The shadow of Seventies Krautrock looms large over Danish psych-rockers Pinkunoizu, judging by The Drop, their splendidly kosmische second album.

Sometimes it suffers from Prince-like micromanagement, but when it succeeds, it's blissful.

Every Bad is a relinquishing of whatever it is that keeps us from baring our souls, and an unleashing of frustration at how, like children riding a carousel, we’re all just going round in circles.

Throughout this intensely poetic, introspective album, currents of guilt, regret and resolution battle in quiet turbulence, the group’s trademark harmonies and acoustic folk settings augmented with additional sonic strata.

When they get their teeth into a groove, Goat’s alloying of krautrock and Afrobeat, desert blues and psychedelia proves irresistible.

Finally, maverick genius Sly Stone receives due respect in this four-disc retrospective, as the leader of rock's first multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-genre band.

Oh Rihanna, it was so worth the wait.... This album shows Rihanna hitting back at anyone who ever said her voice could only do certain things and showing them she can do anything she wants to. Such attitude; no apologies.

Cosmic Wink’s echoing sound allows a sort of resonant, gigantic intimacy over rhythms of mostly languid steadiness.

Bayley’s voice – light, airy, mournful – makes you think of Peter Pan if he were forced to grow up. Thinking of childhood in such analytical detail can throw up wonderful memories, sure, but it can bring out dark things, too – things that tend to hang around in later life. It makes for a complex, thoughtful and moving record.

So many records as reflective and evocative as Egypt Station prove to be career codas. Despite occasional misfires this one proves that, at 76, McCartney, socially and sonically, still has plenty to say.

A new punk classic.

As on the splendid West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Kasabian talk a good fight with Velociraptor--and if the results don't quite bear out the bluster, that's probably more a reflection of the excellence of its predecessor than a measure of its own shortcomings.

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is imbued with the charisma of its creator; it’s a playful and inviting album whose first half zips through the mostly vocal-led numbers with ease and sprightly energy. ... Remarkable singers give rich layers to this accomplished album.

It all comes together more fruitfully on the ensuing "Hey, Shooter." [...] From there, it gets more fecund than ever.

There’s nothing particularly Nashville about Jason Isbell’s new album--no cowboy hats or keening steel guitars--but it does possess, in spades, the kind of blue-collar concerns that have traditionally furnished country music’s backbone.

There’s a wickedly infectious energy, wit and filth to her confrontational braggadocio.

Anthony Hamilton provides another [highlight], bringing a gospelly spirit to “Gently” Elsewhere, Raphael Saadiq and Gary Clark Jr lend their talents to the great party groove “Fun”.

This new collection finds Horan moving towards the lusher production sound of his former bandmate Harry Styles. Laurel Canyon references mingle easily with Eighties synth-pop and Noughties guitar rock. It’s beautifully cohesive.

As ‘Harry’s House’ flings open the doors of its party garage, Styles navigates this confusing emotional territory with a funk shuffle and future soul panache worthy of the Purple One himself.

If the Grammy-nominated Forever was their blistering hellscape, Underneath is a glitchy, industrial wasteland.

There's nothing too innovative about Timbaland's production, but it's probably as reliable a set of grooves as R&B will spawn this year, custom-tailored to carry the singer's gentle falsetto.

Be More Kind is certainly a step in a different direction, it still retains much of what everyone fell in love with, while appealing to a much broader audience than ever before.

Here, deprived of Crazy Horse and Young’s tectonic lead guitar, “Powderfinger” assumes its natural form as an antique folk ballad, while the haunting “Pocahontas”, minus overdubs, is likewise more nakedly vulnerable.

The care and attention pays dividends on If You Wait.

By stepping away for a minute, allowing any fears of getting left behind to cease, Styles has been able to return with newfound clarity and, more importantly, music that actually sounds like him. He let the light in, and it shows.

Though lacking the thematic unity one expects from Springsteen albums, High Hopes has much to recommend it, particularly the way that Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has re-invigorated old material like “American Skin (41 Shots)” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad”.

Perhaps reflecting the three years spent touring after their marvellous Music In Exile album, the excellent Resistance finds Malian desert-rockers Songhoy Blues forging firmer bonds between their native modes and Western styles.

The follow-on to their beloved titular 2009 debut finds Duckworth and Lewis exploring further aspects of the beautiful game, from its amateur enjoyability and levelling qualities to the euphonious variety of its argot.

The follow-up to 2014’s LP1 is the sound of a woman teetering on the brink of collapse, gathering herself, and then erupting into a kind of defiance.

This is your echt ELO in all its familiar state of sub-Beatlesy woe.... Whether his form of “properly” meets with your approval will, of course, depend on your capacity to perceive virtue in the familiar and the sentimentally melancholic (and in brevity: Alone in the Universe clocks in at roughly 35 minutes’ duration).

