So while this endeavour can’t help but be tinged with deep bittersweetness, Electronic Chronic really exudes the warmth of a band tinkering about in their studio.

Smith is an easy fit for disco pop. ... But then Ed Sheeran crops up on Who We Love, bearing the unnecessary gift of a midtempo wet blanket.

The chill, sparse productions foreground Clavish’s economical delivery beautifully, as he flirts with imploring vulnerability and vicious querulousness without ever committing to either.

This record is crying out for the calibre of musicians that helped Bowie make Blackstar, or Bill Callahan’s painterly band, or a truly dial-moving producer – or perhaps some intellectual assaults on the very notion of music itself to pin the listener down and inform them that John Cale – John Cale! – is in the building.

Pop uber-producer Max Martin is somewhat inevitably on hand to make sure the album gleams even harder than this sharp, lurid foursome do on their own. Unfortunately, Rush! is also a record that dashes about trying to tick all the boxes, with Måneskin’s English-language songs far outnumbering the Italian ones.

At their best, which is often on Gigi’s Recovery, the Murder Capital combine muscular drama and skeletal grace with a confidence that Radiohead would be proud of.

Though Bubblegum is brief, at seven songs, Biig Piig’s sound brims with poise and promise.

The songs are sad but considered, their melancholia held at bay by Habel’s strength of character and touching lyrics.

Best described as a punk with a keyboard and tunes to burn, Nomates has dug even deeper for Cacti, her songwriting broadening its reach. Her deadpan takedowns remain heroic.

Late Developers marks a real return to form, and is the band’s most rewarding album since 2006’s The Life Pursuit.

Their four quite different flows still work reasonably well together, from $hort’s lubricious bars to Cube’s truculent pugilism, over comfort-zone beats of electro, P-funk and other familiar 1980s grooves. Yet harmless nostalgia predictably succumbs to charmless bluster.

It really says something when the desolate ballads (Morning Show) and spoken-word interludes on an Iggy Pop record are the tracks you want to go back to. It feels like elsewhere, Pop is impersonating himself.

Strays adds heady organ grooves and hypnotic southern rock to her band’s considerable chops. ... And throughout, her mountain stream of a voice retains its country authority, even when she’s writing a pop tune.

As these elegant tracks play out, mourning what we’re doing to ourselves and each other, there is just the merest disappointment that the sound of these songs is not as overwhelming as those of this album’s magnificently echoey predecessor, Titanic Rising. But quietude becomes these themes.

It treads a fine line between swashbuckling versatility and a lack of cohesion. Versatility largely wins out.

This Is What I Mean is a bold album about showing vulnerability, and continues the erstwhile rapper’s overarching mission to transcend the roles allotted to him.

Best listened to as discrete tracks rather than as a whole, and never quite scaling the heights of Paradise or 2014’s Deep Fantasy, this album is a pleasing but flawed swansong.

Some moments fall flat – Lonely is cloying, paint-by-numbers EDM-pop that doesn’t fully land. Still, Indigo is a polished collection that spans both pop and rap with confidence.

The album’s two mightiest bangers are already out: Pulse boasts the kind of bass and 808 combo that gets your rig banned from venues, and Accumulator layers elements on with the skill that comes from ratcheting up the pressure on ravers for 30 years. But there are more workouts here invoking everything from electro to the eeriness of Boards of Canada.

While the scattered poetics of Anna Mieke’s lyrics are indeed dreamlike, the mesmeric artistry of her second album, Theatre, means that Mieke’s images, her sense memories, start to feel like your own.

There’s enough good material here for this to have been an excellent 40-minute album; as it is, it’s a flawed 80-minute one.

Black Girl Magic finds Dijon expanding her sound to incorporate a wider range of queer Black contributions to dancefloor culture, producing a 15-track masterclass in disco, new jack swing and soulful house.

A deft, warming album that grounds the listener while coaxing them to think bigger.

Springsteen is looking back on looking back; nostalgia, squared. If there is a criticism to be made of this big-hearted wallow, it’s not only that the mood here is galvanising, rather than anything more subtle or bruised.

Noticeably more cheerful than on 2018’s heartbroken Ruins. ... Best of all, though, is Angel, a gorgeously upbeat lament to lost love (“I love you, even if you don’t love me”) that recalls Fleetwood Mac at their most radio-friendly.

The result is an exceptional album that centres joy and community, radiates positivity and youthful abandon, and could well be the one to cross over to the big league.

It is a brave experimentation through unexpected sounds, including Depeche Mode-style new wave on Sainted, but Big Joanie are on more stable and satisfying ground when they put the glittering melodies aside.

A sleek, enticing record that certifies Cakes Da Killa’s place at the forefront of this sound.