Chinouriri is an accomplished songwriter. Ideas spill out of every crammed corner of this collection. Her often hushed husky voice, developed when trying to practise without annoying her Zimbabwean parents, isn’t for everyone. Yet there’s range to her delivery, whether dropping punchy barbs during Dumb Bitch Juice or self-excoriating on My Blood and I Hate Myself.

Dazzling.

A beautifully packaged time capsule.

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.

A crafted, lustrous meditation.

Justice are still capable of raw-edged excitement, but on Hyperdrama they find themselves too polished and bright.

Essentially, there are three types of Pet Shop Boys albums: life-changing, great and OK. This one’s great.

The overall sound may seem too polished and wary of explosive emotion, but it’s nonetheless a consistent and confident foundation – one primed to launch Blue Lab Beats into the spotlight as formidable producers and performers.

Ultimately, this may be Swift’s most Swiftian album: the unhappiness profound, the details generous, the lessons absorbed.

There are no cathartic singalongs in the album’s downbeat cello or swelling drones. Its relatability stems from somehow managing to recreate the specific texture of loneliness.

By now, most listeners will know where they stand on Vedder’s distinctive holler and the band’s beefiness; little on Dark Matter is likely to enchant gen Z away from their own heroes. But the faithful will rejoice.

While the heavier, distorted guitars of Tower and Love We Had feel somewhat jarring in the ebullient context of the album, Sun Without the Heat is a freewheeling and joyous listen, with McCalla employing her knowledge of musical traditions to produce fresh combinations.

Bodega Bait or ATM don’t bring anything to the kids v commerce discourse that you couldn’t get from a jpeg of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Much better is GND Deity, a punchy metallic funk side-eye at the “girl next door” online sex industry, electrifying despite dated references to the long-gone web pages.

The emphatic playing of Hutchings’ more exhortatory bands (chiefly Sons of Kemet) has given way to a more impressionistic delicacy.

Nothing as pretty as 2019’s Debold, but it feels like his most accessible project so far – far more engaging than Headache, his recent AI-performed side hustle.

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

It feels like a feast at a time when pop is offering up scraps. As she mentioned herself when announcing the album to a mix of anger, intrigue and confusion: “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” It’s also her fourth classic in a row.

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

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

There are inevitable longueurs as well, mind: Pure Poor gives dirges a bad name, and closer Hey Lou Reid fancies itself as an epic but instead just feels like an extraordinarily slow six minutes. Still, the fact that Glasgow Eyes is three-quarters of a good record is reason for celebration.

Crutchfield rides a middle road here. Same producer yet different band; same sprightly Americana vibe yet more emotionally placid than its predecessor, which recounted a troubled reckoning with her newfound sobriety.

These highs could have been more musically vertiginous and the lows more chasmic. It is a privilege to have them back, but you wish their music had the courage of Gossip’s convictions. Don’t Be Afraid is an epic intentionally trapped in a cheap Casio keyboard: underpowered.

Vocally, the “queen of Latin music” isn’t particularly distinctive, but she ranges from seductive to strident in a single line and makes both equally appealing. Her Majesty’s moods are despondent (rare), thirsty (much less rare) or proudly powerful (nearly always) and she ensures you’re buffeted by every emotion billowing past.

A plethora of found sounds and jazz inflections keep everything compelling. But the hovering, sustained and gliding elements miss the brave sensory overload of Aviary and the pop nous of Wilderness. The best track is the simplest: Meyou, a warped, minimal vocal meditation.

The record’s dreamlike atmosphere is seductive and disquieting; a moving tribute to Albion’s troubled soul.

It all makes for a multi-textured, multi-hued portrait of an artist who playfully seeks out the primary colours but remains very frank about the shade.

Songs such as Jade Green are so focused on the minutiae of her life as to feel tedious. She finds a delicate balance between the two, though, on Anime Eyes, a dizzying, almost comically lovestruck track that finds Musgraves eschewing the tasteful zen of the rest of the album in favour of all-out lyrical maximalism. It’s a flavour Deeper Well could have used more of.

Refined and subtle, but with the right amount of bite (see the darkly hued True Story), Eternal Sunshine feels like a clearing of the emotional decks.

Unfortunately, Gordon’s spiky, staccato delivery is too often drowned in distortion and diminished by tune-dodging cacophony. So many songs, such as Trophies, are tense yet torpid, and when the airless intensity clears briefly on Shelf Warmer it’s too late.

While Bleachers is far from being a bad album, it’s even further from being an exciting one.

Letter to Yu finds this dancefloor native expanding his already imaginative sound design. It’s sad, but also full of diversions, with Pupul’s curiosity and squelchy sense of fun ever-present.

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.

Musically, meanwhile, Where’s My Utopia? marks a huge leap forward, with co-producer Remi Kabaka Jr of Gorillaz helping to realise soaring ambitions.

You might file her body of work under 70s-tinged alt-country. But Webster’s subtle accessorising – her eclectic production choices, like Feeling Good Today’s Auto-Tuned multitracking – always render these miniatures next-level.

