Their last album, The Seldom Seen Kid, managed the rare feat of winning the Mercury prize and huge public affection. So how do Elbow follow it? With continued greatness and without fuss.

Magdalene is a magnificently twisted sci-fi torch album, an enthralling account of love, loss, heartbreak and recovery. It is erotic and neurotic, confounding and revelatory, summoning the spirits of such iconoclastic talents as David Bowie, Kate Bush and Björk while affirming its own unique personality.

Her magnificent fourth album demonstrates that she is one of the best rappers in the world, period.

It's surprisingly accessible, hypnotic and beautiful if you give it time and concentration.

If this was a debut, we would be hailing Andrews as a precocious young genius. But perhaps, in this age of acceleration, amid a pop blizzard of viral memes and instant digital fame, the slow maturing of a truly substantial talent is something to really celebrate.

[A] bravura masterpiece. There is no sugar rush of digital synthetic beats and radio-friendly hooks. This is a dense, intricate mesh of free-flowing jazz, deep Seventies funk and cut-up hip hop with a verbose, hyper-articulate rapper switching up styles and tempos to address contemporary racial politics in a poetic narrative built around a long dark night of the soul.

If you were enchanted by Skeleton Tree’s other-worldly sadness, Lovely Creatures offers an extraordinary illustration of Cave’s restless creativity. It leaves you relishing the possibility that the best is still to come.

This fabulous box-set finally unites the trilogy. Tragic, poignant, yet uplifting, Newbury's tough-guy singing will often inexorably reduce the listener to tears.

There is nothing disappointing about the way he conjures art from emotional defeat. Toast deserves to be acclaimed amongst his finest works. Twenty-one years since the album was made, Young has reminded us once again why he stands tall amongst the greats of the rock era.

What feels right (or at least absolutely right now) about Metric is the perfect balance, every element in its place and in service of a set of sinuous, hook-laden, elegantly crafted pop songs.

As a body of work, Crushing feels small, intimate and inward. But these are big songs, full of big ideas, from a big talent.

Blue Weekend both refines that sound and takes it in dizzying new directions. Rowsell’s lyrics have never been more absorbing in their examination of friendship, heartache, anxiety, acceptance and self-confidence.

An album for the ages, as well as being an awards season shoo-in, it is sure to succeed in doing precisely what Burna told Billboard his music is all about – “bringing people who don’t even speak the same language together to dance.”

The brilliance of No Thank You is how Simz uses her brazenly unapologetic narrative to spin out larger points about institutional and generational racism, the danger of business practices indifferent to their human impact, and links all of that to contemporary mental health crises.

For an album drawing on despair and recovery, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over is a life-affirming pleasure from top to bottom.

It is a reminder that, beyond the thrill-seeking singles, the mainstream audience still favour meaningful, emotional songs, delivered with passion. Rag ’n’ Bone Man’s debut is full of them.

Hegarty has mastered the art of turning performance into a kind of ritual ceremony and the magic of these symphonic concert recordings blows their previously released versions out of the water.

Long Live the Angels is something special, the sound of a gifted, grown-up singer-songwriter using all the tools at her disposal to put her own heart back together.

Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this funny, hard-hitting, thrilling album is that it actually sounds like a coherent and purposeful piece of work, a statement of what hip hop can mean, and where it can go.

Cohen’s triumphant return to the live arena is reflected in the growling assuredness of his vocals. An absolute treat.

It’s an expansion of her wonderfully experimental R&B, with all the candour listeners expect from this masterful songwriter. ... SOS is well worth the wait.

There cannot be another musical duet around at the moment who are able to make two acoustic guitars and two voices produce a sound that is so subtle and yet powerful.

Swift’s remake is astonishing in its exactitude, another reminder that she is a star of a different magnitude with a mastery of her own talents and a bold business acumen. .... All of the new songs are satisfyingly deft and clever, replete with sinuous melodies, burbling synths and agitated percussion that correspond with the updated eighties stylings of the original. .... The one new song that really punches its weight with Swift’s original 1989 singles is the razor sharp Is It Over Now?

Mixing up elements of rock, pop, blues, jazz, soul and funk, each song finds its way into a supple groove and just bounces around there as though Amadou's guitar strings and Mariam's vocal chords were made of musical elastic.

This live album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience is a compelling and beautiful tribute.

Its beauty lies in the intuitive simpatico of the playing, with different elements rising to the surface at just the right moment. It used to take them months in the studio to achieve this blend. Now these old road warriors can conjure it in a single take.

The album was recorded in Berlin and the dark pulse of that Krautrock influence gives the songs a steely sleekness of purpose (and real cohesion), while the band layer a vigorous variety of sounds and tempos on top to keep things interesting.

The pure beauty and emotion of Rosalia’s vocals and the sensational grooviness of her rhythms all speak for themselves, offering a fantastically fresh take on Latin flavours and modern urban pop.