If these songs occasionally feel underwritten – many are brief, jazzy sketches that seem to wander in and meander back out again – they contrast pointedly with the overwritten, attention-deficit music crafted to punch out on today’s Spotify playlists. Sometimes all you need is a little tenderness.

His singing is better than ever, whether reminiscent of Billie Eilish’s lean-in intimacies (Facts_Situations) or Kele Okereke’s husky confessionals (I’m Done). Yet mostly Halo feels like an inch rather than a leap forward.

Echoes of Fairport, Span, Thompson et al abound, but Offa Rex has its own compelling identity, and should win Chaney an international name.

This, their [Carroll and producer James McMillan] fourth album together, displays a characteristic mixture of deceptive simplicity and emotional depth.

A fierce polemic that impresses and frustrates in equal measure.

DIY at its wilful, weird finest.

There are fewer surprises but no shortage of quality.

A wonderfully inventive creation.

Bracing, brilliant.

Arcade Fire producer Markus Dravs brings depth and heft, whether spotlighting each player or drowning everything in a deluge of guitars. Singer Ellie Rowsell steps up with some wonderfully shapeshifting vocals.

This resulting work is hefty enough to tick industry boxes, and just weird enough to intrigue; a qualified success.

A fascinating album that only slowly gives up its secrets.

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.