The slightly leaden climax to Rearview aside, there’s barely a second wasted in Honeymoon’s 25-minute running time.

Bondy gives his songs plenty of room to breathe, the results being quite often spellbinding.

Occasionally this can leave you longing for something less overblown, but this is Rogers 2.0: dancing sweatily in NYC karaoke bars and singing lines such as “sucking nicotine down my throat/ thinking of you giving head” (on new track Horses) and rocking out. Letting rip suits her.

They may have made their most accessible album since 1979’s 154, but where they go next is anybody’s guess.

She chooses a set of the finest popular ballads ever written and makes them new again.

The New Jersey trio’s most engaging album since 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.

Skeleton Tree shares sonic DNA with its predecessor, 2013’s Push the Sky Away, but there is something inward-facing here, something of the solo, piano Nick Cave, or of The Boatman’s Call.

As The Slow Rush builds, you have to hold on tight to the idea that, despite the musical lengths Parker used to go through to camouflage his lyrics, he is actually one of our most intriguing confessional singer-songwriters.

Ba Power finds Kouyaté in full command, his chattering ngoni lines augmented by guest guitars (Samba Touré, Chris Brokaw), the rhythms given a rock tinge by Robert Plant’s drummer Dave Smith.

His final studio album proves an affecting swansong from the late New Orleans composer, producer, pianist and legend. Here Toussaint treats jazz classics by Fats Waller, Billy Strayhorn, Bill Evans and others to his intricate yet funky piano skills.

A couple of songs hang too much on their belting choruses, but moments such as the disco-Stones shuffle of Oo La La and the unabashed, dreamy balladry of Love in Real Life more than compensate.

here’s a touch of pastiche on the doo wop of Thrill Is Gone, but overall the record showcases a self-assured songwriter, capable of producing swaggering floor-fillers. My 21st Century Blues is Keen’s artistic rebirth. Long may it continue.

A record replete with drama and succour that wrestles with the messy business of being alive.

Wiley is back, and with a banger. There’s no dud on this rattling tour de force.

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.

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.

It all makes for an unexpectedly coherent return.

Musically it’s a fascinating, low-key meld of 70s funk, gospel choruses and wonky rock guitar. Build a Bridge swells with Prince-like melody, No Time for Crying is stark and serious, and Peaceful Dream a gospel singalong. Inspirational work.

These 11 tracks are immersive, shifting creations, retaining the heavenly signature harmonies of FF’s previous work, while further expanding the band’s sound.

It’s a radical evolution that keeps true to their idiosyncratic voice, and amounts to a textbook example of how to do weird pop well.

As with their previous work, it transcends easy genre-pigeonholing, but imagine a Radiohead you can dance to and you’re getting close.

Every production here feels leaner and more rubbery than the last, courtesy of the tight, two-person DIY production team of Peaches and Vice Cooler. To some ears, this approach might lack variety, but there are multiple ways to dice “barely there.”

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

Its louder moments--and there are plenty--are even better and feature stomping incantations that demand air and company.

A whirlwind set.

He brings to mind Roy Orbison or Richard Hawley, but then on songs such as Beautiful Dress and The Fire of Love Williams has a magnificent, fluttering, gender-fluid falsetto that recalls Anohni or Perfume Genius.

Earle pays homage to the outlaws with a dozen fine originals.

An ambitious triumph.

There's a multitracked theatricality to songs such as Gold and Looking Out, which costs him some of the shiver factor of more understated peers, but delivers moments of magnificence too.

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.

Justin used a sparer musical palette than Earle Sr, often with a rockabilly feel – the celebrated Harlem River Blues, for example – but the Dukes, a tough, road-worn outfit, tend to iron out their variety. Earle’s vocals, growling and gravelled these days, deliver the songs straight, only occasionally letting a sense of loss intrude.

Happily SVllB still sound fantastic.

The greatest satisfaction is that she does not jump the shark: everything here is possible-sounding, humanistic and full of emotion; only slightly uncanny.

Hopkins's beats shuffle and trip but there is a great clarity of focus throughout, and a delicate beauty.

