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 result is a set that is spare and intimate, its imperfections and unusual instruments (sitar, xylophone) ensuring that Perkins sounds like no one else alive.

An 11-track galumph through feelgood rockularisms.

In a year of superb, politically charged albums by black American artists, Alicia Keys’s sixth record is a standout, on which her signature piano takes second place to her urgent voice.

He has a warm, wistful voice and keen observational eye, pitching his songs beautifully between youth and experience.

The results fizz and bob like a Berocca for the ears.

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

There are plenty of less banging, but still lovely, treats elsewhere on this sweet-but-sharp set, too.

It is a short, sharp album, produced entirely by Kanye West’s former mentor No ID.

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.

This is a record with reference points of the highest quality (Björk, Fever Ray, Burial), which, at best, bears comparison with them all.

When unaccompanied, it’s clear that her 12 years in the industry have given the singer ample voice and a formidable ear. On IRL, there was little need for big names, since Mahalia is star enough to hold her own.

While it’s a little repetitive in places, Prestige is a sumptuous collection that finds a polished band leaning into the joys of being playful.

Handily, 70s soft rock is a well-worn vector for such feelings. And if there is a nit to pick with Something to Tell You, it is that Haim’s balance of R&B and soft rock has leaned too far in favour of blowsy wallowing, and away from R&B’s clever sonic feints and tough-girl postures.

It all runs very smoothly--perhaps too smoothly for some tastes--but listen past the sheen and the headphone goods are there.

Their eighth album proper is clearly designed to be played very loud indeed; the tension here comes from the interplay of taut structure and fierce bursts of noise.

Washington warmly traverses various themes (across both subject and music) and--via the wailing sax on Humility, the sleazy funk of Perspective, and the quasi-bossa nova of Integrity--it’s an enriching listen.

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.

The soundtrack delivers a faithful sample of Bleecker Street's earnest, antique folkery, ably sung by actor Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford and others.

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.

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.

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

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.

You can only marvel at where they will go next.

A decade on he treads a familiar path of homespun blues and rock'n'roll, happily unencumbered by musical fashion and with deeply satisfying results.

This second outing presents a richer, more percussive sound, albeit one still shot through with the zinging pyrotechnics of tin-can guitar.

The dark nights of the soul only get darker with time, and Night Thoughts proves an unexpectedly congenial companion volume.

While he doesn’t know quite where his strengths lie yet, tracks such as Strange Things and Lonely Side of Her boast a ghostly, weathered quality that compensates for the odd hillbilly dud.

There are glimmers of musical progression on Sleaford Mods’ ninth album: Jason Williamson sings the odd line, and there are even occasional choruses. But, pleasingly, for the most part it’s business as usual.

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

Everything he does is good: melodic, enervated and loud. Twins, though, is a record that goes out of its way to court the floating rock vote, upping the melodies and toning down Segall's more wayward psychedelic digressions.

The real stars here are the Rajasthan Express’s six-piece brass section, who come into their own on the joyous Julus and Junun Brass. Elsewhere, the hypnotic Hu locks into an almighty groove, while the excellent title track is built atop a pleasingly complex rhythm.

There’s depth here too--listen 10 times and you will still be discovering new things to enjoy: clever wordplay, a subtle melody. It’s a joy from start to finish.

Though not as affecting as the original, if we’re talking about club bangers, Kehlani makes it their own.

The album sags a little in the middle, but what’s an epic without a few longueurs? The optimism of the title is well founded.

Ferg’s pungent wordplay powers this splendidly diverse and dynamic second album.

It’s their most adult album yet, and it suits them.

Though interludes from the late guru Ram Dass feel a little hokey, overall Gag Order is polished, powerful and affirming.

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.

Khruangbin’s strengths exist in relative quietude, making their intricate music sound so gentle that it lulls the listener into a newly imaginative state.

What makes for a happy life is this album’s implied question, and as well as all the necessaries about love, Honne offer up idiosyncratic takes on cars (the Peugeot 306, no less) and shrinks.

Friedberger picks over love and relationships in ways that keep you guessing: strange flights of fancy are balanced by offbeat humour and there are startling moments of emotional directness that bring you up short.

While Bulat’s previous sound was lovely, always tasteful, mostly mournful, here she comes arrestingly alive, invigorated firstly by the roiling emotions and rich material of a raw breakup and secondly by warm, glowing production from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, who brings out previously lurking pop and soul tendencies.

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.

His second solo outing since quitting the Old Crow Medicine Show brings vivacity to some well-worn standards--The Cuckoo Bird, When My Baby Left Me, John Henry – thanks to a voice that’s young but weathered, strong but eerie, and comes backed by intricate banjo and guitar picking.

Harding is her own woman, an arresting vocalist whose mannered deliveries--from chanteuse to jazzy--and intense themes defy obvious influence.

This is a record designed to penetrate cell-deep, with slow, unspooling tracks such as Holier, where beats don’t intrude, the music hanging as though in a space out of time.

