By and large, this is pop music made by people who really know what they’re doing. The songs have bulletproof melodies and killer choruses, while snappy lyrics abound.

The result is a free-spirited and joyful record, infused with a sense of community and full of affirmations you can repeat in the mirror.

Untrained ears might shrivel in terror, but those who appreciate the joy of noise will recognise the sound of veteran masters on unassailable form.

His most direct, energised and modernist work in years.

Bloodmoon: I never feels like a compromise. Rather, it does exactly what a crossover should, excelling in ways that would have been impossible had either party gone it alone.

This reissue tweaks the sound with little discernible effect, and adds a package of goodies.

The unpolished edges feel like the sound of a band falling in love with each other all over again. More than that, even, you get the sense of them staking out new ground together: their sound, usually soft and steady, becomes a thrilling lesson in catharsis.

It is rewarding: the sound of Angel Olsen skilfully mapping out an unanticipated new territory for herself, further out on the left-field. Nothing on All Mirrors ends up quite where you expect, including the artist who made it.

The first is patchy but enjoyable, and the wealth of bonus tracks will appeal to those who already know the albums, but add almost nothing of benefit for newcomers.

This is a smart, soulful and immersive work of art.

The most emotional songs are bravely straightforward but quite unexpected.... Surely one of the albums of the year.

It is refreshing to hear someone so emancipated from the rules of genre.

This album is a masterpiece.

For all the Dublin references, there’s a universality to the emotion; the music is finely-crafted enough to keep you returning, not matter how distressing the subject matter of the songs. There’s something here that that suggests Balfe could easily outrun the well-meaning, but limiting labels currently being attached to him – “Ireland’s potent poet of grief” – if that’s what he wants.

It makes for a challenging, dystopian listen, the blade runner to everyone else’s replicant.

As nourishing as it is satisfying, Fed will leave you craving more.

It’s an album bursting with standouts, none more so than Astral Plane, which finds June full of childlike wonderment amid a gloriously ethereal atmosphere reminiscent of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Fantastic stuff.

It’s an album that imagines a world in which its author is the mainstream, rather than an influential outlier. It says something about its quality that, by the time it’s finished, that doesn’t seem a fanciful notion at all.

She just writes fantastic songs: the melody of 5 Dollars is perfectly poised between sweetness and melancholy; What’s-Her-Face frames a lyric about self-loathing with an ominous cloud of electronics; Damn (What Must a Woman Do?) conjures a crowded dancefloor at 4am so effectively you can virtually feel the perspiration dripping from the ceiling. It is an album about pop music as much as any of the other topics it addresses.

On Tigers Blood, she returns clear-eyed and spirited with a twisting country album of anthemic earworms that evoke long summer evenings, intimate chats and misty-eyed regret.

In different hands, some of the songs might be butterscotch-smooth MOR but Jeremy Greenspan's voice never loses its neurotic edge.

There are lots of intriguing ideas here, and it might be better thought of as one long fragmentary track than a collection of songs. But it’s an album that feels like it’s hovering rather than actually heading anywhere, diverting rather than impactful.

Overall, it’s an album designed to thrill and perhaps tentatively expand their fanbase, while the fiercely synth-rocking Solway Firth duly raises a middle finger to everybody else.

It's an album that demands something of the listener, but rewards it in spades.

This is a joyful, transcendent record somehow reminiscent of kids let loose in a musical sandpit. As winter rages around us, it ushers in the warmth and sets a high musical benchmark for others to match this year.

There is so much to revel in here. ... They remain a radical band while making music that is reaching out to the mainstream – while also giving off the thrilling sense that there is so much more to come.

This is a magnificent and poignant farewell.

This is a big, beautiful album, a showcase for direct, punchy emotions and Giddens’ vocal versatility. She trained as an opera singer and executes astonishing levels of beauty and control on Monteverdi’s Si Dolce è’l Tormento and When I Was in My Prime, a folk song previously covered by Pentangle and Nina Simone.