There is so much to unpack that it will reward plenty of listens and be on repeat on many stereos over the summer. This is musical joy captured in a record one of the group’s strongest works to date.

The result is an album which moves on from ‘Hex Dealer’ but still provides the exhilarating, electrifying, and quite frankly, mindblowing songs the New York-based quartet are so loved for.

‘IT’S BEEN AWFUL’ might be TDE’s most TDE-sounding project since ‘DAMN.’ and it’s thanks to Rashad and his team cleansing their palette to create something timeless.

Musgraves is gifted at letting the melodrama slip into something sensual and ‘Mexico Honey’, and its neon-lit innuendos, proves that her pen is still razor sharp. .... Her voice is as serene as ever and it rarely complicates her desire to embrace the undefined. If anything, it amplifies it through her day-glo incisiveness.

Where other emo bands might dramatise the horrors and wonders of death, American Football evokes its totality as a comfort, an ending whose completeness leaves nothing to fear. In the process, they’ve crafted another work of startling, very human beauty.

Dan Carey – Speedy Wunderground head honcho and producer of Fontaines D.C. amongst many others – helms the boards for this record, and sonically it feels richer, with more depth than its predecessors. .... That said, some of the cartoonish aspects of Kneecap’s past remain firmly fixed in place.

It’s one of their strongest of the 2020s and across their 25-year career.

What ‘Kehlani’s’ self-titled moment lacks in risk or originality, it makes up for in songs that explore the fullness of female/non-binary sexuality.

With his last album, ‘Stick Season’, Noah Kahan confirmed the reign of folk-pop in the current age, and with ‘The Great Divide’, he further proves that he’s not just a one-hit wonder.

Embracing simple yet infectious lyricism, impressive guitars and folksy harmonies, Starkey has created another unadulterated Americana album in ‘Long Long Road’, carving his name deeper into the hall of fame.

‘Forever Ends Someday’ is wonderful – a rich, emotionally vivid experience, an inspired statement from start to finish.

The Foo Fighters return in defiant fashion with an album that refuses to let up from start to finish.

Her new music sounds way more nuanced, as if Margaret has learned to work on another level of detail and to find deeper meaning in small, insignificant words. This brings her vocal comeback closer to the approach of another maestro of layered lyrics and sonics – Phoebe Bridgers.

ZAYN is a pop icon who sought retreat, and this record finds the UK-born singer finally re-engaging with the concept of being a main character once more. Yet it’s also highly subtle – the understated songwriting, the hushed, after-hours sonics give him space to lose himself.

Deep cuts remixed, ‘Nine Inch Noize’ is blend of studio and live, and it emerges as a transfixing, completely realised collaborative work.

“Mr Valentine won’t you be mine / Don’t be shy cos I’m sure you’re just my type”, she sings in the jovial boogie-belter ‘Mr. Valentine’, partly mimicking ’00s girl group pop. .... “Don’t you know who I am?” she exclaims with a touching and stoic delivery in the eponymous power ballad of almost Bondian scale.

It’s this ability to navigate the humour among heartbreak, that makes Lime Garden so endearing to listen to.

‘ADL’ feels samey at times. .... A rich seam for fans to explore, but ultimately this is a widescreen blockbuster that is big on stunning vistas, and short on plot.

Sonically richer but still rooted in vulnerability, ‘Cruel World’ expands Humberstone’s palette without losing what first defined her sound.

This album, though, is not a story of what might have been but never was; it is a picturesque view of what happens when a monumental level of care and attention is put into a project. It is a wonderfully constructed success.

With an expansive tone that ‘Vol. I’ lacks, this is an addictive, clever, and primal magnum opus that refuses tropes and easy predictions, going far beyond the niche of fiddly psychedelia Angine De Poitrine’s viral following came from.

While the sonic compositions across ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ all become familiar, as though riding a common wave, it is Weiss’ storytelling that shines through.

A work of dancefloor renewal, ‘Ambiguous Desire’ is explicit in its aims – to move your body, and move your soul.

With this 17-tracker, Joshua Idehen and Parment fashion a musical balm in an age of discontent.

At over an hour, it’s not casual listening. But SUNN O))) have always been about testing limits, pushing boundaries, (destroying speakers). That’s precisely why the album works and why the band have endured.

She creates movement with her lyricism, an intense wave of feeling that brings you in and out constantly.

A refreshing and undeniably strong record.

ELUCID’s rhymes themselves are equally dense and layered, yet also effortlessly impactful. .... This is ‘I Guess U Had To Be There’s most spell-binding quality; you just want to peer deeper and deeper into it, plunging head first into its many thrilling mysteries.