It is clear from her latest opus that Marissa Nadler is at the peak of her powers, giving us a work whose intensity burns brightly. Here is a set of songs that keep their head while all around are losing theirs. The more you listen, the more you fall under their spell, just as you would want from your next box set craze.

Nobody is trying to do anything too contemporary here, and the slight remove these musicians bring to creating contemporary Ross music means we often get a pastiche of her earlier material. It’s effective, but the danger is that it veers tantalisingly close to sounding like an ironic tribute. And so, the album perhaps fares best in its simplest, and most sincerely constructed moments.

Actually You Can probably isn’t the best album to introduce the uninitiated to the delights of Deerhoof. By now, you very much know what you’re getting with them, and Actually You Can is another example of why they have such a strong cult following.

It’s quite something for an artist of Bragg’s age and standing to still remain important and vital but, most of the time on this album, that’s exactly how he sounds.

Overall, I Don’t Live Here Anymore is a solid addition to The War On Drugs canon, and the full-on embrace of heartland rock means they may well find a whole new audience with this album.

As it stands Water is a transition record, signalling a direction of travel but inconsistent and frustrating.

An album that could have easily come off as a millionaire’s vanity project with his rich mates is actually a surprising, creatively rich endeavour.

Always Inside Your Head strikes a good balance between continuity and change, and re-establishes Lone as one to watch in the electronic scene.

The days of Silent All These Years or songs about Cornflake Girls are long gone – but Ocean To Ocean is a moving, poignant and inspiring document of a journey most of us have had to take over the past 18 months.

They find Harris stepping away from the choral ambiance and glacial minimalism of the Nivhek era and retreating back to the nocturnal ebbs and crackling timbres of earlier albums such as Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill and The Man Who Died In His Boat.

It’s different and at times more uplifting than most Parquet Courts albums, but it’s an album for the band, not for the fans.

his album is a playfully flawed triumph. There are more than enough highs to satisfy both fans and casual admirers, while the lows are not quite low enough to founder the project.

The whole album is a treat, and a fun way to pass a half hour or so. Hopefully the movie it’s attached to is just as fun, just as playful, and just as silly. Wonderful stuff – purchase with confidence.

With -io she has made a work that is both devastatingly personal and beautifully generous. Around the time of Reaching For Indigo’s release, she described that record as her magnum opus and no doubt it will remain a high water mark in a remarkable career. But -io is likely to sit by its side, in cosmic grandeur.

Fantasy Island is arguably the peak of their output to date, which is a strong statement to make about a band who are well into their third decade.

Prioritise Pleasure is a richly compelling album. It’s also a big, glorious pop record, the sort that Taylor hinted at back in the days of her former band Slow Club’s Complete Surrender. ... It’s the album of Rebecca Taylor’s career, and surely quite comfortably the best record that will be released in 2021.

Moondust For My Diamond makes a great late night listen – and at the same time offers plenty of evidence that Hayden Thorpe is growing apace. He has without doubt made one of the albums of the year.

Certainly there are some interesting moments on Music From The Spheres. But overall it’s the sound of Coldplay treading water. More alarmingly, it begins to sound like they’re trying not to drown.

Throughout Friends That Break Your Heart, Blake is trying on different sounds, different styles, and producing some good music along the way, but he ends the record still unsure of where he should be.

Half of the album’s 12 tracks are under three minutes, leaving no time to get bored, and there’s little to dislike.

The truth of The Sound Of Yourself is that it is a sometimes confused collection of songs, almost as though it were two albums co-existing in one space. ... However, the quality across the board in these compositions is consistent and the sound of McCaughan in this kind of form is always a delight.

Too many of the songs fail to deliver the mind blowing moments that the band have been capable of in the past.

If a devil-may-care attitude is the album’s strength, it also can be a weakness. Songs hit or miss by chance, the product of unmoderated experimentation which can so easily become indulgence.

And Then Life Was Beautiful shimmers in the heat of the summer just gone, and strikes a good balance between exhortation and introspection.

Protest Songs is not likely to prove as much as a career renaissance as their last album Encore did, but it’s an interesting and moderately successful little detour from a band who are probably well overdue their ‘national treasure’ title.

The music throughout MONTERO suggests that Nas X has a very bright future ahead of him.

The combination of strict process and softer emotion makes for a fascinating album. The Hill, The Light, The Ghost is clearly the result of years of tender loving care, and its ink appears to be only just drying thanks to the instinctive, organic approach.