As a swansong, it's as fine as might be expected given the circumstances.

There's a familiar elemental tone to the Dirty Three's latest album – except this time the oceanic influence is replaced by snow and sky and rain.

Well-made mid-American roots-rock by a young Oklahoman, who may harbour legitimate Springsteen/Fogerty fantasies.

The record is divided into two sets. The first half is a jagged-edged electro backed spleen-splurge with all seven tracks titled with the CAPS LOCK ON. The smoother, more soulful second half finds him in more reflective, lower-case mood.

A series of lovely, languid soul grooves built around throbbing, cyclical organ drones, subdued guitar and electric piano, downtempo funk beats and subtle streaks of strings.

Rising US indie combo Parquet Courts make giant strides on this third outing, where they locate an effective nexus where grunge meets meets avant-rock in colourful pop livery.

Deeper Well is a revelation – as though Musgraves stumbled on an oasis after months in the desert.

[Wrecking Ball is] unquestionably his most potent album so far this century.

Sometimes, her influences are obvious but her exploratory enthusiasm is ultimately winning, and her vocals layered in a way that pivots on the cusp of the sensual and the spiritual.

Dramatic rock-style flourishes punctuate the rolling shuffle “Alwa”, and there are echoes of country picking in the brisk, stinging guitar fills of “Ehad Wa Dagh”. Most potently, there’s a Santana-esque flavour to the Afro-Latin funk of “Tamudre” and “Tumast”, the latter’s fiery, skirling guitar runs accelerating to a dervish frenzy.

Georgia splices the beat and twists the synths into an eerie doomscape, yet it’s strangely comforting – her reminder that while this night may have ended, there’s always tomorrow.

It's all as ludicrous, graceless and unlovely as the "sport" it hymns, yet there's an anachronistic boot-boy charm to Haines's depiction of the milieu that's genuinely affecting, as well as amusing.

This is not always a comfortable bracket for a Kurt Vile song to fit into. When he goes off the deep end though, diving into a vast pool of astral matter as he does on spaced-out closer “Skinny Mini”, it’s a deeply immersive and transporting album.

It’s true that listening to The National often makes me feel I’m hearing ghosts of their previous songs. Old chords and thoughts stalk the halls of different songs. But it’s hard to resist their shimmering, shapeshifting companionship. And on Laugh Track the ghosts are floppier and friendlier than they’ve been in a while.

On [Cat Power] Marshall has changed direction yet again, abandoning her soul charm for something much less appealing.... But her natural grace shines through on "3, 6, 9"... and "Ruin."

This is deeply personal material that’s as impressive if not as game-changing as anything esteemed rap figures Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino have produced in recent years. Miller has turned his anguish into one of the year’s most disarmingly pleasant records.

A late-career Exile on Main Street? Their best since the Seventies? Arguably, but such hyperbole undeniably rests on the broad shoulders of the seven-minute “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, the album’s spectacular spiritual crescendo.

The self-titled record, a loose but beautifully crafted collection of folk-rock songs, explores the kinds of anxieties intrinsic to the modern age--the longing to be at once noticed and invisible; the paralysing effects of limitless information, and the desire to do good versus the desire to be seen doing good.

It’s an album that takes the sombre mood of today and translates it into downtempo music that’s both refreshing and thoughtful.

Gudmundur Kristinn Jónsson's production envelops Asgeir's fragile gifts in delicately wrought arrangements.

Paranoia, Angels, True Love is too long and rambling to bring Christine and the Queens any new fans, or much action on the singles chart. Its self-indulgence may even tire some existing fans. But if you give it time to grow its wings, it can really lift you up.

Go-Go Boots is the promised "R&B Murder Ballad Album" recorded concurrently with last year's The Big To-Do, and it's every bit as good as that description suggests.

Overall this is Metronomy at their most ambitious and pleasurably weird.

Balancing the political disquiet is a vein of romantic yearning, with Kirk’s plea in “Moment” for “desire deserving of something more” offers a fitting summary of the album as a whole.

