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.

The writing here is bleak, self-excoriating and largely excellent.

The bull horn power of Odetta and Bessie Smith’s sly blues are other touchstones on an agile, emotional record.

Having explored the darker side of the dancefloor, Nymph finds Muise experimenting with its more irreverent aspects.

An affecting album of depth and beauty.

Key to it all is intoner Aidan Moffat – “singer” would be pushing it. ... Indispensable, too, is Malcolm Middleton, who supplies musical raw material that he and Moffat work into oxymoronic excellence – cheap, tinny beats and thousand-yard-stare guitars, elevated by strings and saxophone.

Its blend of historical drama, ballad ghosts and philosophical memoir is compelling, made as intimate as if it were in your own skull by Polwart’s warm, wise, attention-commanding voice.

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

Black Flowers, one of several tracks rooted in nature, typifies his songwriting prowess, its cryptic lyrics twinned with a gorgeous melody that is both pristine and familiar.

Highlights abound, but a thrilling Aerial and a sumptuous Top of the City deserve particular acclaim.

Chatten’s vocals and writerly voice are instantly recognisable – declamatory on the three-legged wooze of Last Time Every Time Forever, or folk-adjacent on The Score. All of the People, meanwhile, is a bitter broadside against the kind of false friends the singer in a successful rock band might have to contend with.

Davies has given a powerful, challenging voice to her grief. Great music doesn’t necessarily come from great suffering, but if you’ve the strength for the job, it certainly can.

The mood is prayerful and contemplative, the music a mix of synth drones, Krishna-style chants and Coltrane’s poised, yearning vocals.

[The Ballad Of Darren] finds late-life Blur on eloquent, emotional form. It’s an album that often looks back, while summoning textures and nuances that only add to their toolkit.

These songs about love and existential sorrow feel purposely airy and unanchored – there’s no percussion – mirroring the psychological freefall of recent times. Ironically, though, they firm up the parallels between Lindeman and fellow complex Canadian, Joni Mitchell.

Across 32 tracks it tries to capture the experience of an era from all sides.

By turns gritty and poetic, its words “scattered like teeth”, it’s also a real original.

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.

Rare, Forever rewards engaged listening, though, and intriguingly it’s the classical and jazz influences that are most persuasive, particularly on album bookends Ecce! Ego! and All I See Is You, Velvet Brown, and Mothra’s majestic orchestral techno crescendo.

The third album since Shirley Collins’s renaissance at 81 turns out to be the finest.

The result is a full-length debut that is acerbic, vulnerable and swaggering all at the same time.

It’s testament to the structure and variety of Once Twice Melody that it never lags over 18 tracks, its gradual release paradoxically validating the album format as one still worth surrendering to, totally.

Songs instantly familiar yet utterly unknowable.

Never quite settling where you think it might. Biffy Clyro can seem like two bands: a trio whose ringing Gaelic positivity and guitar bluster can shake a festival headline slot, and a gnarlier, more messed-up proposition.

At times it’s reminiscent of Zach Condon’s band Beirut, but Haiku Salut never stay still for too long, nuzzling up to folk one minute and slow drum’n’bass the next.

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.

Thought-provoking words, lush instrumentation – what’s not to like?

It is deliriously easy to listen to, while hooking the mind, and never once taking the easy path through period pastiche.