Mainstream R&B fans may be baffled at various points, but there will be few more engrossing albums this year.

As well as the unexpected guest stars – Damon Albarn! Chaka Khan! – there’s also songs about arcade games, an instrumental, and experimental tracks based on vocal repetition. It’s a far cry from the band’s usual breezy guitar pop, but it works beautifully well.

Too often on The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light you find yourself reaching for the earlier albums to listen to instead. While Skinner’s hardcore fans will be pleased to see him back, much of the time this feels a lot like The Streets on autopilot.

It may not quite be the equal of records like Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed (very few are, to be fair), but if Hackney Diamonds really is to be the final Rolling Stones album, it’s one incredible swansong.

Having produced one of the albums of the year with just her second effort, it’s incredibly exciting to ponder where she’ll go from here.

It’s a debut album that’s been well worth the wait.

Set It Off is the work of a talented rapper with an interesting taste in production. Offset just needs a bit more consistency to stick the landing.

The jittery electronics of closing track New Year’s UnResolution close the album, confirming L’Rain’s special ability to expertly splice sounds and styles to create something distinctive and original.

All of these tracks are elevated considerably by Lattimore’s production chops, as the skilled performances are turned into vast ambient soundscapes and she proves herself to be her best accompanist. If anyone in the alternative electronic world has been unaware of Mary Lattimore up until now, this album is a perfect insight into her creative abilities.

At first listen, it’s musically not such a close cousin of First Two Pages, but more its identical twin – the same brooding atmosphere, that bottled up tension that seems to have become Matt Berninger’s vocal trademark – yet over a few plays, it seems to slowly take a life of its own.

This is a magical, magnificent album – one of the best of Sufjan Stevens’ career.

If not all of this debut lands too firmly at times, there’s still enough evidence on Sorry I’m Late that people will soon remember Mae Muller for more than that Eurovision disappointment.

She’s been able to defy expectations time and time again due to a combination of good taste, charm and a deceptively versatile voice, and Tension has its fair share of all three.

Isn’t It Now may well be a typical Animal Collective album, but it’s full of creativity and invention that not many bands could pull off after 25 years of recording together.

There are 14 tracks all in all, together with a couple of skits. Yet Smith refuses to fall into this trap, by some smart sequencing of the tracks: with the ballads mostly gathered towards the end of the record, Falling Or Flying feels like a coherent album rather than a collection of tracks stringed together.

As nice as it is (and this is a very tasteful album, seemingly tailor-made to be bought for Mothers Day), Angel Face doesn’t give us much idea of who Stephen Sanchez is, apart from a seemingly nice young man with an extraordinary voice.

Flying Wig is a record that it’s probably easier to appreciate than it is to completely fall for. While this probably isn’t a record for a newcomer to Devendra Banhart, long-term fans will appreciate the change in direction.

It owes more to Timbaland or Mount Kimbie than the current mainstream, but this is the point – Vagabon makes this music sound so intuitive that it could well be the next big thing.

It’s fair to say that long term fans will greet Nothing Lasts Forever with warmth and delight but even when assessing it with a more critical eye, it’s hard to avoid thinking they’ve rarely sounded better.

Occasionally, songs like Like A God and the fiery Double Dare do recall the band’s old magic, but those moments are few and far between.

Chaos For The Fly is a captivating debut that showcases his artistic evolution outside of the post-punk bombast of Fontaines DC. These songs bleed through in their honesty and lack of over-thinking to demand active engagement, to explore their intricacies and contemplate their themes.

Like all the best albums, it keeps you on edge, never quite knowing what’s coming next.

Bailey Rae sounds like an artist reborn. It may not be what you expect, but it’s all the better for that. Without a doubt, it is the best album of Bailey Rae’s career, and quite probably one of the albums of 2023 as well.

Of course their music is heavily in thrall to the 1960s, but they wear their influences with an easy-fitting indifference, like a comfortable jacket.

There may be nothing to touch Pretenders classics like Brass In Pocket or Don’t Get Me Wrong, but Relentless is an appropriately named album – the sound of a band constantly moving forward and refusing to submit to the dying of the light.

trip9love…??? is what happens when brilliant artists navigate their way around self-imposed limitations: most music doesn’t sound like this, but perhaps it should.

It is a unity of the best elements of James Blake’s music – the rare ability to move the feet of a large crowd and the heart of a single bedroom listener simultaneously. He nails both achievements with striking regularity here.

Clear Pond Road is an album that takes time to really get under your skin, but once its there, it continues to reward, enchant, and disturb. It’s another wonderful addition to the Hersh canon.