Summer Camp's long-awaited debut album seethes with updated teen angst set to engaging electropop grooves.

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck augments his usual reedy Americana stylings with some unexpected developments on Muchacho.

A touching, intelligent work.

Producer Ed Buller has given the band a bigger sound that works well on the rolling U2-esque riff to “Barriers”, but parts of the album still sag under expectations.

From start to finish, Monet’s songs deliver mellow yet funky instrumentation, with a hint of glittery disco on the livelier songs. Often, she adopts what would be described as a traditionally masculine gaze: confident, brash, assertive. Monet knows what she wants and exactly how to get it.

“The Satellites” opens the album with tart trumpets over staccato guitars, “To Us All” closes it with an oceanic excursion. In between are liquid pools of guitar and chattering keyboards.

An elegant, understated pop masterpiece.

A resounding, bitter corrective to the pleasureland fantasies of modern R&B pop and the empty braggadocio of hip-hop clichés, Key Markets may be one of the year’s emblematic albums.

Four decades on, it sounds as revolutionary as ever.

The dazzling deftness of his fingering in the Presto and Double Presto sections evokes a kind of giddy delirium and his feathery technique wrests the tenderest of emotions from the second Sonata's Andante.

The predatory, hypnotic swamp grooves that have been Tony Joe White’s stock-in-trade throughout his career lend a magical backwoods bayou ambience to the nine tracks of Rain Crow, on which his peculiar songcraft and grizzled Woodbine baritone conjure up gripping regional narratives.

This ability to tiptoe between opposing positions brings a pleasing depth and grain to some of her songs.

The unusual alliance of Floridian rapper/singer Eric Biddines with south London groovemaster Paul White brings an engaging, infectious charm to Golden Ticket reminiscent of Outkast and Arrested Development.

It’s a pretty decent album, with their trademark melange of rap stylings at their most spikily effective, each track switching between self-promotion, street-crime narrative, social commentary and cosmological speculation as different members take the mic.

No song sounds over-rehearsed, and plenty sound like they were laid down on the first take.

Bohemian legend and walking R&B encyclopaedia Chuck Weiss is on great form on this latest album.

Brimming with intensity and the analgesic hypnotism that is Pierce’s signature, And Nothing Hurt would make a suitably majestic final Spiritualized album.

Glimmers with fantastic, layered production. Instead of merging sounds so they become indistinguishable, each chime, each clatter of percussion, is given its space – as a result the whole album feels remarkably fresh.

Just when you think it's done, it finds another gear through the ingenious addition of a subtle offbeat that kicks the groove up a notch--the kind of sly, brilliant touch that suggests Rudimental are worthy heirs to the likes of Soul II Soul and Basement Jaxx.

With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.

This is a record that expands the idea of what Sleaford Mods could be.

If you’re looking for smooth guitar riffs and auto-tuned vocals, you won’t find it on I Don’t Run: Hinds thrives on their imperfections and that’s the point.

It’s their best album to date.

There is a brilliant album among the 18 songs, if only it had been pruned it a little.

As with their debut, this album feels as though you’re being allowed a brief but intense insight into his self-contained world. Yet the vein of humour that ran through those earlier songs has been replaced by a deeper sincerity.

Guilt, sickness, depression and death have their haunting power acknowledged. The optimism of a songwriter who sees the world’s love and beauty through his own sometimes deep pain rarely falters.

Despite the limited instrumental palette, there’s a broad variety of approaches.

Can’t Rush Greatness is a bold statement, yes, but one that Central Cee does, by and large, live up to.

Through 14 tracks, Jordan and Harley offer a fast-talking, witty and well-meaning account of day-to-day life for sharp-eyed British youth.

Alicia Keys’s musicality is far superior [than Solange's]: whether developing swaying gospel fervour on “Pawn It All”, threading balofon through the two-part reflection on African-American queens “She Don’t Really Care/1 Luv”, or riding a perky Latin shuffle for “Girl Can’t Be Herself”, her work is grounded in a melodic appeal that’s almost magnetic.

David Bowie releases the most extreme album of his entire career: Blackstar is as far as he's strayed from pop.

[Ventura] streamlines .Paak’s sound, making for a tightly packaged, melodic and danceable album.

There's a maturity about Rumer's delivery that sets her apart from all the Duffys and Adeles.

Thea Gilmore's 70th birthday tribute takes the form of re-recording her favourite Dylan album in its entirety, triggered by her acclaimed 2002 cover of "I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine", which sustains its solemnity despite the inclusion of congas.

I Slept On the Floor is a marvellous, and intense, debut.

For all its gloom, Merrie Land is an entertaining and theatrical album, with vocals that capture the social observation of early album Parklife. It’s also an immensely clever feat of word painting, never relying on lyrics alone to reflect the sense of anxiety.