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

This is a well-crafted collection that could maybe do with a couple more heaters, but will keep the wider audience he picked up with Conflict of Interest happy.

Bubblegum Dog is more engaging for its muscular delivery and surreal lyrics, and there’s a sense of space to the soaring Nothing Changes. Ultimately, though, for all its gloss, Loss of Life feels a little disappointing.

There are words of love for suicidal addicts (Alibi) and a sense of the distance travelled, while remaining constant: an outlier whose solidarity with the runaways and the marginalised endures.

An innovative homage to tradition.

No longer just parochial rabble rousers, Idles are moving on up.

Grip is OK, but it should make more sense on stage.

There are nice moments of nostalgia: banger Hearts and Flowers references Jenny from the Block, while the excellent Rebound is a throwback R&B jam accentuated by fluttering harp. But songs such as To Be Yours and Not.going.anywhere offer very little outside of simply soundtracking a cosy night in chez Bennifer.

It’s when Larsson gets earnest that things start to falter. Nothing cribs too readily from Rihanna’s 2010-era balladry, while Larsson’s full-bodied delivery jars with Soundtrack’s soft strings. She’s better setting those emotions to big floor-fillers, as on End of Time, which peaks as a desperate Larsson belts “until the end of fucking time!” For that sense of pent-up release, Venus works perfectly.

For those expecting Malone’s all-enveloping instrumental embrace, the churchiness of the voices can startle. But the younger artist came to music through choirs, and the sorrowful grace of the words makes plain emotions she previously only implied.

At just 35 minutes, Phasor might not be as all-enveloping as his previous efforts, yet it offers enough scraps of melody and moments of wonder that you won’t feel cheated.

It’s an aural through line as she dazzles us with her range: unexpected dancefloor bangers (Prove It to You), pellucid vintage soul and exultant funk.

As usual, the words he drawls are blankly impenetrable – the gorgeous I Can’t Find You could be about friendships, a relationship or his car keys. Still, this is a wonderfully agreeable album and, if you miss the roar, there should be more Dinosaur Jr in a year or two.

Peacemaker balances its polished Nashville musicianship with uncanny textures, resulting in a record so atmospheric you’d swear you could hear the rustle of her white prairie dress in the breeze.

Here are grownup, weighty ruminations on devotion, sacrifice, separation and Covid, but The Tower and King of Sweden are also perfectly constructed pop.

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

Her second album, written in Nashville, continues to make up for lost time, moving on in both craft and playfulness.

If Insano is to be Mescudi’s musical curtain call, it showcases his capacity to attract big names, without delivering on distinctive songs.

Although the likes of the punchy 1981 and the poppier Suzie Chapstick roll back the years, too many of the songs here sound laboured and/or pedestrian, and there’s a real paucity of memorable material.

The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.

There is no right way to grieve, but it feels as though shock and sorrow have only made Sleater-Kinney seize their day and prioritise.

But where its predecessor was louche and hook-driven, this fourth studio album skulks deeper into her psyche, its occasional moments of catharsis upended by sombre piano interludes and bleak lyricism.

Orquídeas’s variegation means it’s not quite the no-skip concept album that was Red Moon. But in a rapidly decompartmentalising pop landscape, where Spanglish is increasingly a lingua franca, Uchis’s flair and depth cuts across whatever notional cultural barriers might remain.

Sometimes it feels more like an oral history project, with first-hand spoken-word accounts by Liam Bailey (the title track), or Brown’s appreciation of her family on Just Be. Mostly, though, she succeeds in channelling her anger, sadness and defiance, all the while conveying gratitude for the richness of her Caribbean roots.

At 14 songs, there are misfires that could have been pruned – Run for the Hills is generic, algorithmic trap-pop – but overall, Think Later feels like McRae’s ticket to the big leagues.

The only slight misstep is Mother Earth, which swaps the original version’s distorted guitar for pump organ – but as it’s Young’s voice that still takes centre stage, that feels more of a cosmetic change than the imaginative reworkings elsewhere.

Over 10 tunes, Regal and Petralli fashion taut, soulful pop nuggets out of jazz fusion licks, a sound not a million miles from Tame Impala meeting Thundercat, but gnarlier and different at every turn.

The magnificently eerie Four Kinds of Horses is the record’s peak, while maternal elegy And Still feels like the most open, vulnerable song he has ever sung.

Benjamin has woodwind form. He contributed flute to the soundtrack of Everything Everywhere All at Once and played clarinet on 2018’s epic tribute to his mother, Look Ma No Hands. New Blue Sun is more weirdly charismatic than either of those.

You don’t have to strain too much, either, to hear a plausible feminist reworking of songs such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, when Parton joins larynxes with Pink and Brandi Carlile. But overall, Rockstar is both a savvy commercial package and a fudged artistic opportunity.

The title track and single Tantor are decent, and Shakedown a warm beachside strut, with Brown’s lyrical ice shards speared through. Bass Jam is lovely nostalgia, shimmering harmonies surrounding him like ghosts of his former selves. Otherwise, the beats feel slightly tired, casting a pall greater than any of Brown’s recent misfortunes.

