A conceptual double album exploring earth (reality) and heaven (idealisation), is perhaps unlikely to sway the old guard, but it pushes forward with a purposeful vitality that was at times missing from his debut album, The Epic.

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.

A beautifully packaged time capsule.

Their voices interweave majestically on cover versions that stretch with surprising ease from bluegrass to grunge.

The record is a joyous listen, which will only be enhanced on their forthcoming tour, and a confident assertion of Ezra Collective breaking out of the once-restrictive jazz enclave.

Musically, there’s a playful restlessness throughout, with rock and electronica constantly being twisted into imaginative shapes.

This 13-track album is a more emphatic, even angry work charting her emotional evolution [than mixtape What We Drew].

Despite the undercurrents of melancholia, Antiphon is another impeccably realised meld of bucolic 70s folk and radio-friendly soft rock, as warm and assured as it is adventurous.

Sonically capricious in the best possible way, it takes in rasping electro, hardcore riffing, rock-opera camp and continues to throw up new surprises with every listen.

Where they used to overlap neat pastoral melodies until the ground felt like it was churning beneath you, the landscape here is smouldering, godforsaken and explosive, their awkwardness untamed.

Though at times songs and sentiments blur a little forgettably, this is an impressive statement of intent.

He appears to have been hoarding his best material for his first solo album since 2004's Bubblegum, because Blues Funeral has quality to spare.

All of this grandeur is punctuated by shimmering orchestral interludes, the plummy voice of Emma Corrin (AKA The Crown’s Princess Diana) as Simz’s life coach, and hard-hitting tracks of another kind, where the artist examines her motivations (Ovation) and her relationship with her absent father on the heart-wrenching I Love You, I Hate You.

It all makes for an excellent follow-up to 2012’s comeback album, One Day I’m Going to Soar.

Crown and Treaty is at times wonderful, particularly on "Blue Sky Falls", "Joyful Reunion" and "Brugada".

Although Mirrors requires several listens to fully appreciate its beauty, it is definitely worth the effort.

Ejimiwe forgoes the disjointed electronic sounds of his first two records in favour of a hazy alt-rock backing, but he’s now at home in this style and his languid, sung-spoken monologues sound their most assured.

The thrush-like Natalie Prass, 28, has written a heartbreak album that reminds you why such albums are so wonderful and necessary in the first place.

The producerly hand of the National's Aaron Dessner and cameos by the likes of Beirut's Zach Condon only add to the conclusion that Tramp is one of the must-hears of early 2012.

Here, beautiful songs are played with discretion and near-telepathy; a luminosity hovers above the slow miniatures.

The musical chemistry is undiminished on their third album where a languid kind of heartache holds sway.

When, as on Majesties Ranch and Iron Deer Dream, they use handclaps and harmonies to wonderful effect, imbuing psychedelia with a youthful glow.

It’s safe to say that though big sis Beyoncé has run her close recently, she’s once more the most intriguing Knowles sibling.

Accessible but challenging, Masseduction thumbs its nose at genre while Clark’s choice of producer--Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde)--roots it firmly in pop; it is, after all, an attempt to jump Clark from cult act to mass seductress. It’s working.

The reversals in the lives of African Americans are front and centre; this most conscious of hip-hop crews remain exemplary bellwethers.

The more it changes with the times the more its essential spirit comes through. And it's guaranteed to cheer you up.

One of this even more classy album’s appeals is the juxtaposition between the elegance of the music and the grimness of the rhymes.

Over two self-produced top 10 albums, Lauren Mayberry, Martin Doherty and Iain Cook, all graduates of alternative and post-rock bands, have refined a sound that keeps one foot in indie electronica, the other in modern radio pop and its heart in 80s synths.