Tiger Blood is the sound of an artist improving on her already high standards.

Bright Future consolidates the view that Lenker is now one of the most distinctive and powerful voices of her generation and these new songs will only deepen the intensity with which her music is received.

By the time we reach closing track Who Brings Me the journey through the cloudscape is complete, sealing an experience that is equal parts head and heart music. It’s an absorbing, cohesive listen that casts fresh light on familiar structures and melds them into new and appealing shapes.

The album does seem to tail off a bit towards the end – as nice as Light It Up and Tough are, they both seem disappointingly sedate ways to bring the album to a close compared to the succession of instantly engaging anthems that preceded them. Other than that, though, there’s enough evidence on Real Love that the fire that inspired Gossip is still burning as bright as ever.

Songdreaming is a big musical event. It is a great place to start if you are less familiar with folk music, opening its arms to ambient and electronic influences while simultaneously celebrating traditional instruments and old melodic forms. It is also a great place to visit if you’ve lived with these forms of music for decades.

While it inevitably doesn’t have the shattering impact of Psychocandy, it does confirm their unlikely status as elder statesmen that a whole new generation can look up to.

While there are no big surprises on Rockmaker, most of the tracks on the album are as instantly addictive as in their heyday.

Deeper Well is an album to wallow in, one for those rainy days inside where you just want to sit and find comfort in music. For anybody undergoing some large life changes, this is an album that will be able to gently guide you through those times.

eternal sunshine also represents a triumphant return to form, sophisticated pop music complementing her distinctive voice beautifully.

While it doesn’t quite have the instantly addictive quality that Pupul’s work with Charlotte Adigéry does, this is still a rich, multi-layered work that serves as both a fine tribute to Pupul’s mother and a compelling journey of grief, loss and the effects of ancestry.

It’s a brilliant record, even without the weight of history behind it, and a classic, true heavy metal album from the same band that practically invented much of the genre. Essential for fans of any of the forms of metal. Obviously.

This is an astonishing album.

If Antonoff can add more of his own personality into songs as beautifully crafted and well produced as these, they could unleash something special.

This is thrillingly visceral music that could bring Mannequin Pussy ever closer to crossover success.

This is an adrenaline rush of an album, an electric shock in a world of flabby gas. Proof, if any were needed, that it’s possible to reinvent the wheel if you’re committed enough to the spin.

It’s another intriguing step in the evolution of Everything Everything – it ultimately doesn’t matter whether you buy into the overarching concept of the record when the songs are as good as they are on Mountainhead.

The more that you listen to this album, the more affecting it becomes.

On this one, they’ve become a great band. It’s harder to take them seriously here, but perhaps that’s something they’ve never wanted. They’re more than content with being the class clowns, and we’re more than happy to have them.

Most importantly, Sadier succeeds in her aim, offering a genuine musical antidote to the cultural scars and traumas we carry from recent years.

There is no radical change from their first four albums, but anyone familiar with MGMT knows that means plenty of musical exploration, a refreshing flick of the fingers up to the norm. There are many lyrical gems, too, VanWyngarden and Goldwasser maintaining their happy knack of writing songs that connect, songs that their listeners will want to hear on repeat.

As a soundtrack to watching those flames flicker, it doesn’t come much better than The Past Is Still Alive.

It’s more conceptually consistent, more musically accomplished, more of pretty much everything that she’s ever done before – and what she was already doing was verging on masterly. Filthy Underneath is already a contender for Album of the Year, and it will take something truly exceptional to beat it.

Maya Shenfeld’s towering achievement is to craft a highly effective polemical record with no words, the music saying all that needs to be said: throw in imaginative sound design and a deft approach to pacing and the result is an out-and-out triumph.

By the time we reach the end, Doyle has nailed his musical remedy for the pace and relentless demand on the senses this digital life can make. Ironically he does so with a pleasing amount of analogue input, the music spring-like in the upward looking way it saunters down the street.

We find Omni changing the formula only slightly and having incredible success with it. Highly recommended. Underrate them at your peril.

The Mess We Seem To Make is a remarkably confident, assured debut album – every inch of care and time that’s been lavished on it has obviously been well spent. Crawlers sound very much like a band on the cusp of some very big things.

Blu Wave sounds absolutely steeped in sadness – it’s full of pedal steel guitar, luscious string arrangements and Lyttle’s fragile vocals. It is, in a word, beautiful.

It would have been very easy, at such a young age, to restrict himself to a particular sound, but What Happened To The Beach? demonstrates an impressive range that bodes well for his long-term success.