A late-career lapse into gimmicky covers of “Silent Night” and “Can Can” aside, this compilation is a marvellous confirmation of pop’s fringe possibilities.

Ironically, despite the phalanxes of American producers involved in the album, it actually sounds less desperately transatlantic than The Fifth, possibly due to Dizzee’s enjoyment in using parochial British expletives like “bloody” and “knackers.”

Anthony Hamilton provides another [highlight], bringing a gospelly spirit to “Gently” Elsewhere, Raphael Saadiq and Gary Clark Jr lend their talents to the great party groove “Fun”.

Imagine Killing Eve in audio form. They’re still that kick-ass. That sexy. That much fun. Put this album on your to-listen list, pronto.

The result may be the band’s best album yet, one on which they come closer than ever.

An extremely promising start.

Complex, involved and engaging, her music’s exploratory inclinations are tempered with a distinctive melodic charm.

There’s a lot to unpack, but Welfare Jazz is a smart and rousing listen.

This record doesn’t find the often-brilliant Musgraves on her sharpest, Dolly Parton-est form. She delivers more platitudes than usual; her melodic shifts often lack their tangier twists. But the sadness and everydayness of her breakup does breathe slowly and honestly through the songs.

The widescreen south-western ambience is stippled with intriguing touches, like the shruti box and bowed guitar droning through “Gallop On The Run”, and the rhythmic rattling chains of the death ballad “Lay My Lily Down”; though the most moving performance is Weir’s plaintive solo piece “Ki-Yi Bossie”, oozing empathy for a reluctant penitent alcoholic.

As usual, the factor that will divide black metal fans are the vocals, which remain somewhere between screamed and croaked. Either way, this comeback will restore them to prominence within that community.

Although comprised of re-worked leftovers from last year’s excellent Wire album, Nocturnal Koreans finds the band still managing to find new routes to take away from that tightly-focused project.

Musically, it’s an almost seamless blend of the two groups’ styles, variations on a sort of operatic indie-electropop, which recalls variously Freedom of Choice-era Devo, chattering Kraftwerk techno and, in the more melancholy environs inhabited by “Little Guy from the Suburbs”, a whiff of Leonard Cohen.

The pair have weaved Anderson's songs together with various ambient elements--traffic noise, birdsong, the tinkle of teacups on saucers--to create a song-cycle that illuminates the exceptional in the everyday.

Mindset is short by Necks standards--just two tracks of 22 minutes each--but it is typically involving.

A rich, rewarding indulgence.

Fay Hield’s singing throughout is open and honest, delivering the stories unencumbered by needless ornament or moralising.

There’s unintended comedy and a few overlooked gems amongst the lesser lights unearthed here.

One step forward, two steps backward: having produced perhaps his best album with 2014’s Carry On The Grudge, Jamie T is at best stationary, and often retrograde, on Trick.

Hammill continues to explore the hubris of human existence. He’s often best, though, when he ventures off-track into more warmly specific tales.

Genders’ broad northern tones lend an apt rootedness to ethereal observations like “There’s a truth behind illusion, shining there--it’s only light”; and his subtle, detailed arrangements likewise form the most natural bed for them.

[“Monkey Bizness” is] the most animated Ubu has been in ages, with an atmosphere of vertiginous dark energy accreting around the jagged guitar riff of “Red Eyed Blues”, while even the slower, more subdued melancholia of “The Healer” wields a strangely sinister poignancy as a desolate Thomas regretfully confesses, “I see too much”. But what visions!

A set of songs seething with dark knowledge, as Bejar peeks behind the curtain of appearances in search of underlying motivations.

Happy hour at the all-you-can-eat alt-rock buffet is clearly open. ... It’s all delivered rambunctiously enough that it’s easy to simply enjoy Gulp! as the alt-pop pick’n’mix it is. Go gorge.

Clocking in at a scant 31 minutes, you could call The Age of Pleasure a quickie – but one that more than manages to scratch that itch.

The engaging mood is further enhanced by Condon's baffling but beautiful lyrics.

