If nothing on Everything Was Beautiful feels truly essential to anyone with the Spiritualized back catalogue, it’s also a glowing example of their aesthetic.

It all adds up to a magnificent third album which serves as the crowning point of a career that is, excitingly, still in its infancy.

There is little filter on the creativity here as White’s legacy allows him to explore and indulge odd ideas, but it could do with some productive channelling. Hence Fear Of The Dawn ends up a partially enjoyable but partially frustrating listen.

Horace Andy is clearly an artist not content to rest on his laurels, and with this album he strengthens his position as a bona fide reggae legend.

The album could have been a niche critical favourite that marked them out as just curious oddities. Instead every preconception has been firmly smashed. Firmly on track to become the biggest band in the country, Wet Leg are here to shake the post pandemic culture out of its slumber.

El Mirador is up there with their strongest albums, certainly rivalling the likes of 2003’s acclaimed Feast Of Wire as possibly their best.

You Belong There is a genuinely transporting, multi-dimensional song cycle and a glimpse into a fascinating musical mind that demands repeated plays. It’s destined to appear on album of the year lists but its depth and sense of ambition will ensure its treasures last well beyond 2022.

In their second album Confidence Man provide us with the feel good music we desperately need right now, taking the weight from our shoulders and offering more than a semblance of hope in difficult times.

There’s the occasional curveball, such as the Latin shuffle of Olvidado (Otro Momento), but for most part the music hovers on an astral plane between speakeasy jazz and the later nexus of Dylan, Nilsson and Newman. The result is strangely timeless.

The Unfolding is an album with a broader purpose that conveys its egalitarian, inclusive message with discretion, confidence and superb musicianship. It succeeds in balancing the beautiful with the cerebral, simultaneously existing as both head and heart music.

For some the relentless artificiality of this album will make it hard going, and is likely that Walt Disco will make better records, but as a debut this is assured, individual, and liable to incite a thousand arguments about teenage clothing choices. Like all the best pop music.

It might not be exactly how you remember Loop to be, but it’s distinctly Loop nevertheless and is a welcome return for a band that were thought to be done and dusted.

The music of Aldous Harding is beautiful on the surface, but becomes even more wonderful when given a chance, and when it’s as good a first listen as Warm Chris is, finding time to dive back in is a rather simple task. Warm Chris is the first great album of the coming summer.

Filled with the classic Molko goth-nihilism it’s twinged with as much Nirvana as it is Depeche Mode. Familiar yet fresh, a grower indeed, catchier with each listen.

The lovelorn subject matter is at times overbearing, but nevertheless Homesick is a decent listen from start to finish and its consistency is impressive.

Crash, while not a perfect record and not entirely free from external pressures, sees the singer in a completely different space, making joyous music that flits between normativity and hall-of-mirrors-style subversion in a manner reminiscent of The Weeknd’s Dawn FM.

Becoming Undone is a twisted, thrilling ride, at once stylish and unhinged, showing that more sophisticated production techniques haven’t taken away any of ADULT.’s edge over the years.

The full listening experience is perplexing, intriguing, sometimes perhaps infuriating, but rarely less than intoxicating.

Whilst it’s unlikely to have surpassed a compilation that would have boasted the likes of I Wanna Get Lost With You, Indian Summer, Graffiti On The Train and Mr And Mrs Smith to name but a few, Oochya! is undoubtedly one of Stereophonics’ better albums in recent times even if, at 15 tracks, it’s a little too long.

It might have been largely inspired by events that took place in the past but this is a forward-looking album by a band that has rediscovered their place in the world.

Though it’s only a brief listen, Back In Black finds Cypress Hill refreshed and re-energised.

Deciding which music you listen to in a world that now benefits from so much of it is another tough choice, but in the case of The Jacket, it comfortably feels like it could be a very good fit for many.

Reeling is undoubtedly a solid step on a road to a successful career, and one that will find this band honing in on both its desired path as well as strengths that will become clearer as time goes by.

The music can be deadpan and serious at times, but Magazine 1 gives the running impression that it was a huge amount of fun in the making.

It’s a rare skill to be both silly and devastatingly tender, and it’s all here to revel in.

Stars is simply a wonderful work by a wonderful artist, which can be enjoyed with or without the contextual groundwork of its sister album. Enjoy liberally and often.

Its cumulative impact is immense, the singer giving everything she has to the music. Limbs may not be an easy listen, but Keeley Forsyth makes it an essential one, singing from the depths of her very bones.

Yet for all these noisier moments, tracks like Desperately and IWR sit at the other end of the spectrum, striking a more consonant, conciliatory tone. It’s this ability to seamlessly blend opposing sounds and balance beauty with tension that makes for such an intriguing album, and very much confirms the old adage that good things are worth waiting for.