The result crackles with a wired energy that doubles down on his core creative tenets, while still sounding like no other White record released previously.

Uptempo numbers such as the Pharrell-produced Tamagotchi and the chugging Talk, meanwhile, feel shoehorned in for radio play, removing breathing space for Apollo’s vibrato-laden voice and overstuffing the record to 16 tracks. Apollo’s aptitude for unexpected genres can provide beautiful results, as on the yearning En El Olvido, but it can equally speak of a jarring restlessness.

A handful more tracks and now, the full monty, reveals that there seem to be two Wet Legs high-kicking for supremacy: the knockabout, sly, absurdist outfit and a band that turn out to be quite like a lot of other bands.

Peel’s intentions are sound, the results are very pretty and the live shows will be great, but what ensues is still a modern classical-electronic crossover that relies too much on orthodox musicality to truly do its subjects justice.

Bloated and self-indulgent, it plods along, with barely a memorable melody or thought-provoking lyric among its 17 tracks.

A class act.

Doherty’s weak, watery quiver of a voice is over-exposed on Lo’s parodic pop fantasias, which veer from syrupy and insincere fluff to low-stakes Smiths tributes.

With its atmospheric melody and operatic harmonies, it’s a truly evocative listen.

Unfortunately, there’s often this vast emotional chasm in his music, a feeling that nothing ever means anything, until the final two tracks, The States and The Last Song, which prove that he can write a lovely, affecting lyric after all.

Clearly Harding is still having fun, and while it can make for a somewhat jarring listening experience, her playfulness adds depth to this charming record.

The album’s feminist slant is “implicit” and reggaeton – the Latin American style heavily influenced by Caribbean sounds – powers a handful of sassy party flexes, a first for this artist, better known for her flamenco background. Staccato rhythms figure heavily, maintaining this unconventional pop artist’s edge. All that energy is balanced out by heartbreak on quieter ballads such as Como Un G and a handful of tracks where Rosalía’s first-class voice is allowed to take more traditional flight.

Reason to Smile brings to mind Ms Dynamite’s 2002 Mercury-winning A Little Deeper : era-defining works that blend hip-hop with neo-soul and jazz, and storytelling that paints the Black British experience with the finest of brushes.

Taken as a whole, though, Who Cares? is so unvarying in its sentimental melodies that it begins to fade into the background, so unobtrusive that it becomes unremarkable.

There’s nothing here that’s particularly immediate, the likes of Cemetery of Splendour only gradually yielding their delights. Instead, Classic Objects is unceasingly intriguing.

Their debut album, co-written and co-produced with Soulwax, is a treasure chest of funk, French house, sweaty techno and all kinds of dirty electronic weirdness to rival Moloko at their freakiest. But their takes on the fraught subject of wokeness on Esperanto (“Don’t say: I would like a black Americano/ Say: I’ll have an African American, please”), or sexual agency on the Timbaland-flavoured dark R&B of Reappropriate err on the side of basic.

It’s keyboards that take centre stage here on a set of energetic, electro-indie cuts that are as dancefloor-friendly as anything he has been involved with since Electronic.

These songs about love and existential sorrow feel purposely airy and unanchored – there’s no percussion – mirroring the psychological freefall of recent times. Ironically, though, they firm up the parallels between Lindeman and fellow complex Canadian, Joni Mitchell.

This is, ultimately, an album that has a spectacularly strong sense of place – London, NW1 and NW3 – and some very definitive British musical reference points, which nonetheless wonders, eloquently, where home is.

The end result finds elegance trumping excitement.

Because Because ends this gutsy, ambience-heavy record with joyous, Middle Eastern birdlike calls from Golding, calls that appear to answer themselves, thanks to Luthert.

The uncharitable take would be that a 37-year-old still writing lyrics in txt spk is quite cringe, but the truth is that Love Sux – three-minute banger after three-minute banger, complete with classic Lavigne “woah-oh-ohs” – is exuberant enough to have you slipping on a pair of Vans and partying like it’s 2002.

All last year’s singles plus a dozen new drops here add up to an excellent, if exhausting, mixtape. Sensibly, songs confine themselves to three minutes or less, and there’s a wild joy to their commitment to entertainment.

A brace of great tunes make the case: Rhododendron nods at Jonathan Richman’s Roadrunner, somehow making wildflowers sound gloriously disreputable. Saga, meanwhile, is a traumatised ballad that channels David Bowie, but with acoustic guitars and horns.

It’s testament to the structure and variety of Once Twice Melody that it never lags over 18 tracks, its gradual release paradoxically validating the album format as one still worth surrendering to, totally.

With Prey/IV, Glass seizes control of the sequence, and the narrative, for herself.

The Dream is another enjoyable stroll around the band’s latest curiosity shop.

The result is their most varied and expansive record to date.

Every so often, the disparate parts coalesce into something enjoyable: We Go Back and Dragon Slayer both exhibit a lovely playfulness. Stretched over 48 minutes, though, there’s the sense that for all its undoubted cleverness, Time Skiffs is not terribly easy to warm to.