It’s just a shame that not enough of the flair she finds for juxtaposition reappears on this fourth album as memorable music.

With none of the material really cutting through the production wizardry, this is another triumph for texture over songwriting.

Despite all the biting character sketches and evergreen dancefloor nous in evidence (both at once on Will O’ the Wisp), Hotspot has its cooler passages.

Despite a couple of nicely turned meditations (the title track, A Meeting at an Oak Tree), Raw Youth Collage mainly transmits a confusion that is less generational than solely Mura Masa’s.

Overall, an enjoyable, imaginative and at times uncanny assault on the senses.

No one could ever mistake this band for sonic outliers, even when they hit their distortion pedals, but Walking Like We Do sets the Big Moon up for much bigger, more mainstream things.

While the elastic basslines of the Talking Heads-indebted Only in a Man’s World and Money Is a Memory stand out, Making a New World works best as a single piece of music, not least because some of its interstices are too fragile to stand unaided.

Seeking Thrills sounds full-fat, not free-from. Awash in euphoria blowbacks and pre-loved synth-pop, this is a record that proves the dynamics of a good time benefit from a clear mind.

While this album’s rotating mic-spot keeps things moving like a playlist, the memorability of these tracks bobs up and down like the waves off the coast of Free Nationals’ native California.

Fine Line is a confident step in Styles’s whimsical musical adventure.

Spread over 17 songs that tick off genres with all the flair of an automated Spotify playlist, Payne’s anonymity remains the album’s default through line. Occasionally painful yet weirdly Payne-less.

On the unreleased tracks, genuine surprises are few. But the campy prowl of My Oh My and the high-stakes breathiness of Bad Kind of Butterflies keep the balance tilted away from syrupy dross, in favour of fun.

Broadly speaking, After You succeeds as a rich, expansive set of sophisticated classic pop – but, unlike Peñate’s early work, it feels somewhat irrelevant to 2019.

Arabesque is as good as anything they’ve done in the last 10 years, with French lyrics and echoes of the intensity of Primal Scream’s If They Move Kill ’Em refracted through a skronking jazz filter. But they’re rather less engaging when they hit the stadium preset buttons.

A talented interpreter, Dion comes unstuck when she can’t overcome the source material.

It’s a boldly idiosyncratic collection, and generous in its aims, but it’s also an unsatisfyingly structured racket.

These moves are still tentative, and talk of artistic progression is often the kiss of death, but Girl Ray have moved out of a place of limitations into more kaleidoscopic musicality.

The only downside is that Kiwanuka could have been even braver.

The songs often lean more towards the arty end of the mainstream, losing touch slightly with the startling radicalism of Sudan Archives’ early sound.

Pony meanders, seemingly uncertain of its purpose, but Rex Orange County retains enough charm and honesty to remain engaging while he figures himself out.

This record is just shy of being truly groundbreaking. Polachek remains too much of a class act, a little too wedded to conventional beauty on songs like Look At Me Now, to really take her pop to the bleeding edge.

Even though these arrangements are not gratuitous, and All Mirrors is beautifully wrought, it never quite devastates. More weirdness would have helped, and less default goth-pop. Strangely, Olsen’s voice gets a bit lost in the mix, a little too ill-defined, atmospheric and understated to stand up to the operatics surrounding her.

It’s an intensely, intentionally stressful listen, the occasional victory of thumping, clanking grooves over the scraping, grating racket offering an illusion of normality before snatching it away again.

Throughout, a commitment to heartfelt songcraft remains the most “country” thing about Sound & Fury.

As always, Liam’s greatest asset is his astonishing voice, all yearning and defiance. Still, his songwriting has improved. ... Sadly, most of the new songs peddle tame, low-stakes nostalgia, swimming in cliches and drowning in sentimentality, as satisfying as trying to get relationship advice out of a cashpoint.

The smoothness of Hval’s musical vehicle, this time around, allows her ideas to slip in softly, almost subliminally: humanity as a virus, technology’s role in romance, bereavement, panic attacks. It’s an eerie sort of euphoria, but no less of a rush for it.

It’s not a terrible album – it’s better than many bands that Pixies inspired – but it isn’t terribly good either.

Inspired by a wider 80s film nostalgia, these narrative songs conjure intimate, urgent dialogue and the eruption of the supernatural into the everyday.