It feels genuinely different and exhilarating.

For Those Who Wish to Exist proves Architects’ ability to oscillate between thoughtful, interesting, finely wrought compositions and gleefully hulking exercises in metal obviousness is still intact. The fact it often feels stultifying regardless proves turning climate anxiety into gratifying entertainment is a very difficult art to master.

If it doesn’t feel quite as remarkable as Ghosteen, that tells you more about the previous album than the quality of Carnage: Cave and Ellis’s musical approach is still vividly alive, the dense, constantly shifting sound complementing the richness of Cave’s writing now.

There is comfort in Neale’s introversion, but you long for her to burst free; for a hint more dynamic texture to fully render her vignettes.

Times’s contents underline what Experience already suggested: whether it’s down to his immersion in the original era or a natural affinity for making it, Lewis is really skilled at producing disco-infused pop-house. Instead of overloading tracks with obvious, high-camp disco signifiers, his talent lies in subtle touches.

Conflict of Interest feels closer in spirit to Dave’s expansive Psychodrama than British rap’s other big-hitting recent albums: smart and sombre, long yet free of padding.

Nodding to dubby post-punk, dream-pop, rave and disco, its experiments are half-familiar yet never ostensibly retro – an approach that tempers this exploration of a very modern malaise with a dose of nostalgic comfort and joy.

Taken on its own, Stop the Hate is a pleasing if somewhat unremarkable continuation of the Afrobeat canon, yet it serves to lay the foundations for Made’s second half, For(e)ward. Where Femi’s voice is endearingly wavering, the younger Kuti is far more forceful.

Whatever primness remains, Good Woman proves the Staves now slot effortlessly into that roster of intelligent, interesting artists, interrogating life, love and womanhood on their own distinctive terms.

The band have smartly instituted enough changes to the process of making albums to stop them feeling as if they’re merely going through the motions, but their contents are there to fill in the gaps between the big hits on stage without suggesting a drastic drop in quality. By those criteria alone, Medicine at Midnight – like its immediate predecessors, a solid but unspectacular album – is a success.

Madlib channels a deep, intertwining lineage of Black music through Sound Ancestors like folklore oration, storytelling with the sorcery of a beatmaker who knows how to make an instrumental really sing.

It’s a long way from the psychedelic odysseys and ambient drones of his Porcupine Tree days: not prog, but always progress.

Right now, Collapsed in Sunbeams feels like a warm breeze in the depths of a miserable winter.

Bicep pull it off with considerable aplomb. Isles’s melodies are lush or wistfully melancholic, but the beats are too tough and driving for its contents to be mistaken for something you’d play at a dinner party.

When emotions warm, Charles loses command of her musical touchstones, the potential for nostalgia and poignancy smothered by sentimental pastiche.

Drunk Tank Pink is best when it shifts towards something more soft-focused.

The issue here isn’t intent; it’s execution. But when Viagra Boys are completely focused, they’re still fantastic.

Titling this album Volume 1 suggests Greenfields represents more than a one-off experiment: for all its strengths, there’s scope for Barry Gibb to develop this unlikely late-period diversion further.

Intriguingly, the record manages to wield this extended 90s palette without becoming encumbered by nostalgia, and its uptempo passages enter warp speed without slamming into undue intensity. But it’s held back by the moments in between – the troughs, where bluesy pads plod in unmemorable cadences and obscure the clarity of vision elsewhere.

Age has not withered the rapper’s astonishing level of technical skill. If you’ve heard most of what he says before, it’s still possible to be awestruck by the way he says it. ... The music is less interesting than on its predecessor.

The studio set’s sound balance is warm and spacious, the live takes less so (Bennink’s irrepressible energy sometimes overdominates). These tracks catch the saxophone colossus in gale-force form with partners right on his case, and the accompanying essays and images expand on that fascinating story.

Not everything here works, but taken together Folklore and Evermore make a convincing case for Swift’s ability to shift shape and for her songs’ ability to travel between genres: as lockdown overachievements go, it’s pretty impressive.

There are moments of filler – Deep Down’s vaguely R&B-ish groove rambles a little – but this is the most straightforwardly enjoyable and certainly the most personal McCartney album since 2005’s haunted, twilit Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

That spluttering yet charming Rico from 2018 is still there, but overall this debut doesn’t feel like progression, but stagnation.

Listening to Plastic Heart, it’s hard not to suspect a sense of compromise: attempting to corral Cyrus’s diverse interests into something with obvious commercial appeal to avoid the muted sales of 2017’s Younger Now, which failed to convince pop fans or lure in the traditional country crowd. It isn’t a bad album but it’s far less interesting and more straightforward than the artist who made it.

Megan Thee Stallion’s talents are a moveable feast – she sounds as at home snarling over the minimal 80s gangsta rap of Girls in the Hood as she does with Beyoncé’s voice weaving around hers on Savage Remix.

The music on Shadow of Fear is frequently so forceful and alive that it precludes the sensation that plagues a lot of new music by rebooted “classic” artists: you never feel like you’d be better off listening to one of their old albums.

Raymond’s similarly fearsome precision often feels both portentous and perfect.