Run the Jewels 4 is the culmination of their near-30 years of experience, during which time they have observed, listened and reacted. Their anger, hurt, elation and love – along with their near-psychic ability to read and riff off one another’s individual thoughts – build to the radioactive “a few words for the firing squad”, the album’s astounding apex.

On her best album in years, Thea Gilmore darts back and forth between sharp, intelligent pieces on dark themes--depression, loneliness, murder--and more positive songs about love and hope.

There are no pop bangers here, just exquisite, piano-based poetry. There are characters Swift has never introduced before. Some are fictional, it seems; some are inspired by family members; some are people Swift wishes she hadn’t met. Folklore’s songs care less for those showstopping one-liners and more about the small details.

Living in Extraordinary Times marks a band still working at their full capacity, bringing new ideas and sounds while retaining what inherently makes James James--big choruses, danceable tracks, and timely lyrics.

On Skinty Fia, Fontaines DC have nailed their themes of urban decay and defiant immigrant soul. They just need to find the courage to fully emerge from the chrysalis of their indie and post-punk influences.

Garwood forces the listener to adopt his pace--a sort of aural equivalent of the “slow food” movement. But it works.

Though that melancholy seeps deeper into songs like “So Now What” and “The Fear”, it’s never allowed to dominate, with the latter’s rolling drone groove quixotically tempered by the addition of mariachi horns, a typically off-centre touch.

With her delivery tacking impressively between sweet and smoky, "On the Road" recalls what happened when the Kind of Blue influence hit the likes of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin.

The new instrumentation affords a more nuanced approach, from the thrumming bass, piano, tom-toms and subtly tingling guitar evoking the resolute support of “Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, and the keening, spacious synth textures of “Tompkins Square Park”, to the unison guitar thrash that opens “The Wolf.”

Tracks such as the blistering “Temple of the Sun” take no prisoners, taking little time before exploding into the kind of full-frontal assault we’ve come to expect from the heavier side of metal. Elsewhere “The Luminous Sky” takes a more frenetic approach though feels no less uncompromising, while “The Sacred Soil” closes out a record that not only shows exactly where Skeletonwitch are in 2018, but also where contemporary metal is at as well.

Save for the big live band arrangement of Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” that closes the album, it’s a thoughtful, intimate set.

Blixa Bargeld's collaboration with Italian composer Teho Teardo finds him in fine fettle on a group of typically sardonic songs set to unusual string and electronic arrangements performed with The Balanescu Quartet.

The confidence of the performances benefits strong contemporary material dealing with issues from outreach to domestic abuse.

Some are perfectly matched: the cycling strings of the poignant “The Electricity Goes Out And We Move To A Hotel” are like waves lapping at a wall, while the darting bricolage of scraping bow and “close-up” violin brings a real sense of desperation to “Dawn Of The World”. Anderson’s characteristic air of matter-of-fact wonder, meanwhile, lends a gentle charm to the epiphanies of “Everything Is Floating” and “Nothing Left But Their Names.”

Race is richly entertaining, immersive and evocative, orchestrated with fastidious care and feeling.

While the songs here lack the scuzzy charm of her debut, Tell Me How You Really Feel is a weightier, more direct record.

For his final recordings, Allman returned to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, where gospelly backing vocals and burring horns bring a deep-soul tone and texture not just to a soul standard like “Out Of Left Field” but also to material like “Going, Going, Gone” and the Dead’s “Black Muddy River”.

NAO has hovered around a near-perfect brand of sultry, neo-soul-inflected R&B. Four years later, and she seems to have mastered it.

Though it could stand to sound more consistent throughout (at times The Staves sound like they’re throwing that proverbial spaghetti against the wall), Good Woman successfully demonstrates that even through life’s lessons and uncomfortable liminal states, family is the most stabilising force.

A brave, and welcome, transformation.

Beautiful, blissful melodies are buried in there.

All told, probably The Monkees’ best album, after their hits compilation.

There’s a little electronic noodling going on to remind us that, though Mering sounds supremely grounded, a part of her is still in exiled orbit around a damaged world. It’s soulful, and a little spooky.

The Kentucky combo Cage the Elephant manage to find a new wrinkle on the face of US indie-punk, thanks to an enthusiasm for yoking catchy melodies to abrasive guitar riffs that recalls the Pixies.

Their mega beats endure on No Geography, but this is also a stupendously successful splicing of past and present.

72 Seasons may not see Metallica doing anything new – but it does find their old machine firing on all cylinders. Old and new fans alike will be headbanging happily throughout.

For his part, Daltrey matches Johnson every step of the way, fighting his corner just as fiercely as in his dayjob.

The calm, methodical “Gravity Wake” blends stately Moondog-like drums with undulating synths and relaxed solo horn lines that inescapably bring to mind Terry Riley. Elsewhere, the use of rhythmic, murmured vocables in “Glossolalia” recalls Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians.

For Life Love Flesh Blood, Imelda May has hooked up with T-Bone Burnett and his failsafe session crew of tasteful interpretive talent to effect a shift away from boisterous rockabilly towards more sensual torch songs like “Call Me” and “Black Tears.”

