There are 14 tracks all in all, together with a couple of skits. Yet Smith refuses to fall into this trap, by some smart sequencing of the tracks: with the ballads mostly gathered towards the end of the record, Falling Or Flying feels like a coherent album rather than a collection of tracks stringed together.

It owes more to Timbaland or Mount Kimbie than the current mainstream, but this is the point – Vagabon makes this music sound so intuitive that it could well be the next big thing.

It’s fair to say that long term fans will greet Nothing Lasts Forever with warmth and delight but even when assessing it with a more critical eye, it’s hard to avoid thinking they’ve rarely sounded better.

Chaos For The Fly is a captivating debut that showcases his artistic evolution outside of the post-punk bombast of Fontaines DC. These songs bleed through in their honesty and lack of over-thinking to demand active engagement, to explore their intricacies and contemplate their themes.

Like all the best albums, it keeps you on edge, never quite knowing what’s coming next.

Bailey Rae sounds like an artist reborn. It may not be what you expect, but it’s all the better for that. Without a doubt, it is the best album of Bailey Rae’s career, and quite probably one of the albums of 2023 as well.

Of course their music is heavily in thrall to the 1960s, but they wear their influences with an easy-fitting indifference, like a comfortable jacket.

There may be nothing to touch Pretenders classics like Brass In Pocket or Don’t Get Me Wrong, but Relentless is an appropriately named album – the sound of a band constantly moving forward and refusing to submit to the dying of the light.

trip9love…??? is what happens when brilliant artists navigate their way around self-imposed limitations: most music doesn’t sound like this, but perhaps it should.

It is a unity of the best elements of James Blake’s music – the rare ability to move the feet of a large crowd and the heart of a single bedroom listener simultaneously. He nails both achievements with striking regularity here.

Clear Pond Road is an album that takes time to really get under your skin, but once its there, it continues to reward, enchant, and disturb. It’s another wonderful addition to the Hersh canon.

Guts is an immensely confident and assured record which confirms that Olivia Rodrigo is here for the long-term.

While it may not hit the meteoric heights of It’s A Wonderful Life or Vivadixiesubmarine, Bird Machine does act as an emotional and evocative farewell to one of the most missed songwriters of our age.

Hit Parade provides ample demonstration of her inherent and infectious sense of fun and her propensity for eccentric bops, qualities which have served her well across the decades.

Nothing ever feels glued or grafted on for some empty featured artist action; Halo, Beck and the samples collage together into the voyage as a whole, and combined with the ever-dazzling visuals that have rightly earned them their place in live music history as one of the most spectacular attractions on the circuit, it’s a testament to their never-ending quest of excellence.

There’s not much on this album which will raise the eyebrows of anyone familiar with their previous work, as it falls somewhere between the fuzzy glow of 1993’s Souvlaki and the dispassionate chill of its follow-up Pygmalion. But Everything Is Alive is joyful listen regardless, taking the cloud tunnel bliss of the best shoegaze and adding some pure pop pleasure. Cinema for the ears? More like dream visions for the soul.

By the time Free The Ruler’s soulful loop fades out, we’ve only come to a conclusion in the loosest sense. The listener enters Earl’s world in medias res and 25 minutes later he’s still maintaining, still working everything out, but the journey’s been nuanced and engaging.

This is a good album, even if they’re not quite great yet.

Even the less successful tracks have something interesting about them, and they never flatten the feel-good mode of the album. It’s been a while in coming, but Bunny could be a case of third time lucky for Willie J Healey.

It’s easily Alice Cooper’s strongest album in decades, a testament to the resilience, and seemingly endless creative capacity the man has.

Weedkiller is the sound of an artist actually excelling in multiple fields with apparent ease. In a landscape where rap is diversifying and artists like Ice Spice and Sexyy Red are achieving notoriety, Ashnikko is a leftfield force to be reckoned with.

This may all sound exhausting, but luckily The Hives have the songs to back up their energy.

With Struggler Genesis Owusu has followed through on his potential, and hopefully won’t be getting the boot from listeners anytime soon.

The beats sometimes bang in typical trap fashion, like on Topia Twins or Meltdown, but are not afraid to go surreal and alien.

The streaming era may have killed mixtape culture, but it’s best to come into Magic 2 expecting a more casual affair – Nas is mostly just flexing, surveying his legacy while adding to it.

Punchy, playful and exhilarating, with Euphoric Georgia has regained her artistic verve.

As the album draws to a close, it’s hard not to see I Am Not There Anymore as their most ambitious, artistically progressive offering to date.

This is a fine and often beautiful album, full of sensual delights and productions that vary from wafer-thin to chocolate rich. Throughout the focus is on Lanza and her feelings, which are reassuringly human and grounded. Combine that with its underground origins, and you have a record for the everyday listener.