A band whose early commercial ubiquity shouldn’t obscure the continued creative vitality of their work, Maximo Park open a fresh era with some of their finest work in a decade.

Big, bold and ambitious, it’s both a welcome return and a statement of intent.

By final track ‘wasting’ the band have taken you on a long, winding journey – not all of it sticks, but the best material here ranks alongside Goat Girl’s finest work.

Manic is an imperfect collection of tracks - with high peaks of sheer genius along with the low falls - but it still manages to fill eyes with tears, hearts with love and minds with thoughts as it explores the life and times of a 25-year-old in startling, stark detail.

This is a sound of a warm, human futurism. A record that feels impressionistic and abstract, dominated more by feeling than theme. Heavy sounds deployed deftly. Sometimes it feels a little fragmented (like on the slightly off-kilter swagger of ‘We’).

A blindingly good debut.

It’s a compelling work that just takes over, in the best possible way.

For all the PJ Harvey comparisons Calvi will inevitably attract this record is more alternative cabaret than gothic melodrama -- and much better for it.

It’s a triumphant comeback.

While these are only flashes, they help make Corsicana Lemonade a progressive exercise in restraint.

His most cohesive, and delightful, to date.

As a body of music Exai lividly pulses, possessed by a half-life of disturbing magnitude.

Stuffed with bomb-ass beats and rhymes that will bang from Cali to Darlington.

It's palpable that the tracks are more at home on the stage, where you can feel the frenetic energy of the record itself, Georgia's boisterous on-stage persona coming through in abundance. On record, sometimes that energy gets lost in a noisy ether, her identity chopped and screwed into fragments.

In choosing to move down a more percussive path, the Phoenix Foundation set themselves a challenge quite different than those they had previously faced. 80-minute double albums are usually tough to follow, but they've chosen to reconnect with the spirit of the band rather than try to top 'Fandango' in a self-conscious manner, and in doing so have redefined themselves.

Albanese joins a select group of modern classical artists able to offer so very much without the need for words.

While by no means poor, this album does little to advance the reputation he has already secured, as one of the UK’s most reliable rap suppliers.

Earworm guitar licks and choir-like harmonies sprout unexpectedly from Goat Girl’s skeletal, unpredictable songs like wildflowers in landfill.

The Doom-helmed ‘Lil Mufukuz’ and Phat Kat’s ‘Bubble Up’ show the Dabrye-plus-MC chemistry at its best, but if there was ever a criticism of the previous entries in this trilogy, it was that Dabrye struggled when it came to trimming the tracklist. ... The same is unfortunately the case here too.

This record contains meticulous instrumental arrangements and clever storytelling. It is protest music without the cliché heavy rock sound and direct lyrics. Instead Maltese uses satire to place pity upon the world but mostly himself, all delivered with a wry grin and a sparkle in his eye.

Through seeking comfort in the analogue, HÆLOS are breaking rich, new ground.

A songwriter who would thrive in any setting, his work thrives due to its simple poetry and emotional impact. A love letter to another time, ‘Promenade Blue’ is also resolutely, unashamedly now.

It’s immersive and ambiguous, these tales belong to you as much as they do the person next to you on the train.

The songs have been reinterpreted and elevated by Khruangbin’s sonic retexturising and takes the listener through a technicoloured journey of Ali’s most-loved classics and B-sides from his extensive catalogue.

‘Drunk On A Flight’ strikes the perfect balance between up-beat, angsty pop and more contemplative jazz ballads. It marks a distinctive shift in Eloise’s songwriting, simultaneously maintaining the timeless charm of her early music that made her so popular, whilst constructing an ode to classic pop.

The experience of touring, which she didn’t have at the release of her debut, is clearly heard in her bolder and more open delivery. Maybe ‘The Secret of Us’ is still not her Sour or 1989, yet she is firmly committed to making one someday.

Longing and levity substantiate the expansive cosmic realms of ‘Pomegranate’, where joy and exuberance draw you deeper into her sonic world with husky vocals and shimmering instrumentals.

Sometimes, maybe, it sounds like they are trying just a little bit too hard. There’s a certain self-consciousness pervading the record. .... Having said that, Young Knives are confident enough in their own skin to know that just because a musical element may not be “needed”, we would all be much emptier without it.