[There are] some decent moments on this debut album.

Weller’s magpie tendencies pay dividends.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not a pretty sound, though there are moments of transcendent grace.

It’s a magnificent return to form.

Nichols’ explanation of its development--starting out in the mould of country legends The Stanley Brothers, but metamorphosing through exposure to Malian desert-blues master Ali Farka Toure--reveals the blend of influences his music subtly weaves together.

Musically, Dark Matter is some of their catchiest and punchiest material in years. It’ll have you nodding your head – but it’ll never let you get comfortable.

While the Bootleg Series cupboard appears as well-stocked as ever, the value of outtakes from a notoriously weak album (Self Portrait) is debatable, though there are gems among the oddments.

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.

Crush is an insight into Shepherd’s brilliant mind and – such is the sheer variety of this album – a way to inspire one’s own imagination.

Like Randy Newman, the Mael brothers have a knack for voicing the hopes and regrets of diverse, sometimes unsympathetic characters; and the latitude afforded by their operatic arrangements allows them to add commentary in real time, like an instrumental Greek chorus.

At times, Yorke moonwalks into self-parody with lines such as, “What's the purpose?” But such sixth-formery is compensated by the gorgeous melody and elegant phrasing of “Bugging Out Again”, so beautiful it's hard to hear with your eyes open.

Movingly prefaced by Gillian Anderson reading the novelist’s suicide note, its gently absorbing string undulations, with a faintly keening soprano occasionally audible amongst the oceanic swells, bring fiction and real life together in a deep, powerful manner.

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

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.

This is a quietly momentous album of depth, soothing in its introspection.

That could stand as a motto for the album: this is music seeking to let in the light.

It’s Blumberg’s longest commitment to a way of working, which is just as well because it is brilliant.

Though it doesn’t deliver the promised 2020 twist on the Nineties formula, beabadoobee’s debut album is a terrific new addition to the “bubblegrunge” genre.

Taking you on a journey which reveals new landmarks and perspectives each time you listen, To Love is to Live is a compelling and real cinematic picture of the emotions that life throws at us. It’s a journey you will want to relive.

It’s their best album to date.

Faithfull lifts them from the page with a compelling combination of crispness and tenderness. She doesn’t use that soporific “poetry voice”. Instead, she can make 200-year-old visions of beauty, love and death feel as urgent as the latest true-crime podcast.

Feist here cements her position as the poster-girl for intimate US indie rock, with songs that peel back the skin of the human condition.

It's tasteful but a touch bloodless.

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.

There’s a pleasing congruence between the way that the surreal invades the ordinary in Rennie Sparks’s lyrics, and the way that Brett Sparks’ voice and music illuminates that invasion.

It’s one of the most considered and thought-provoking electronic albums of the year.

On Cavalcade, black midi feast on a smorgasbord of influences but the result at times can leave their sound meandering aimlessly.

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.