They exhilarate and seduce the listener into a world that makes enduring and acknowledging turbulent times a bit more glamorous.

The content is lovingly packaged in a box neatly dressed-up as one of those giant beat boxes hipsters used to lug around before the advent of the Sony Walkman and the digital revolution that followed.

25 is certainly the equal of its predecessor. What it sacrifices in youthful rawness it makes up in maturity and sheer class. Adele Adkins has taken her time over her third album and it shows.

Subtract still sounds like an Ed Sheeran album, just one that is not trying so hard to be everything to everyone all at once. Sometimes less really is more.

It is not reinventing the pop wheel but everything is done with an appealing combination of taste and passion.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the snap ’n’ flex with which Kiedis flips out this nonsense. He and Flea (now 53) clearly know how daft they are yet you can also hear how happy they sound to still be pogoing along.

Ultimately, this is a brilliant record about clearing out the emotional crap and stripping things back to their essence – the perfect soundtrack to lull us out of our collective wintering and into some mental spring cleaning.

Like FKA Twigs’s Caprisongs, Beyoncé's Renaissance, and SZA’s SOS, Raye’s My 21st Century Blues deserves to be listened to from start to finish, then again, and again.

Hynes's voice is refined into an emotive croon. Inventive pop from a bright indie talent.

With more restrained tempos and a broader, gentler soundscape, the focus shifts to Flowers’s thoughtful lyrics, lovely melodies and grave yet pliant vocals for the most nuanced and heartfelt set of songs that he (with various co-writers and band members) has ever conjured up.

Price’s fantastic fourth album, Strays, advances boldly into terrain occupied by such exalted US rock craftsmen as Jackson Browne and Tom Petty, with soulful vocal swagger, a widescreen band sound and a poetic lyrical depth that should leave most of her Nashville peers prostrate at her feet.

[Wizkid's] finest body of work so far, showcasing a maturity and an artistic vision that cements his status as one of the most influential people in pop music today.

What an absolute joy it is, in which the grand old man of songcraft flips through his own back pages with genuine relish, a man in his 80’s revisiting the words of his firebrand youth and finding entirely new meanings there.

From the clarion call of The Hosting Of The Shee to the haunting The Faery's Last Song, the result is a fabulous feast of words and music.

WE is their sixth album, and every bit as good as their best. ... With a work as ambitious and boldly realised as WE, Arcade Fire know they have nothing to fear by inviting comparison to rock’s all-time greats.

The production by Jack Antonoff is stunning, with a huge amount happening beneath the surface of what first manifests as a scratchily intimate acoustic-flavoured unplugged band. There is not a weak song or throwaway performance here, amidst many that only reveal their secrets on repeated listening.

The result is the gorgeous Tomorrow is My Turn, which shows off the full singing range and power of the frontwoman for innovative string-band trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

This isn't mere cleverness, it's instinctive musicality, buoyed up by three other fine players.

The Decemberists blend rock and folk well (there's even a nod to the famous Raggle Taggle Gypsy Man in a riff on Rox In The Box) and the songwriting crafts pastoral and emotional imaginery into tight-knit, attractive songs. This album is an unexpected treat.

At first listen it sounds messy, but the more you play it, the more inspired and essential each brutal interruption becomes.

Real emotion never gets old. Honey is moving in more senses than one, a hypnotically groovy dance floor opus, set to the beat of Robyn’s tender heart.

Content is their best record since the late-Seventies, packed with savagely danceable riffs and rousingly incisive lyrics about consumerism, domestic fragmentation and political resistance.

Freed from the constrictions of slavish imitation, with production from her new and more experimentally inclined collaborators, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, these six songs offer an intriguing lens through which to view this more innocent version of the savvy star, imbued with the dreamily nostalgic ambience of an adult remembering her bright-eyed youth.

Strangers is his most measured and thoughtful album to date.

Delta is their best album yet, spiritual solace wrapped in secular anthems.

Like our planet, this album is a rare thing of wonder.

Her songs may be about growing pains, but they’ve got timeless appeal.

Despite the subject matter, this is an invigorating celebration of the joys of great songwriting and proof of the power of one man and his piano.