While perhaps lacking the simple yet intricate beauty of his purely instrumental work, In The Furrows of Common Place is another strong release from Ghedi, and fans of Chris Wood, Alasdair Roberts, Seth Lakeman and other modern folk luminaries will find much to enjoy in this confident and atmospheric collection of songs.

It is the penultimate songs that show some signs of invention.

It’s a clear attempt to deliver a more mature, varied work than Nothing Great About Britain, and in that it succeeds. But considering his lofty aspirations, there’s nothing here that others rappers like Dave or Akala – both blessed with greater emotional intelligence, intellectual gravitas and grasp of social and political issues – haven’t done better.

It confirms how they’ve always been a band that have explored human emotion in deep, meaningful ways but Distractions feels like something more, like the beginning of a fresh chapter in their story.

A Billion Little Lights is a good album when heard in isolation, but it pales in comparison to those albums that inspired its creation.

Open Door Policy is quite possibly the best Hold Steady album since 2008’s Stay Positive.

An album that’s up there with their best, one of their most powerful and cohesive statements to date.

Me And Ennui… is pure articulation. Just when you think that Sarah Mary Chadwick has shone a light on every one of her warts, here comes the ‘and all’.

Ultimately though, Music is a case of too much filler, too little killer, even when divorced from its controversial origins.

Undaunted by the pressures they continue to face, Virginia Wing present a disarming form of resistance to life’s troubles.

In the face of personal and public devastations, the friends have avoided inertia and constructed a garish and cathartically atonal album that unbelievably manages to avoid catastrophe.

Throwing a light on the minutiae of his fraying psyche doesn’t always make for the easiest of listens. No longer buoyed by adolescent concerns, Alec Ounsworth may not be in the happiest of states. But if you heed closely you’ll hear the sound of one man’s combing for moral redemption amidst societal and individual collapse. And that deserves applause.

Legacy+ shows two sides of the Kuti coin that, while inevitably reflecting and respecting the history of Fela, also show his restless quest for the future and what that holds carries on with subsequent generations.

Django Django’s style is well-worn by now, and a little more stylistic or structural invention wouldn’t go amiss, but Glowing In The Dark still delivers the goods with ease.

Distinguished by its wide eyed, maddeningly flamboyant mélange of ideas, these Perth psychonauts’ latest is so potent you risk getting tinnitus and/or a contact high from each monolithic twist and turn.

What keeps you coming back to Good Woman is a sense of hope and optimism that shines through – that sense that, despite the grief and pain, there’s always better times ahead. Maybe it’s exactly the sort of record we all need in these times, and it certainly contributes towards this being the best Staves album of their career to date.

This is a characteristically strong, uncharacteristically sloppy (in a good way!), album by one of the few remaining shining lights of rock music. Greatness is almost a given at this stage.

Black Country, New Road are no gods, but this inventive and likeable album should earn them a million or so disciples.

The full blast of bass and guitars from Nic Bueth and Alex Sprogis that respectively fortify tracks like The Big Curve, Decoration and Slideshow are as grotty, inexorably heavy and domineering as the world frontman Charlie Drinkwater finds himself lashing out at.

Occasionally the sparkly pop stylings and dependably profound poetic musings give the record an air of interchangeability, but this minor parlour trick merely invites an opportunity to explore the contents further at a pace comfortable to the listener.

Alive After Death is a record interesting enough to satisfy those with a taste for the transgressively predictable, as long as you don’t scrutinise it too much.

Somehow, there’s an odd clarity to be found amongst all the noise, distortion and decay. The Body might have looked to their past in finding the sound for this album, but in creating this slab of grief and anger, they’ve managed to be uncannily prescient. This is probably one of the most relevant and affecting albums of 2021.

Weezer have made one of their most catchy and insightful records to date.

It’s a conflicting record, filled with swells and dry spells, but the forecast is generally clear in all directions.

This is a good, and sometimes great album, that feels like it’s a few tracks short of being a masterpiece.

Surrounding contemporary anxieties within a collage of expertly designated snatches of melody, the record feels slight at first glance before eventually revealing its complexities to the listener, without ever suggesting notions of self-pity.

A Common Turn is a questing and provocative record that’s both remarkably dynamic and audaciously exposing.

It’s not the sort of record you look to for big surprises or revolutionary moments, but if you’re looking for an excellent pop-soul record from an artist who’s going to be around for years to come, you can’t go wrong.