Their 10th album is surprisingly straightforward, its 12 songs concise, uncomplicated, largely acoustic affairs. However, listen more carefully to Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics and there’s a bitterness that’s at odds with the gentle instrumentation.

Their fifth album sidesteps the rolling, electric style that's made them world-conquerors for a return to acoustic campfire camaraderie.

The result crackles with a wired energy that doubles down on his core creative tenets, while still sounding like no other White record released previously.

The only problem with this little gem of an album is that there isn't more of it.

If these collaborations occasionally rely on comfortable nostalgia, the prowling, Usher-assisted Do It Yourself – all splintering electronics and heaving beats – is a welcome reminder that Jam and Lewis can still conjure up something fresh-sounding. ... Overall, however, this is an immaculately produced debut that makes you instantly long for Volume Two.

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.

The rest of the album is almost as great [as "Veils"], but concerns itself with heartbreak of the romantic kind.

Newly recruited producer Jeff Tweedy brings fresh textures to a mix of bluesy rock, delicate acoustica and skirling electric folk, but mostly he stands back and lets a master do his stuff.

Francis glides along, deliciously unresolved about a relationship. The hype was not wrong.

Dodge and Burn bristles with clarity of riff, hook and tune and showcases the frankly ridiculous drumming ability of White himself.

Sensitive and punchy as always.

While the songs on Glowing in the Dark might be less immediate than those on 2018’s Marble Skies (particularly that record’s thrilling title track), the hooks are still there – they just take a few more listens to sink in.

Food is good-time party fare packed with feeling; many of these songs would blend right in on a Soul Jazz compilation of rhythm and blues rarities.

His tremulous voice and weed-fuelled guitar still resonating 41 years on.

The Dubliner's follow-up, though no less literate, is more adventurous and electronic.

Deacon is a 180-degree pivot, a record so serene, poppy and loved up you can’t help but swoon along with it.

A contender for their boldest LP yet.

Her anger is buoyed up by a sample from Kelis’s Caught Out There, a throwback trick she tries again less successfully on the bratty, Avril-referencing L8r Boi. It feels like a cheap gimmick on an album that manages to avoid novelty even when its tongue is placed firmly in its cheek.

Throughout, Glover’s genre fluency is unimpeachable; the only minor drawback is the overmannered air of some of these period pieces, where there could be more straight-up abandon, as on the persuasive Me and Your Mama.

Ruminating on everything from love, abusive men and her new dog, Joanie – even on an impressive instrumental number named after said canine – Sling is a generous, cinematic delight.

In short, it has the kind of beauty that sees you playing it, and only it, for the next three weeks.

The most country thing about this body of work is the hard-lived wisdom it offers up. The love songs are very grown-up.

Weary then, but, as ever, authentic.

The beats here are deft as well as driving. Surprisingly, EDM stylings such as the juddering bassline of As Long As You Love Me work well with his plaintive and still unmistakeably teenage voice.

Songs such as Maid Marian’s Toast are both clever, easy-going and gilded with just the right amount of feedback and mouth organ.

Heavy Light confirms a major talent.

There are so many good tracks on here that you want to say there is not a bad track on this outrageously fine pop record. But there is. Love in the Dark is a flaccid ballad [...] that almost undoes all the powerful work Reyez has done thus far. Almost, but not quite.

Even the weaker moments are elevated by a raw vocal that growls with bubbling emotion. Love’s trials and tribulations never sounded so exquisite.

It’s not quite a masterpiece--the dancefloor gets too short shrift--but it ably brings some fiercely non-linear soul music to deserved mainstream attention.

I Don’t Run essentially continues where Leave Me Alone left off. The production values remain determinedly lo-fi, the playing still no-frills, the songs rarely rising above the ramshackle.

There are traces of White Chalk-era PJ Harvey, Low and Sufjan Stevens here and there, but At Weddings introduces a new and singular talent.

Throughout, the sound on Blue & Lonesome captures the clatter of a largely live band loyally rendering the music of their heroes. Despite the title, and against the odds, it is an album full of joy.

There’s a welcome economy to the songwriting and nothing outstays its welcome.

The atmosphere is one of glacial sultriness laced with small surprises (Creep’s horns; childhood self-recordings), but Tei Shi’s lyrics interrogate love and its permutations with elegance, and her South American heritage emerges on the Spanish-language Como Si.

