Their pairing might well be bananas, but it works. Buckley is certainly no luvvie on leave. This is, at times, a dazzling album.

In lesser hands, an album that at times sounds like R2D2 breakdancing in an industrial spin-dryer might make for trying company. Yet, for all their Day-Glo stridency, Nova Twins not only know how to write songs, but how to arrange them too.

Ugly Season may seem just that to those who prefer Hadreas’s smoother side. Yet the most compelling elements of his work remain, and the album is a culmination of one of the most consistent and emotionally generous artists today. Without the focus of the dance performance, the onus is on the listener to concentrate – but the rewards are as rich as ever.

Without a feeling that it’s intentionally waiting for the rain in order to go out dancing in it, it draws on its authors’ memories of the good times – reflecting, according to Philippakis, right back to their earliest days – and projects them huge and bright.

At the heart of Ezra’s mainstream pop appeal is a sense of joy that infuses his music with radiant positivity. In such troubled times, Ezra’s escapism is pure gold.

Shackled by its own turgid competency, Dear Scott fizzes with all the life of a demo tape recorded in a local community hall double-booked with a bingo night. No matter how loud you turn up the volume, it still sounds quiet. It sounds uncomfortably naked, too.

Whatever Big Time’s genre, it is a mature and accomplished album; a requiem yet also a quiet celebration. It’s probably the most honest album you’ll hear all year.

Despite what the polished sonics might suggest, Twelve Carat Toothache is an ambitious record with real range, proving that Post has found his groove as America’s kaleidoscopic king of new-era pop.

The songs are anthemic, surprisingly upbeat calls to arms which suggest that Templeman is one to watch.

McRae is primed for success, though, and while her songs can verge on self-indulgence – there’s a fair amount of navel-gazing at play – they’ll surely speak to a teenage audience. This is well-made, ear-wormy pop music, guaranteed to hit a nerve.

Just Mustard have said they wanted their second album, Heart Under, to make the listener feel like they are driving through a tunnel with the windows down. And on this noisy, wonderfully chaotic record, the band seems to have nailed it. ... The inventive beats make you want to dance.

Everything may remind you of something you’ve heard before, but Gallagher remains a singer who can deliver utopian exhortations and sneering put-downs with equal conviction, even in the same song.

It sounds gimmicky, but far from it: Raw Data Feel is a thought-provoking experiment that aims to reshape the dissociation and damage caused by endless scrolling into fodder for the dance floor.

Eyeye may be more of the same from Li, but as a distillation of her music to date, and a final confrontation with heartbreak, it’s flawless.

Pacier than her self-titled 2018 debut, the new album is still too long. But lengthiness suits R&B’s slow-burn tendencies: lingering over syllables and songs, letting new albums simmer.

This is music with a big, gleeful smile on its face. And it is accompanied by clever and compassionate lyrics.

This is the Stones’ 12th live album. Do we need another one? Not really. Live at the El Mocambo is one for dedicated fans and completists, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of a band in transition – and great fun.

It’s not all perfect: every so often, the tracks swing from sounding like impossibly cool, experimental rock to, er, Coldplay. Overall, however, this is guitar music at its most thrilling.

Welch’s self-mythologising is extravagant, her poetic language overloaded, yet her lush music binds it all into something magical on songs that exploit explicitly female archetypes to examine her own psyche.

If you can look beyond the occasional ham-fisted blip – the command to “stop tap dancing around the conversation” that closes out the otherwise-astounding We Cry Together is the most egregious example here – then there’s so much reward.

The all-female indie-rock quartet, have returned after a six year hiatus with fourth album Radiate Like This, and it feels more intimate than ever.

The album retains the competent aura of Sigrid’s debut, if not always its punch. Her unrelentingly talented vocal performances on tracks like piano ballad Last To Know strip her back to the artist before the fame, the artist at her piano at home in Norway. But high-octane pop remains the place where she really shines.

Four decades into their career, Soft Cell have rarely sounded more current.

WE is their sixth album, and every bit as good as their best. ... With a work as ambitious and boldly realised as WE, Arcade Fire know they have nothing to fear by inviting comparison to rock’s all-time greats.

There is a clutch of fine songs here written for Nelson by some of Nashville’s leading contemporary tunesmiths, including the title track (a celebration of life on the road) and elegiac ballad Dusty Bottles that are surely destined for classic status.

At its best, it’s like a movie soundtrack. String interludes behave like camera pans between scenes; fuzzy production gives everything a dream-like quality.

Alpha Games should please their established fanbase, but Bloc Party still sound strangely ambivalent, trapped between the visceral thrill of lean, modern guitar music and their doubts about its form and function.

Given the circumstances surrounding its creation, there is unsurprisingly a sadness at the heart of Two Ribbons, but even in quieter moments such as the acoustic Strange Conversations, or the atmospheric interlude In The Cemetery, the air is of light breaking through. And, equally often, there is a redemptive clarity and a wonderful sense of healing.