It's only later that you realise Franz Ferdinand's fourth isn't just a return to form but a tuneful meditation on death, decay and the void.

Go High closes the album on a surprisingly experimental note. The big, syrupy ballads, meanwhile, accentuate Clarkson’s undeniably powerful voice, creating a comfort zone that feels genuine.

Do Easy is harmless, a little preposterous and quite beguiling--just like all good goths.

[The album] is an intriguing work: dark, seductive and as hard to pin down as its creator.

My Wild West isn’t without its longueurs, however, the introspection of Together or Apart and Go For a Walk failing to make much impact, but overall this is a fine set of grownup pop songs.

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.

Too many songs begin with the hook, to get you through the revenue-generating 30-second mark without any of that scary rapping. When the hook is strong, that’s just about acceptable. Too often, it makes Tinie sound like his own guest rapper.

This Timberlake record may not boast as many rocket-propelled singles as before. But it finds the two Tims going back to the future without so much as a sideways glance at the rave-pop fashion.

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

There’s plenty of promise here.

As the standout Yesterday attests, Full Closure and No Details is quietly impressive--a slow-burning fusion of defiance and heartache.

Light but deep, it [Of The Mother Again] helps this shimmering solo effort knock the last three MMJ albums into a cocked hat.

His voice, like the music, has a dream-like quality. ... Superb.

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.

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

These are fictions, but they reflect raw truths in a way that draws you up short.

Traoré’s vocals remain smooth, agile and sometimes challenging.

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.

Fenfo’s most seductive marriages of ancient and modern have already come out: Nterini, the lead track, and the mesmeric Kokoro. Nonetheless, the depths of the tracklisting are a surprise.

You'd have to be seriously unmusical not to be charmed by the elegance of it.

Recorded straight to tape with no overdubs, Still Moving proves a thrilling, spontaneous affair, switching between the laments and love songs of southern Italy and the gritty blues of North Africa and North America.

As ever, Swift seems to know just the right phrase to pull you inside her break-up narratives.

Their warring improvisations are intriguing, unsettling and often exquisite.

Trick feels more celebratory than melancholy, mostly because of the bruising passion and commitment Treays loads into every syllable, every bar.

The results are easy enough to digest, even if the process isn’t, with just enough repetition and structure to prevent attention drift.

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

This album takes anxiety as a theme, but it sounds materially less neurotic than their previous records, for good and ill.

Her authority is unquestionable: songs such as the Leonard Cohen-influenced Solitary Daughter give Laura Marling a serious run for her money.

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.

This is an album full of what another killer track – Secret Life of Tigers – calls “serotonin overload!” – a flow-state that not even a perky reggae track featuring Ed Sheeran (Lifting You) can dim.

Jamming is one thing; finding oneself in the midst of one of Europe’s top jazz orchestras is something else, and Charlie Watts handles it with aplomb.

Filthy Underneath feels like an intelligently calibrated vehicle in which musical and emotional progress is made, even as suffering laps at the running boards like flood water.

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

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

With its hypnotic vocal sample, unnerving silences and ever-changing beat, Burial collaboration Sweetz is one of many standouts.

A potent brew.

These sour notes aside [Energy and Heated], Renaissance is the feelgood manifesto that puts all the other post-pandemic party albums in the shade, a song cycle crammed full of homages to the historic continuum of Black dancefloor therapy.

The balance between pop and experimentalism is very fine but Young Fathers strike it with exuberant ease.

A couple more songs with the punch of Candidate or last year’s Headstart, here relegated to a bonus track, and a couple less mid-paced numbers among its 14 tracks would have made Different Kinds of Light unstoppable, but it’s a sure step forward by an impressive songwriting talent.

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

As ever, it's the gorgeous harmonies of husband and wife Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker that make these sparsely decorated songs take flight.

Boomiverse’s self-conscious stylistic plurality is the new old-school. All Night, simultaneously too wacky and too obvious, is a moment to cringe at, but for the most part this is dad rap that can hold its head high.

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.

Here, she unfurls a sequence of eight originals bound together by a cascade of imagery drawn largely from nature, in particular the bird kingdom, “a lawless league of lonesome beauty” the singer yearns to join.

Even by this band’s lofty standards, G_d’s Pee at State’s End! is a particularly rocking instalment of their familiar franchise; still head and shoulders above most other music that sails under the flag of post-rock.

It brims with the sense of release and joy that comes from the tiniest escape from confinement.

Coming Home is, perhaps, a healthy reiteration of the classic sounds of succour in a time of need; a principled and mellifluous nay-saying.

[An] endearingly careworn debut.

His trademark reticence (both this and 2010's Earl begin with voices needling him to speak) means he gives away too many verses: the best tracks are him and him alone.

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.

You Still Get Me High and Story are full-on 80s pop, expertly executed with hooks, vocal performances and a widescreen feel. Even better are breezy retro cuts such as Hands, a frisky disco/R&B outing with rapped sections. One More Time, meanwhile, packs in handclaps, housey disco and more party-for-two promises.