modes.

They’re at their best on their more focused songs: there’s a swagger to opener My Little Tony, and Worlds Greatest Emoter has a winningly upbeat bassline. But when the tempo drops, the likes of Calm Down With Me and Bibs are indigestible dirges, and too often The Twits feels like a heavy-going triumph of style over content.

The album takes off when Jung Kook can focus on his honeyed falsetto, as on the supple disco glide of Standing Next to You, or on 3D’s exhilarating chorus. Golden is full of bright spots, but only fully shines on occasion.

It peaks with How Music Makes You Feel Better, in which a techno-infused beat anchors a euphoric, arena-sized synth line, expressing Kourtesis’s belief in music’s capacity to heal the spirit.

From first note to last, Chronicles of a Diamond swaggers from the speakers. Even the love songs have new light cast on that hoary old topic by the roaring fire of Burton’s voice, while Quesada layers psychedelics and electronica into the orchestral mix, always conjuring new charms from familiar elements.

It’s a successful enough reinvention for Anderson surely to be wondering why she didn’t make a solo record sooner.

While technically accomplished, Selvutsletter doesn’t do enough with its occasional moments of wonder – the glorious chorus of Hvals that arise during Sea White, for one – to justify its many lengthy, meandering sections.

Full of defiant brio and what you might charitably call unreconstructed Stonesiness – the Sydney Sweeney-starring video for Angry is a case in point; the LP’s Bill Wyman cameo is another – Hackney Diamonds is packed with convincing echoes of the band in its pomp.

If these songs are more off the cuff than before, nothing here sounds unprofessional. Some lyrics have not exactly been sweated-over – “I love you forever, even when we’re not together,” goes Forever – but they chime with people feeling acutely separated from loved ones.

Crazymad, for Me doubles down on CMAT’s self-knowing “too muchness” with a meatier sound and more vaulting ambition.

If the lyrical content often favours navel-gazing, nearly every song comes with an expertly crafted, big pop chorus or a sonic gear-change – Flatlining, for example, shifts from warm synths to a four-to-the-floor beat and tumbling electronics.

It is, of course, too long. But its peripatetic nature means you can easily assemble your own collection from its 21 tracks. Tense, urgent Broad Day, eerie Night Vision, or feisty duets Fine As Can Be and Princess Cut should all make that list.

Most songs here start bijou and intimate, and swell to a clanging, polyphonic crescendo. My Little Red Fox begins by underlining the similarities between Stevens and Elliott Smith, before building to a rococo fantasia. Shit Talk features Bryce Dessner on guitar and stretches to eight minutes of shape-shifting, elegiac misery.

His singing is better than ever, whether reminiscent of Billie Eilish’s lean-in intimacies (Facts_Situations) or Kele Okereke’s husky confessionals (I’m Done). Yet mostly Halo feels like an inch rather than a leap forward.

By turns angry, celebratory, mournful, hopeful, here’s an album for complex times.

An exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones.

Ultimately, the album is burdened by its own weight, striving to exorcise the group’s creative urges. Perhaps with more time together, Animal Collective could jam into a sense of consistency again.

If these songs occasionally feel underwritten – many are brief, jazzy sketches that seem to wander in and meander back out again – they contrast pointedly with the overwritten, attention-deficit music crafted to punch out on today’s Spotify playlists. Sometimes all you need is a little tenderness.

Sometimes, he brings to mind Massive Attack, but then quickly the impression dissipates. Loose and cinematic, Sublime combines breakbeats with guitar, piano and strings. Not every element here is as assured.

This harsh, noise-fuelled musical heartbeat is a thrilling new phase, cementing Ćmiel as a fearless creative voice.