The English songwriter’s spacey, super-melodic, immaculately produced pop casts a wonderful spell when it works, particularly on lead single Religion (U Can Lay Your Hands on Me) or the swooning, filtered coda to The Stage, as endless as summer seems in early July.

Every track on We Are King putters and glides by quite smoothly. It’s only gradually you notice how complex this dream state actually is.

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.

No chance of paunchy homage here; lyrics cluttered with Munch, war and the Chartists and the tightly coiled energy of its best moments, such as Misguided Missile and instrumental closer Mayakovsky, suggest they are fronting up to middle age rather well.

Andrew Fearn’s deathlessly inventive compositions stare you down, defying you to find them simplistic – the title track’s turbo-charged electro, and the pointillist electronics of Top Room, are just two cases in point.

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

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.

Musically, too, there are tempestuous moments (Missing Children; Sing Me a Song), but the quartet only soar when the lights are dimmed and ambience takes precedence over energy.

Looser, grungier, fuzzier and yet more abrupt, perhaps, than latter-day Wilco offerings, Star Wars is proof that you can get considerably more than you pay for.

Empowerment, unity and joy combine to catchy effect, with the exceptional Kidjo now leader of a new generation.

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.

With its silky delicacy, percussion that plays with everything from trip-hop to neosoul, and that deft voice gliding through sublime imagery, this is a quietly enriching and powerful first album.

You could dismiss Cheat Codes as dad rap, but this record is absolute joy from end to end.

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

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.

This fourth album by Gothenburg’s master of the indie story song song finds him reinvigorated after 2012’s heartbroken I Know What Love Isn’t, kicked up the arse by drum machines.

Bradfield supplies his usual tender bombast. Some of it could be sketches for a musical, and there’s real intelligence and verve to the electronic, acoustic and orchestral arrangements, with surprising yet successful touches of prog and psychedelia.

Hive Mind--their mainstream-facing fourth outing--offers up another set of come-hither sounds whose confidence has taken another leap.

Maisha are no mere copyists, however; this is above all a celebration of young, eclectic Britain.

Gold and Albarn have done great work on Lindé, mixing Bocoum’s desert bluesology with fuller accompaniments and adding a clutch of interesting guests. ... While the album cruises easily along, Bocoum’s subject matter is serious. Facing turmoil from poverty and jihad, Mali is, as Bocoum puts it, “on the ropes”. His response, calling for unity and hope, proves captivating.

It may not rank among Wilco's boldest works. It could have done with more wig-outs. But it captures the art of the almost with both hands.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues lives up to its title with candour and tunes.

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.

Paul’s soft voice, washed by reverb, recalls the dreamscapes of Beach House, and there are reminders of Sharon Van Etten in the enveloping swells of drums, grungy guitars and spacey shifts of rhythm.

As on Power’s previous albums, there is a delicious tension between the ethereal succour offered by her voice and the turmoil these thrumming songs are processing. Often, wordless emoting is the only solution; Power’s tones flow like starlings above her mantric guitar and that of her partner and collaborator Peter Broderick.

The results are frequently exquisite.

This record is just shy of being truly groundbreaking. Polachek remains too much of a class act, a little too wedded to conventional beauty on songs like Look At Me Now, to really take her pop to the bleeding edge.

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.

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’s not always the easiest of listens, but the boldness of her vision is compelling, especially on Discovery and the title track, where beauty and raw power interact.

Once again the songs are all traditional, while Lee has skilfully intercut some and “rewilded” them with the odd flourish – the “Old Wow” of the title is his name for an awestruck sense of nature.

The trio’s appetite for drugs, women and money never wavers from first to last track. Yet the more introspective songs, such as the spectral Traumatised and thoughtful High Road, tell powerful stories about their journey to success, and prove that D-Block Europe’s imperial phase is far from its end.

It’s far more satisfying musically, however, working as a good showcase for Jason Williamson’s stream-of-consciousness rants and Andrew Fearn’s unshowy but effective beats, from the frantic spleen-venting of 2014’s Jolly Fucker to the menace of last year’s OBCT.

