Travelling beyond the accepted norms of the swarm of post punk girl groups operating at the same time, this Technicolor tinged album somehow melds droning krautrock sections and psychedelic experimentalism into its jaunty street hoodlum doo-wop core.

The layered and intricate soundscapes that embody Isles are testament to the vast and diverse musical influences that Ferguson and McBriar have explored and savoured over the years. Bittersweet and introspective, yet hopeful and spellbinding.

It may have been written and recorded in double quick time, but Won’t You Take Me With You is still an impressively assured, fully realised record.

Stripped back tracks, smart beats, punchy bass, and Williamson’s dextrous barked delivery are all in place, and it seems that the band are in their dis/comfort zone.

In spite of all that’s going on, the ground that Shame manage to cover, it all hangs together brilliantly. Drunk Tank Pink is a great album, from whatever angle you look at it.

With The World Only Ends When You Die, Skyway Man has come up with a boldly visionary record that is bursting with ideas and provides unexpected twists and turns at every corner.

Greenfields is a fine reminder of just how legendary a songwriter Gibb is, and while there’s no big surprises contained within, a Volume 2 would be a very welcome thing.

Half Japanese have once again smashed it out the park, this time with a bewitching assortment of rubbery love songs and caustic noise, all centred on the subjects we truly wanna hear about: celebrities, Hollywood monsters and unrequited love (often between celebrities and Hollywood monsters!).

The sound on Welfare Jazz may be more of the same glam-phetamine trash disko bomp that made the first record so distinctive – a ramshackle wad of low-end guitars that spit and burn like chip pan fires and boisterous oft intoxicated vocals with a surplus of undulating sax – but there’s something else that’s been added to their arsenal, something that was hiding in plain sight all along. The protagonist of these songs may not be all that apologetic as he pontificates of his transgressions, but he is at least man enough to put his grubby hands up and forewarn friends and lovers that he’s a little damaged. It’s a good start.

The rock history books have not been as generous to Live Skull as to their contemporaries, but with luck this crazy melodic record will go some way to restoring them as kings and queens of the urban jungle.

Akin to falling asleep next to an electric fire whilst snow begins to fall, Camila Fuchs have created an extrasensory gift of a record, one that is affectionate, woozy and a comforting delight in these most taxing of times.

An exuberant and heartening spin of the songwriting wheel, a carefree and not overthought documentation of how creativity can be harnessed and fledgling ideas brought to realisation More importantly, it’s a valuable addition to his catalogue that should provide happiness to many.

It is not instantly recognisable as Groove Armada, but it shows how the pair have moved on from constant festival sets and gigs to managing farms in France, as Andy Cato now does. Clearly they still want to have a good time, but the stress is now on music that feels older than it does new.

We Will Always Love You is an emotional rollercoaster, and a lovingly put-together tapestry that signals The Avalanches entering the 2020s as vibrant as ever.

In all aspects has Swift built upon her work on Folklore, creating a vast soundscape of poetical stories, and it is only at the end of this album you realise that Folklore did leave you wanting. Evermore also does this, not because it doesn’t reach up to the pedestal of folklore – in contrast, it covers the more complex ground.

It’s a bold, contemporary sounding record that is also aware of its broader lineage, something encapsulated by opening track Stranger Than Fiction.

Odin’s Raven Magic captures the group reconciling their actual genius with the mountains of praise heaped upon them.

The album reaches something of a climax with On Each Of The Six Fives Of The Moon, which features thick, metallic tones encircling over bleak and unforgiving terrain. Its Deathprod-like heaviness is sustaining and compelling in equal measure and, like much of the album, there’s little option but to submit to its force and embrace the imposing mass face-on.

It quickly becomes apparent that it very much deserves to be conidered equally alongside the rest of the Calexico discography and not seen as a novelty or one-off.

Opening track Last Breath is worth the price of the record alone. It provides the album’s title, all the more poetic when encountered in the grief-stricken context of the song: “I didn’t understand how beauty holds the hands of sorrow / How today can outshine tomorrow.” The production here is wonderful, with crystal clear dynamics and a real contrast between intimate and sublime.

When Megan moves away from her standard lyrical fare, perpetuating her beef with Tory Lanez on opening track Shots Fired or penning the poppy tune Don’t Rock Me To Sleep, the results are some of the best moments on the album, and if these aspects of her style had been explored some more it could have made for a more diverse LP, but Good News is still chock-full of catchy hooks, stellar verses and feisty attitude.

CYR may be a good record, but even with its overblown 20-song length it leaves the listener wanting more, given the context of this band’s capabilities.

Plastic Hearts is a change in direction that works really well. With names like Billy Idol and Joan Jett guesting, there’s even a sample of a Stevie Nicks song in case you were any doubt that this is a Miley Cyrus album that your dad would feel comfortable listening to.

Following some recent setbacks in his personal life, Luke Abbott has got round to making, for all intensive purposes, his impression of a breakup record, and damn, if it isn’t a total knockout.

All in all, Shadow Of Fear is a well-rounded release.

Night Network may not be the 12 tracks which would shake the person who doesn’t like The Cribs out of their most curious position. But it is 12 more assertions of greatness from a band who you really should like.

III is not a record that makes too many demands on the listener’s attention: its instrumentation is calm, unintrusive and balearic, and the songs tend towards a slow evolution rather than a formal structure per se.

The message of the record is as faultless and as invigorating as the field recordings of raindrops and tributaries that gush over it. Ana Roxanne won’t be hampered by other people’s definition of her; her musical genius will encapsulate multiplicities and blossom of its own accord.