Warmth rises consistently from I Told Them, with its easygoing mix of Afro pop, rap and R&B. You inhale it – soft, nourishing and moreish as if it’s steaming off freshly baked bread. There are moments of nutty chewiness, but mostly it’s stretches of pleasant, if airily bland, doughiness.

Fallon is never going to escape the Springsteen comparisons that still cling to him like those Born to Run leathers, but this is solid, genuinely inspired songwriting that TGA fans will enjoy.

Magic Mirror is an impressive and mature debut.

Her rap flow has a terrific tensile strength. When singing, she delivers as both a belter and a breathy balladeer. ... Special is good as hell.

Taking its name from a death-themed poem, Made of Rain is a welcome return to the Furs’ classic blend of aggression, tender melody and brooding ambience. But it’s darker than they’ve been before.

Produced in understated manner by Tucker Martine, the songs' clean pop lines are revealed with the minimum of decorative detail.

Merging their asymmetrical early math pop with the deep space atmospherics of Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, plus added innovations – ambient rainforest throbs on “Moonlight”, deadpan EDM on “In Degrees”, Afro-glitch Radiohead on “Café D’Athens” – they’ve created an inspired album of scorched earth new music that, in all likelihood, will only really be challenged for album of the year by Part 2.

This collection of re-recorded themes confirms his keen attention to mood and tonal colour, though the alterations are sometimes irritating--notably the itchily urgent percussion track rattling along beneath the familiar keyboard motif of Halloween.

It’s a 10-track album that encapsulates emotions and situations that are as versatile as her sound. Whether you’re reminiscing about late-night make out sessions in high school or surrounded by plenty of “cool” girls in your city, Soccer Mommy’s introspection is something that defies age.

This is a record steeped in both the chilly yearning of Bowie’s “Berlin” albums and Ziggy Stardust’s glam apocalypse, as well as the science-fiction paperbacks by the likes of JG Ballard which inspired them.

Holy Fvck, from the title down, then, is a classic shedding-the-pop-facade record, bristling with defiance and real-me rebirth. And, as is the nature of such emancipation albums, it’s extremely horny. ... Amid the buzz-rock howls and air-guitaring, though, there is plenty of space (on a frankly overlong record) for more subtle emotion.

It’s not a perfect album--like so many, at 17 tracks it’s way too long, and there’s too little variation in tempo and mood--but it’s yet another confirmation of what can be achieved when subtlety and sensitivity are the driving forces.

Sigrid has a raw energy and emotional briskness that can make you feel like you’re doing aerobics in neon leg warmers atop a pristine mountain. Pure friluftsliv.

Yes, there are moments when their sound threatens to stir up the ghosts of indie landfill past – his staccato “ah ah ahs” and “la la la” drawls on “The Races”, for instance – but ultimately the charm and unpredictability of their vignettes see them through.

Wareham's fragile delivery imparts an eggshell vulnerability to songs that track contemporary anxieties, such as "The Deadliest Day Since the Invasion Began", but finds its natural home in the lilt of the Incredible String Band's "Air".

There’s a drive and urgency about Whiteout Conditions that whisks one along regardless, their usual indie-pop mode here strengthened by layers of fast, bubbly synths and pulsing Eurocentric beats.

Never Let Me Go expands on the disassociation Molko encapsulated for so many misunderstood Nineties teens, applying it now to the entire human species.

Fanfare offers a classy rumination on modern values--albeit something of a conundrum, in being perhaps the most sophisticated celebration of simplicity ever recorded.

In “God Knows I Tried”, a reference to ““Hotel California” conjures up the mood of sun-baked dissipation, while she grudgingly confirms the dead-end revelation of celebrity, “I’ve got nothing much to live for, ever since I found my fame”. It’s a disillusioned rejoinder to the burning urge for fame that stains youth culture in the 21st century, and as such, fits in perfectly with the album’s overall sense of exquisite decay.

Most B-sides compilations seem to have been thrown together to fulfill contracts but Dead In The Boot has a form and substance beyond that.