Songs such as The Wheel and Stockholm Syndrome offer thrills that can’t be denied, a preposterously exciting scrapyard soul.

The voices of Callahan and Oldham provide a through line in what can occasionally be unexpected stylistic forays. Least best is a version of Billie Eilish’s Wish You Were Gay: High Llama Sean O’Hagan’s flippant, tinny beats point to a grave generational misunderstanding of digital pop. But almost everything else succeeds in having revelatory fun with old favourites or hitting the listener hard– or both.

Though Bubblegum is brief, at seven songs, Biig Piig’s sound brims with poise and promise.

Fascinatingly ambitious, and often extremely fun, this debut finds pop in safe and thrilling hands.

Traditionalists might still wonder where all the nice steady beats have gone, why so little music here is anchored. The dominant message, though, is of limitlessness, of hope and, on Future Forever, of “a matriarchal dome” with “musical scaffolding”.

Outrage is very much grime’s default mode, but Stormzy is particularly good at it.

She's irrepressible and the record sparkles with personality and elan, sealing her as a pop star worthy of the illustrious company she keeps.

Lennox still sounds unmistakably like his peaceable bear self, despite having acquired some new carnivorous companions whose firepower, critically, he doesn’t need.

You struggle to comprehend how the extraordinary sounds near its inception are coming out of a tuba (via a wah-wah effect). On The Offerings and Radiation, Cross’s prowling tone is slung so low as to sound filthy. One can only hope his lips and lungs are insured.

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.

With this album, you'll be scrabbling for a lyric sheet because Homme seems so uncharacteristically unmoored.

In Stonechild, Hoop has streamlined her sound. It’s hard not to feel her sentiments could benefit from some similar pruning.

Though Pallett is guilty of trying too hard to impress ("Even as a child you felt the terror of the infinite," begins Song for Five & Six), the Canadian's melodies seldom disappoint.

On bravura cuts like EVP or the electronic ballad But You, Hynes has both funk and gossamer production skills, the better to unify this sprawling project. Elsewhere the patchwork of sounds don’t quite gel as heroically as you would have hoped.

Átta feels surprisingly unengaging.

These tunes relish their flutes and organs, horns and strings. Crucially, hope plays off against the bleakness.

Unsurprisingly, not every song’s that good--To Be Remembered is particularly forgettable--but, at its best, Eska is a mind-bending gem.

An assured, ear-opening debut.

Their debut album is shadowed by tragedy, lead singer Dan Klein having succumbed to neurological disease shortly after its completion. His keening falsetto is at the heart of the record, a set of elegant, tortured love songs that occasionally betray Klein’s anguish.

There is much to distinguish Moriondo, whose sense of mischief is as strong as her pop-punk desire to tell it like it is.

Thankfully, The Theory of Whatever takes a gentler, more mature tack; no longer the mouthy street poet of the people, Treays is simply singing his heart out about his muted memories of love, nostalgia and hangovers. It’s a joy to perch alongside and listen to him reminisce.

The meandering midsection of Warm Hands is a slight misstep, but this is another impressive addition to Segall’s canon.

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.

The word “immersive” is bandied about a lot, but Hecker’s work really is.

His first album in nine years contains decent orchestral tear-jerkers, such as She Chose Me and On the Beach, a vignette of an ageing surf bum, but its lead items fall flat.

On first listen it’s a little difficult but lopsided melodies emerge, the best of which call to mind the blues as played by PiL.

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

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.

From Prologue, with its deep drone, wash of waves and circling, priestessly choral voices to the closing Adan no Shima no Tanjyosai and its sparsely plucked guitar and elegiac strings and flute, the album casts a still, soothing spell.

Clearly Harding is still having fun, and while it can make for a somewhat jarring listening experience, her playfulness adds depth to this charming record.

