Death Cab are back with a bang and a new-found self-assurance.

This is an album in which Mumford embraces and forgives his own, to deeply moving effect.

The more conventional songs radiate power too, from straightforward pop-rock anthem Hurricanes to the electronic thud of Holy — her It’s A Sin moment. The album’s final three tracks feel superfluous, but Sawayama ultimately succeeds where Dr Frankenstein failed: her creation greater than the sum of its parts.

The Hardest Part doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It knows what it is: undisguised, accessible songwriting pulsing with country lifeblood which manages to avoid being swallowed by its own ennui.

Spirituals is tonally consistent despite its range of distinctive influences and talents. Just when Santigold threatens to lean into the corny, as on the SBTRKT-produced Shake, she pulls back, adding a whimsical, purposefully on-the-nose rattle sound at the end of each wedding disco-like “shake, shake, shake it” hook. It’s a joy to hear her back in her creative swing.

Hideous Creature doesn’t possess the same pop immediacy of Sim’s day job, but it does feel like a record that needed to be made: vital and beautiful.

A defiantly bravura set of melodic metal on which the 73-year-old genuinely sounds as though he’s having the time of his life.

Scintillating and confident. ... This is music to bop to on the streets, to listen to in church with a big congregation, or to soak up alone in a room.

While this album invigorates and intrigues, in future I would hope to hear her expand lyrically, while exploring the hauntingly melancholic sounds her violin can produce. For now, at least, the defiant joy her work evokes is a stimulating jolt to the senses.

Ellery and Skye have managed cohesion amid the cacophony. I Love You Jennifer B is a dramatic outing that combines the modern, the classical and everything else in between.

There are songs where it feels like there’s been a huge step-change in Nesbitt’s writing, as on When You Lose Someone. ... Some songs, however, fall right back into the clumsy patterns of Nesbitt’s earlier work

Throughout, the arrangements are as relentlessly upbeat and playfully retro as the album’s Alan Fears-designed artwork, stuffed with vocoders, peacocking basslines and laser-beam synth sounds. They’re also wildly referential, and largely fail to add anything either fresh or memorable to the conversation.

The songs are catchy, the emotions are sincere, and it is all driven by an intense desire to connect. But somehow Yungblud always sounds as if he’s trying too hard.

They capture Reed’s early processes, fragments of ideas that would morph into his definitive work. ... We sense that all that remained for Reed to do was to become Lou.

The Painter harks back to the producer’s woozy, worldly chill out beginnings. It even features Orton on two tracks. This is ambient music for grown-ups.

Mascara Streakz may not reinvent the wheel, but it does stand confidently among their greatest hits while making a compelling case for having that fifth shot of tequila.

This is Jacklin’s most personal offering yet and while the pain of mining her soul for such material is clear, through these diary-like confessionals, so too is her catharsis.

Muse are a blockbuster band, and this is another box-office-demolishing spectacular – it would feel like self-denial not to surrender. Honestly, the end of the world has rarely sounded like so much fun.

There are duds, mostly when Aitch is chasing LA acclaim and aping US trap rappers on tracks like Cheque or Fuego. But when he leans into the silky, bumpy ’90s-era smooth-licking RnB that he raised himself on – see Sunshine or R Kid – he’s hard to beat.

A fun, enjoyable vessel that spotlights a magnetic talent. The music might not entirely be Panic! at the Disco’s own – but like fellow Vegas bigwig Elvis, that’s clearly no barrier.

The great joy of this late period album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lifetime Achievement is not so much a last will and testament as a bravura insistence on Wainwright’s intention to carry on living and loving for as long as he can.

Holy Fvck sounds like a genuine attempt to deal with a troubled adulthood and leave the past behind.

For the Wu-Tang purists, twitchy for a return to the raw Only Built 4 Cuban Linx sonics, the music here isn’t exactly going to quench your thirst. But it’s further proof that what the RZA truly savours is stepping outside of his comfort zone, and it's a relief to once again hear a little weirdness in rap.

Unwanted calls to mind a Jacqueline Wilson novel transposed into an LP format, its 12 songs relentlessly circling over ‘difficult emotions’ – awkwardness, rejection, and, yes, it’s okay to express your anger. And these, of course, are well-worn teen-pop topics already.

It’s surely fair to deduce that the intended ‘reset’ is all about returning pop to its early years’ sense of wonder, both sonically and emotionally. On that level, its nine tracks resoundingly succeed.

What Kasabian have lost in aggression they have gained in depth and sensitivity, and the result is a vivid, adventurous album set at the outer limits of rock and techno.

This is highly advanced rap filtered through easily digestible hooks and musical choices. The beat variety on display is exquisite. Almost every shade of Megan Thee Stallion is here.

A hazy collection of groove-driven vocal tracks featuring singers and rappers.