It’s a proud, forceful demonstration of the strength and variety of modern African music, brilliantly combined by producer Liam Farrell into arrangements where funk, afrobeat, desert-blues, dub and congotronics swirl infectiously around the women’s voices.

Prass confirms her unique, tremulous contralto mining depths of despairing devotion on songs clearly triggered by romantic crisis.

BRAT is a hedonistic, ultraviolet collection of songs whose thumping – slightly disorienting – club beats more than succeed in their aim of “capturing a feeling of chaos”.

It's all delivered with customary warmth and swing from Miller's home studio.

Smith’s new record does feel like her most personal. Her lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, as though she’s in the middle of composing a message to a friend or partner. The delight she takes in performing these songs is palpable.

His richly soporific new album – his first new material since 2012’s Tempest – plays like an extension of that [2016 Nobel Prize acceptance] speech: a folksy recitation of literary and pop references sprawling over long, ramshackle songs with minimal (mostly acoustic) melodies that sway back and forth behind him like curtains in a light breeze.

Costello has always been an exceptional storyteller, and this is one of his most evocative albums.

With Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys co-producing, Olive has captured the flavour of 1960s Brit-blues on the cusp of spreading into druggier, more exploratory areas.

Although this album loses some of his distinctive sound – and has none of the cool experiments of Beyoncé’s record – it also showcases his undeniable song-crafting chops.

The emotional cohesion the record loses in its shifting cast of singers/songwriters/genres it makes up in DJ-savvy textural variety.

The UK edition of their debut has three extra tracks recorded in a church, which damps things even further. But there is still much to enjoy here.

Two Ribbons is another milestone for the duo. Their third record finds the inseparable pair separated. Written mostly individually, it explores the small fissures beginning to show in their friendship as they’ve grown up and grown apart. The result is remarkable.

Young's best album in some while.

Instead of a too-many-cooks situation, which this easily could’ve been, Dessner and Howard find cozy nooks for everyone. The singer’s reedy voice is the drawstring that ties it all together.

It’s a happy surprise to find a fresh, shiny energy-driving CWPHF. The tunes are sparkier, tempos more varied and the sonic textures cheerier, as though the band were given a clean shave and a hot lemon-scented towel.

Breezy, Smiths-esque indie folk closer called “Favourite”, featuring a guitar riff that could’ve fallen off Viva La Vida…, evinces the depth and richness that new producer James Ford (replacing Dan Carey) has brought to the band on a record that leaves post-punk in its dust and roars off into broad new horizons. Potential fulfilled.

The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia. Its influences span decades; Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar and Bobby Womack are all recalled.

Standouts include a heartbreaking cover of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and the haunting murmur of "More".

There's a simplicity about these previously unreleased demos that's utterly beguiling, the spare settings allowing the sweeter side of George Harrison's character to shine unencumbered by studio blandishments.

On John Paul White’s Beulah, the dark emotions of tracks like “Fight For You” and “Hope I Die” mingle with the bitterness of “The Once And Future Queen” and the low self-esteem of “I’ll Get Even” to create a strangely subdued portrait of emotional turmoil, couched in Southern folk and country modes.

Deadbeat starts intimate and confessional, with what might be the best opening track of the year. .... From there, the tracks flow and blend hypnotically, tied together by the piano. Sometimes a song’s coherence is sacrificed to tranceyness, but hooks keep bobbing to the surface like lava lamp bubbles.

Great fun, from first to last.

Punisher ends with a thunderstorm of manic, discordant brass and drums and a pained scream, the physical culmination of the undercurrent of doom that has lurked throughout. But you emerge feeling not deflated but purged. Punisher has the effect of a particularly pummelling massage.

This is music that sounds as fun to make as it is to listen to. The energy here is thrilling, the strong rhythm section provided by former Detroit garage band The Greenhornes’ bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler. ... Help Us Stranger has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

Walls is unchecked, indignant and raw, and though it ends with a note of despondency, it is a triumph.

Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things.

As a songwriter, Steve Earle is blessed with two apparently contradictory gifts: the ability to animate fictional lives, and a streak of cussed, lefty sincerity that gives bite to his truth-telling.

Hubcap Music finds Seasick Steve back on form, with an album steeped in gritty boogie and even grittier attitude.

The Life of a Showgirl might be one of her most uneven records, but she’s as compelling as she’s ever been – the showgirl, the ringmaster and the circus all in one.

Her own third album suggests she’s every bit [Damien Rice's] equal in tracking the heart’s mysterious emotional undercurrents.

At times, the tracks loosen up to the point of unravelling completely. Yet Balloonerism remains a rather wonderful, albeit unsettling, reminder of a talent lost.

A typically diverse collection.