They now dart in yet another direction, devising a shuffling indie-dance style that recalls variously the infectious syncopations of Talking Heads, the baggy grooves of Happy Mondays and the campfire psychedelia of Animal Collective, but somehow manages to sound homogenously all of a piece.

For better or worse, Duster sounds as though it was created by humans. Imperfections are packed into structures that are more comprehensible, and far less nebulous. Each crackle, echo and strained vocal makes the limitations of being human seem not only clear, but beautiful in its vulnerability.

The best of confessional pop – think Beyoncé’s Lemonade – finds an original sound for an original experience and demands the listener’s attention.

It's Rose's harmonies that make the album special: warm and breathy, they seem to sidle gently into position, rather than cut with razor precision.

Heart, ultimately, is the key to a project which links personal, small-scale disturbances of loneliness and homesickness with broader concerns of population density and ecological sustainability.

Fender has refined both his songwriting and his sound.

It's quite easy to envisage entire arenas punching the air to songs like these and the pounding “You're Gonna Get It”, one of two tracks featuring Paul Weller.

The result is a record that is by turns lush and ethereal, a sonically cohesive venture into slightly unfamiliar territory.

Coup De Grace is Kane’s best work to date: punchy, cohesive and lots of fun.

Despite the hiatus, this guest-laden double-album finds the group still very much engaged, rattling out tongue-twisting, articulate verbal flows dealing more with social realities than self-aggrandising brags and outlaw fantasies.

By the second listen, it's somehow found its place in one's affections, despite its lack of obvious hooks.

Muhly’s sweeping orchestral vista mid-section dominates “Pluto”; and Stevens’ furtive, autotuned description of “Saturn” as a “melancholy creature, paranoid secret” is rudely interrupted halfway through by a brash, bustling beat barging its way in like Donald Trump at a photoshoot. The “oracle ghost” “Venus”, meanwhile, is treated in more recognisably Sufjan style, in its exhumation of a youthful indiscretion at a summer camp, characteristically stirred into a wider lyrical compass.

A series of lovely, languid soul grooves built around throbbing, cyclical organ drones, subdued guitar and electric piano, downtempo funk beats and subtle streaks of strings.

All in all, it’s a fine addition to the seemingly bottomless corpus of Springsteen’s ever-expanding oeuvre.

Like Starboy, there’s a hefty Eighties influence here, although for the most part, After Hours abandons the danceability of its predecessor in favour of moody introspection. This is the music you listen to when the party’s over.

This is proudly shape-shifting, genre-defying music.

A bitterly beautiful album.

Both musically and lyrically, the project cleaves to that kind of silly-spooky, funfair innocence, in a way that lends the album a freakish, cartoon unity denied to some of Tare’s previous projects.

By and large this is a welcome and judicious follow on from Red Flag; it very much feels like All Saints are back with aplomb.

The result is an engaging, youthful and thoughtful folk-rock.

The Swedish pop innovator take charge over nine expertly produced tracks, exploring matters of sexuality, relationships and desire with playful candour. It’s brilliant, too; Robyn’s voice is commanding but also curious, enveloped by tremendous salvos of house and electronic sounds.

A bleak but alluring album.

Throughout is a sense of wonderment at being alone. Perhaps solitude is an underrated pursuit, but with Inner Song, Owens makes a highly convincing case for it.

Perimenopop is destined to get listeners hot and bothered; Ellis-Bextor remains as cool as ever.

With its classical and avant-garde stylings and Clementine’s sometimes queasily operatic delivery, I Tell A Fly won’t be to everyone’s taste--which in this era of increasing conformity may be its most valuable asset.

Hotspot teeters somewhere between their ballad-heavy album Behaviour (1990) and 1988’s shimmering dance record Introspective. ..You sense this album is intended as an expression of hope for the future, rather than a fond look back.

Sweet Heart Sweet Light is infused with an uplifting lust for life.

This is a record steeped in both the chilly yearning of Bowie’s “Berlin” albums and Ziggy Stardust’s glam apocalypse, as well as the science-fiction paperbacks by the likes of JG Ballard which inspired them.

Yes, nostalgia is a fairly generic formula. But listened to as a whole, the album positively thrums with sonic invention, managing to feel both fresh and full of intrigue. Khan once again demonstrates a knack for uncanny storytelling.

It’s the gap between his character and the songs’ sentiments that gives this album its curious appeal.

Her second volume of collaborative remixes/re-recordings with diverse guests draws its source material from all stages of Ono’s career, and brings home not just how enduringly courageous she has been, both artistically and socially, but also underlines the vein of fierce feminism running throughout her recording career.

Combat Sports is a great return for The Vaccines, and an album that will soar at their live shows.

“Riser” features Jaki Liebezeit-style tom-toms behind cosmic contrails of synth trapped in a cavernous ambience; while string synth and wordless vocal keening drape like fog around “Abandoned/In Silence”, whose clarinet line establishes accidental but apt echoes of the theme to Exodus.

Free often feels like the messiest kind of improv, full of stream-of-consciousness expressions and storytelling that doesn’t follow any particular logic. But tracks like the tense “Glow in the Dark” or the sombre “The Dawn” are also oddly irresistible, loose, thoughtful and free-wheeling.