Previous songs have hopped around topics and genres(dance music, bombastic Kanye collaborations; here are arresting departures like the slow, hyper-modern torch song Coffee & Cigarettes or the closing electronic rock ballad Rage.

It isn’t quite as good as 1979’s extraordinary Broken English, but the likes of Falling Back and Sparrows Will Sing are the equal of anything she’s done since.

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

Throughout, Raymond takes this roiling, rhythmic traditional sound and stamps her own imprimatur on it.

The breezy Surreal Exposure is an unhurried delight, as is instrumental opener The Disney Afternoon. Throw in a couple of collaborations with Julia Holter, and you have an album that’s ideal for lazy summer afternoons.

The final refrain of “please complete me” carries a powerful sense of hope – an end befitting an album that finds King Krule hitting a new stride.

The Long Goodbye can feel heavy-handed: even those phoned-in messages from famous friends (Mindy Kaling, Asim Chaudhry) sound jarring. Ultimately, though, Ahmed delivers, offering up some clever writing on this powerful concept album.

A crafted, lustrous meditation.

She parcels out her tones more cannily now, an anachronism that is no criticism. But spending time with all this juvenilia only points up the quality of Swift’s songwriting. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is both an art project executed serendipitously and a strategic move the industry will be poring over for some time.

As eloquent as Squire’s guitar is, his lyrics can often be trite. Sometimes, though, Gallagher sings something that makes you sit up.

From the noisy low end of lead track Broken Man, through Flea’s prowling industrial pop and the superlative goth jazz, Bond-like theme of Violent Times, it’s a loud and unapologetically varied work.

It's a daring mix of tradition and modernity, but the group's skill and organic approach carry it off.

These songs respond beautifully to the pathos and drama of their subject, summoning a mood with subtle musical shifts but knowing when to deploy the grand gesture.

A timely, arresting album.

It’s never as transcendent as 1997’s When I Was Born For The 7th Time, but when Tjinder exhorts “amplifier to the echo chamber… mixer to the microphone” on St Marie Under Canon it doesn’t sound like a tired old rocker glumly gazing round the studio for ideas, it sounds like liberation, celebration.

Recorded at his son's home studio, David Crosby's first solo studio album in two decades has a pleasingly jazzy feel, the arrangements full of blocky piano chords and big string bass which, with Crosby's much-envied harmonies, create a pleasant fug.

Nothing on Sleep Well Beast is headline-new. But you are either in singer Matt Berninger’s corner, clinging on as he drills down into his anxieties, or you are wondering why even validated white guys in first-world countries can still eat themselves up inside so insatiably.

If anything, they seem to have gained funkiness on workouts such as Get Your Pants Off and the loose, classy closing instrumental, Zimgar.

Lewis remains a defiantly ornery presence, and the stellar cast here--Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Doyle Bramhall II--are kept firmly in harness to his still muscular vocals and stridentbarrelhouse piano.

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

There is chemistry here, making for tight songs that prance insouciantly from genre to genre, scattering wisdom and swagger in their wake.

Norbat Okelo is spare and spooky, Owiny Techno is Afro-psychedelia and Harpoon Land groove-heavy pop for Stone Rose fans who want to move on.

It’s only when Arcade Fire nail down specifics that they stop just adding to the digital churn and give you actual shivers.

Gnomic titles, introverted lyrics directed at a vaguely defined “you”, and yearning vocals rippling through an extravagantly brutish soup of sound: this band’s 30-year narrative arc is a straight line.

Into this fray step the Chemical Brothers, 90s dance music titans, with their eighth studio album, their most enjoyable in years.

However good the other tracks are here, it's her indomitable track with Nicki Minaj, I'm Out, that powers this album.

Parker’s third solo album for the International Anthem label is a meditative gem that breaks with the more fully fleshed out style of his two previous outings.

While there are still nods to the polite dinner-party soundtrack feel of her early work – the string-drenched Courage, for example – this is a much bolder statement of intent.

This is a kaleidoscopic, hard-hitting record designed for the feet as much as the synapses, healing by frequencies.

An album to light the way through the darkest hours.