It’s not that Nihilistic Glamour Shots is some objectively terrible record, but it’s certainly not a great one. The music isn’t minimal, it’s mundane, a songwriting stodge that seems content to play in its own filth.

Their sound hasn’t evolved but simply bettered itself, and as per usual, finds its way around an extensive (and slightly absurd) range of instruments.

It may be a lighthearted exercise in updating old pop bangers to suit a new style, Lovato’s career-spanning retelling is also an unexpectedly touching retrospective by the time it gets to the explosive rendition of ‘Don’t Forget’ that serve as a joyful end-credits.

IX is a finely detailed exercise in establishing and exploiting excitement levels, at points telegraphing its trajectory but always delivering substantial payoffs.

As polished as a beach stone, it's a subtle, startling work.

Jesus Is Born - as a stand-alone album - is pretty neat.

It’s a record that at first curiously struggles to find its footing, before an assured mid-section guides Cardi B to the next level of her career.

Sure, Ultimate Painting know their influences, but what shines through most of all is the sheer diversity and inventiveness of their songwriting.

Hotel Shampoo shows off a simpler, stripped back Rhys - whose lyrics are placed front and centre of beautifully arranged tracks, each imbued with an infectious energy.

Summer 08 is the banger-filled record Mount has always wanted to make, for fun, and we’re very much glad that he did.

From the very first note Encore is superb, a joyous, addictive experience. Remarkably, it’s everything we’d want from a Specials album in 2019 and more.

The upped slickness does mean the album offers little in the way of the provocative, though, so you may be disappointed by Breakage's leniency, and a wrath that's merely implied.

It's pure, carefully conceived theatre, at a pace that you can never predict, without being an emotional descent that spirals over and over until you're wishing it'd buck its ideas up.

The punchy indie exuberance pervading this record is its calling card but beneath the surface there's a whole lot more going on.

‘Love Sux’ is more of an antidote to pop progress rather than a nostalgic throwback. It just has all the elements of what made us fall in love with Avril Lavigne in the first place.

Don't be surprised if Ghostpoet is on Mercury minds once more with this excellent effort.

If it feels just a little patchy in places compared to its predecessor, it's hard not to be jerked into life by this band's approach to the dancefloor's dark bidding. Just don't over-think it.

Tracks like ‘Swamp and Bay’ bring us punchy indie rock, and ‘Hoax and the Shrine’ give us woeful nursery rhyme acoustics befitting to a reflective train ride in a coming-of-age film. A development for Girlpool, and one of sheer enigmatic bliss.

They write hooks, they’re inventive, they’re passionate, they can do uplifting and they can do poignant, and on ‘Sick Scenes’, they do it all with panache.

Down In Heaven is a great, hazy summer album.

Gimme Some, sixth album from Swedish indie pop types Peter, Bjorn And John, is absolutely superb; sunshine and a hundred beach parties stuffed into thirty minutes, sprightly and joyous, cool, confident and glossy.

The Connecticut trio boasts former Lauren Hill and Alicia Keys touring band members--guaranteeing The Stepkids is as tight as it is lovingly reverential.

An intense, heady listen nudging the continuum that little bit further.

Playful and emotional if a touch polite, it's marked by moments of genuine greatness.

Glass Animals should definitely continue tinkering with their sound; they just haven’t yet earnt the right to full reinvention yet.

Running at 16 full-length tracks, Strength of A Woman can seem overindulgent. Songs that are enjoyable in isolation, or as a smaller subset, become either repetitive or forgettable in the context of the whole.

With the additions of neat production touches and elegantly self-aware lyricisms to complement Weiss’s already powerful atmospheric sound, there is a definitive feeling of hope that runs through the core of this album.

Though 'Nowhere Generation' isn’t breaking boundaries, it doesn’t need to. Rise Against have carved out a niche that works for them, and if it aint broke, why fix it?