Stand for Myself remains attuned to these country-soul stylings, but the full ingredients list is long: old-timey doo-wop on Great Divide, Brandi Carlile backing vocals, plus subtle British inflections.

All of this is delivered with upbeat charm and wry humour; pedal steel solos don’t so much sweeten these pills as dunk them in a vat of serotonin.

The band are less assured on the quieter numbers, however. The likes of Milk at McDonald’s and the dreamlike Sue’s are pleasant enough (and the former includes the arresting line “I don’t regret a single drop of alcohol”), but unlike their best work there is precious little in the way of nagging hooks to lodge in one’s head.

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 musical reaction to strife and scandal that comes from a quarter where pretension often trumps fun, America is that unlikeliest of things: a feelgood summer album.

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.

This first album in 20 years proves an inspired tribute to the master.

Too many songs start engagingly, become slightly less interesting then peter out. And as ever, Tucek’s lyrics fall between pleasingly quotidian and blandly banal, derailing promising tracks such as The Tunnel.

Her follow-up seems brasher, more memorable yet less substantial, lacking the eeriness that made her last work so compelling.

The just-so production and mastery of the American songbook is pure Rostam, while Leithauser anchors these story-songs with a plethora of vocal moods: gargles, croons and yelling.

Some songs roll along with almost indecent ease--Somebody Was Watching, No News Is Good News--while some draw you up, like the Pops/Mavis duet Sweet Home.

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

The mood only really dips on Chamber of Reflection, when jangly guitars are replaced by a discombobulating synth and his downer sentiments are matched by the music.

Like previous Jay Som records, Anak Ko might seem slight at first listen, particularly Duterte’s winsome coo, but the payoff for lingering in her evolving dreamspace is hefty.

Mostly Radical Romantics is witty, inquisitive about physical and psychological relationships, and less austere than before. The songs produced with Olof are excellent.

Veirs’s 10th solo album is perhaps her most satisfying yet, the deceptively simple songs sketched out on acoustic guitar or piano (the lovely The Meadow is particularly minimalist) and subtly embellished by her band and producer husband, Tucker Martine.

Wide Awake! might be too scattershot to appeal to a much wider audience, but it does cement Parquet Courts’ position as one of US indie’s more intriguing outliers.

Another challenging but ultimately rewarding listen.

The pace of Shadows doesn’t vary from a stately waltz time, even on the 4/4 tracks. The treatments are of a piece: Dylan’s lived-in croon to the fore, breathing close to the mic as his heroically discreet band swoon and groan around him.

Bennett’s voice is ultimately too thin to carry the emotive heft of her heartbreak material, and Broken Hearts Club works best when she facilitates others to take up its mantle.

Throughout, Nao balances some very aerated sulking about unsatisfactory relationships with defiantly old-school touches. You can hear everyone from Janet Jackson to Aaliyah in this confident artist’s deceptively dreamy tones.

Among the standouts are a theatrical version of Ewan MacColl’s The Fitter’s Song, the crazed instrumental Love Lane, and Carthy’s own You Know Me, an empathic comment on the refugee crisis.

What worked a treat then continues to work now.

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.

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.

Pity there's still too much syrup to wade through on other tracks.

Unfortunately, there’s often this vast emotional chasm in his music, a feeling that nothing ever means anything, until the final two tracks, The States and The Last Song, which prove that he can write a lovely, affecting lyric after all.

Fade returns to familiar territory so intuitively that it feels less like a return to form than a homecoming.

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.

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

The spaciousness, punch and depth of these productions is telling, but it is a mark of the album’s artistic integrity that Stormzy manages to transcend genre (again) without sacrificing his core griminess, or losing too much in the way of accent, word choice, content or theme.

There is one salient, nailed-on fact about this enigmatic album, however. It’s how easily its most anthemic cuts will slot into those revved-up Arctic Monkey festival set lists.

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

Although it doesn’t quite touch the consistency of 2021’s Made in the Pyrex, this third mixtape’s moody volatility is utterly compelling.

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.