It doesn’t quite match the standard of late-career high point The Liberty of Norton Folgate (2009), but the album is not without its moments.

Ultimately, Heaven Knows needed to move beyond PinkPantheress’s TikTok formula to break new ground, but is still stuck in the sounds of the past.

Integrated Tech Solutions is another assured slam dunk: a loose concept album about our dystopian tech consumerism with bouncy retro production that crackles with vim.

Party music looms large, thanks to tunes like Out of Luck, Ghost! and What Ya Know; range and depth comes in the form of Wasp’s husky R&B. But the feelgood moments, though nagging, can’t help but feel slightly anodyne compared with Maidza’s more lethal modes.

They’re at their best on their more focused songs: there’s a swagger to opener My Little Tony, and Worlds Greatest Emoter has a winningly upbeat bassline. But when the tempo drops, the likes of Calm Down With Me and Bibs are indigestible dirges, and too often The Twits feels like a heavy-going triumph of style over content.

The album takes off when Jung Kook can focus on his honeyed falsetto, as on the supple disco glide of Standing Next to You, or on 3D’s exhilarating chorus. Golden is full of bright spots, but only fully shines on occasion.

It peaks with How Music Makes You Feel Better, in which a techno-infused beat anchors a euphoric, arena-sized synth line, expressing Kourtesis’s belief in music’s capacity to heal the spirit.

From first note to last, Chronicles of a Diamond swaggers from the speakers. Even the love songs have new light cast on that hoary old topic by the roaring fire of Burton’s voice, while Quesada layers psychedelics and electronica into the orchestral mix, always conjuring new charms from familiar elements.

It’s a successful enough reinvention for Anderson surely to be wondering why she didn’t make a solo record sooner.

While technically accomplished, Selvutsletter doesn’t do enough with its occasional moments of wonder – the glorious chorus of Hvals that arise during Sea White, for one – to justify its many lengthy, meandering sections.

Full of defiant brio and what you might charitably call unreconstructed Stonesiness – the Sydney Sweeney-starring video for Angry is a case in point; the LP’s Bill Wyman cameo is another – Hackney Diamonds is packed with convincing echoes of the band in its pomp.

If these songs are more off the cuff than before, nothing here sounds unprofessional. Some lyrics have not exactly been sweated-over – “I love you forever, even when we’re not together,” goes Forever – but they chime with people feeling acutely separated from loved ones.

Crazymad, for Me doubles down on CMAT’s self-knowing “too muchness” with a meatier sound and more vaulting ambition.

If the lyrical content often favours navel-gazing, nearly every song comes with an expertly crafted, big pop chorus or a sonic gear-change – Flatlining, for example, shifts from warm synths to a four-to-the-floor beat and tumbling electronics.

It is, of course, too long. But its peripatetic nature means you can easily assemble your own collection from its 21 tracks. Tense, urgent Broad Day, eerie Night Vision, or feisty duets Fine As Can Be and Princess Cut should all make that list.

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.

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.

By turns angry, celebratory, mournful, hopeful, here’s an album for complex times.

An exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones.

Ultimately, the album is burdened by its own weight, striving to exorcise the group’s creative urges. Perhaps with more time together, Animal Collective could jam into a sense of consistency again.

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.

Sometimes, he brings to mind Massive Attack, but then quickly the impression dissipates. Loose and cinematic, Sublime combines breakbeats with guitar, piano and strings. Not every element here is as assured.

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

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.

A Love and Let the Sun Come In recall the jangle of their early-80s imperial phase. The ballads are equally well executed, most notably the closing I Think About You Daily, with Jonny Greenwood’s hypnotic string arrangement imbuing Hynde’s uncharacteristically swagger-free vocals with a powerful sense of regret and vulnerability.

Throughout, Mitski’s voice has never sounded sweeter or more exquisitely measured, even as she sings of protagonists vomiting cake, alcoholism (Bug Like an Angel), men, dogs, God and the devil.

What’s never in doubt is the authenticity of the “missteps and redemption” detailed in its songs, or their engaging, personal delivery.

Overall, Guts is perhaps missing Sour’s big pop moments, but as a snapshot of an upturned life it’s consistently fascinating.

While not quite a return to form, the album’s sleek yet plaintive production is a welcome reminder of what Blake does best.

At 15 tracks, Club Romantech can feel relentless in its rhythmic energy. Yet if you surrender to the sound, it’s hard not to find the album infectiously danceable. It is a brave new world for Icona Pop, one that finds them closer to Ibiza than Katy Perry.

A punk disposition suffuses many of these nine tracks, immolating assumptions around the j-word. Fly Or Die III (for brevity) rocks, rolls and generally throws itself around.

In a world of diminishing returns, not many artists hit their peak 11 (or so) albums into their career. That only makes Jump for Joy even more of a triumph.

Although Monét is still finding her voice, her production, overflowing with euphoric horns and silky melodies, fits her soft cadence and carefree lyrics like a bespoke suit.