So many ideas have gone into I<3UQTINVU that it’s almost a new album in its own right. So while it’s not quite as brilliant as I Love You Jennifer B, it does suggest the restless duo are moving into more thrilling terrain.

Vessel is a return to form for Kline: bringing the sincerity that was threaded throughout her Bandcamp releases to the forefront once again.

It’s a much better album than Sea Change, just as immersive, but wiser and less indulgently wallowing.

Wolf's mix of retro soul, moody synths and backwards beats doesn't add up to his masterpiece, but the fan-stalker narrative "Colossus/The Bridge of Love" is his own "Stan".

Overall, Smother finds Wild Beasts hurdling that difficult third album with some aplomb.

Valve Bone Woe is a lovingly crafted collection of covers – a surprising, successful new endeavour by an artist evidently still keen to challenge herself.

For the most part, an album of rock songs to cherish in the Pixies oeuvre, united by an eerie thread that’s hard to shake off.

The result is a set of gripping, euphoric grooves carrying raps that indicate a new-found maturity.

This album’s intricate, pressurised urgency keeps Sons of Kemet at that movement’s head.

There’s an interior dialogue throughout, which is sometimes more intriguing than musically engrossing. ... But there is transcendental beauty here to get lost in.

Cutouts feels a little like the cheeky younger sister of Wall of Eyes. The arrangements on that second album skewed traditional; more sombre and vulnerable in tone. Here, there’s a newfound vibrancy perhaps taking cues from Skinner’s jazz background.

Certain songs work better than others: “Dog Eat Dog” tries to tackle social injustice but lacks real bite; “Don’t Think”, though, has all the swagger and defiance of vintage Blondie. Most impressive is how much more confident The Big Moon sound as a band.

Ry Cooder’s long investigation of the permutations of the blues and possibilities of justice comes to rest here in the religious balm which remains inseparable from American music.

Overall this is Metronomy at their most ambitious and pleasurably weird.

The Art of Pretending to Swim is Villagers’ most assured, and daring, album.

The charm – and perhaps a flaw – of Collapsed in Sunbeams is how easy it is to drift in and out of it. At times, Parks’s prism colours and ideas can leap out, scatter and startle you. At others, the myriad references to fruit and fashion alongside mental health catchphrases can feel like flipping through a magazine. But then, that’s how the light works. And I’m so glad Parks is here to brighten this dark year.

It’s a solid return – the sound of a band both rejuvenated and continuing the multi-layered sound of their previous releases.

While Cabello stands out on the more fiery tracks, she also shines in subtlety.

Perhaps it’s her wisely chosen collaborators or more life experience, but Kimbra’s exploratory ethos has never been so on point.

There’s little here that Coombes doesn’t test the waters of. And though in lesser hands such eclecticism may have felt forced and disjointed, here it’s nothing short of excellent.

Instead of limiting themselves, Beach House are finally embracing all of their creative moments, which have inevitably challenged them to become better artists.

There’s nothing revolutionary about this very solid release from a kitemarked institution of an act. But Nonetheless proves that the Pets have still got the brains, still got the hooks. And their canny cultural commentary remains on the money.

No surprise then that this first solo album following her second wind is full of exquisite craftsmanship.

Its 13 tracks are a polished mix of flirtatious bops and high-octane tracks that celebrate self-worth, with the moving torch song “Breathe” serving as the album’s closer. Sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking to be found here, but it does prove that Little Mix do just fine when they’re relying on their own instincts.

Georgia splices the beat and twists the synths into an eerie doomscape, yet it’s strangely comforting – her reminder that while this night may have ended, there’s always tomorrow.

Tracey Thorn takes a wider brief than usual for her Christmas Album Tinsel & Lights, mostly avoiding the routine carols and standards in favour of left-field choices.

It's an unashamedly middle-aged affair, from the quietly moving affirmation of devotion in "Two Children" to the comforting reverie of "I Remember You".

Elverum’s voice’s masculinity-defying diffidence couldn’t be more indie, but his words now add all the weight he needs.

On her latest effort, the singer-songwriter proves that the power of reinvention suits her just fine.

Minor Alps is a collaboration between American indie stalwarts Matthew Caws (of Nada Surf) and Juliana Hatfield, an alliance so congruent that Get There is surely the best work of their careers.

The 28-year-old musician has amplified his talent on his sophomore record Good Thing.

First Rose of Spring is the work of an artist who will never grow old.

Even when he strains to keep in key or pitch, he manages to make a virtue of his shortcomings, bringing a sense of long-distance exhaustion to “All The Way”, and applying a sort of Gallic shrug to “All Or Nothing At All”, in stark contrast to the jauntier tone of Frank Sinatra’s and Billie Holiday’s interpretations.

More sonic and lyrical experimentation could allow the songs to make a deeper mark. But this record is a definite power-up from an artist who carries, as promised, “a knife with the heart on my sleeve”.

The T-Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues is Gruntin' Gregg Allman's first album in 14 years, and it's the best work he's done since the Allman Brothers' Seventies heyday.