Expanded to a duo by bassist Nate Brenner’s promotion to full-time accomplice of Merrill Garbus, Tune-Yards’ characteristically confrontational approach acquires a new brusque confidence on this fourth album.

Pleasantly undemanding for a few tracks, the album just seems to evaporate away halfway through, as if even its creators couldn't retain interest in it, either.

Imaginative and innovative in equal measure.

The result emulates, and equals, Joanna Newsom’s Divers, another ambitious album about the inescapable inter-connectedness of love and death.

Bubbling synths and glistening ripples of acoustic guitar adorn these tales of elite bohemians.

Unlike most gothic pop, Lanegan’s art is not a matter of fashion or mascara: it’s a genuine cri du coeur, as rare and beautiful as anything in music.

While refusing to close the doors on the synth-pop sound so synonymous with Scissor Sisters, Jake Shears also stands out as a progression; call it the same dance up a different street.

Costello has always been an exceptional storyteller, and this is one of his most evocative albums.

Blixa Bargeld's collaboration with Italian composer Teho Teardo finds him in fine fettle on a group of typically sardonic songs set to unusual string and electronic arrangements performed with The Balanescu Quartet.

Like the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the journey results in a sort of epiphany of infinity which, despite the album’s short running-time, resonates long after it’s finished.

The synth-pop duo were hardly upbeat to begin with, but this is downright miserable. ... Still, it’s not all hopeless – at least the music is good.

Amongst the poppy organ and droning guitars, McClure’s managed to retain the ingenuous character of his debut, blending pop sparkle and melancholic indie charm in a way that recalls New Zealand’s legendary Chills.

There is a strangely addictive quality to hearing something quite so aggressively sui generis as this.

The intimacy and evocative atmosphere of previous releases has been retained, but there’s a fresh, barnstorming spirit brought by the team surrounding the core duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino: where earlier releases sometimes felt too meticulously crafted, this one has the sound of a proper band, its members constantly egging each other into uncertain territory.

A trio of absorbing driftworks.

It's Springsteen territory, occupied with pride in songs like “21st Century Blues” and the elegiac closer “Remember Me”.

While Cabello stands out on the more fiery tracks, she also shines in subtlety.

It’s their most poppy and psychedelic-leaning work to date, bursting with colour and fuelled by a multicultural band featuring Elenna Canlas on keys and backing vocals, and Ish Montgomery on bass.

Comprising equal parts Stones raunch and REM-style country-rock, songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are working at the peak of their powers.

She's surely destined to become one of the voices of the year, while her accomplices' subtle confections of minimal electro throbs and stripped-back beats has an alluring simplicity that's like a refreshing, palate-cleansing sorbet.

It’s both mesmerically appealing and cacophonously repellent, a paradoxical blend repeated in the shrill, thrumming monotony of “Austerity Blues”.

Always prey to their psychedelic tendencies, here MMJ swallow the full tab and dive headfirst into a whirlpool of supposition, analogy and swirling guitars.

The Experiment’s increasingly obvious fault, though, is how close they keep to the middle of their many musical roads.

Unsurprisingly, his vocals are the most appealing aspect of the album, with the emotional strength of his lead lines supported by subtle harmonies.

This recently discovered live recording from 1968 captures [Dennis Coffey] at an earlier stage, just before his reputation soared through contributions to classics like “Cloud 9”, “War” and "Band Of Gold”.

Del Rey’s deliciously twisted pop fuses hip hop beats with her breathy vocal delivery; their mutual power is in their ability to keep things hidden, whilst seeming utterly explicit. It’s a heady mix to be caught up in.

So many ideas have gone into I<3UQTINVU that it’s almost a new album in its own right. So while it’s not quite as brilliant as I Love You Jennifer B, it does suggest the restless duo are moving into more thrilling terrain.

Her debt to Grace Jones is evident in the elegant melodrama of “Ten Miles High”, but her application ranges much further on an album of intriguing strategies.