You can let i,i overwhelm you or sink into its currents of drift and despondency – either way, it is immersive and rich. Yet it’s hard not to anticipate certain peaks (the unimpeachable climax of “Holyfields,” the joyfully silly “Sh’Diah” chorus) as if waiting for the school bell to ring.

[Jones'] natural ebullience still drives the splendid Give the People What They Want, a hook-laden affair keeping up the high standard set by I Learned the Hard Way and 2011’s punchy Soul Time!, as good an R&B album as any in recent years.

The lyrics dwell on age, family and endurance, but the backporch party vibe imparts a warm glow to proceedings.

The most pungent aroma rising from Juju's avant-jazz dub-trance grooves is that of a funkier Mahavishnu Orchestra.

An artful yet unschooled prospect to reckon with.

It’s really interesting seeing how much chemistry Dubz and Giggs still have; it feels like there’s still some space for Ard Bodied 2.

Oddly, there’s nothing here from Echo & The Bunnymen, despite the inclusion of borderline cases like The Damned, The Mission and Adam And The Ants, and a host of lesser bands creating the musical equivalent of smeared mascara. But there’s a broad range of tangential directions sheltering under the otherwise welcoming umbrella of Silhouettes & Statues.

As ever on Welch & Rawlings records, their harmonies are sublime, warmed by guitarist Willie Watson’s third part; but there are fewer dark shadows here than usual, with songs like “Good God A Woman” and “Yup” offering light-hearted fables of God’s and Satan’s dealings with women.

Signs that Cracker Island is designed to be a summer album sizzle though the heat-haze synths of “Silent Running” (featuring soulful contributions from Adeleye Omotayo) and the hip-sloshing dancefloor pulse of “New Gold” (feat Tame Impala and Bootie Brown).

Despite being written by different combinations of the line-up, it’s possibly their most homogenous album, most songs riding gentle pulses of percussion, organ and piano, guitars circling the action.

The artwork for Charli XCX’s third studio album finds her clad only in a steely squiggle of computer-generated ribbon. It’s a great visual metaphor for a collection of 15 pop songs that – at their most thrilling – wear their raw, metallic beats and synths on the outside, like scaffolding.

A bleak but alluring album.

“How long will it take to break the plans that I never make?” It’s a question that was inevitably begged by those previous celebrations of low-rent outlaw glamour, and, in attempting to answer it, Suede may have made their best album.

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 songwriting on This Is How Tomorrow Moves has a deeper confidence to it, allowing Laus to embrace the sweet, hooky melodies, which swell above her Nineties-indie-inspired sound.

The results are quirkily, unexpectedly appealing.

Though inspired by Grace Jones's new-wave disco torch-songs, the results are markedly dissimilar.

With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.

Quietly Blowing It feels like the first steps into bold new territory.

Sleater-Kinney are as potent now as they ever were – their music spiky and confrontational, melding the personal and political to striking effect.

The King of Limbs sounds like the bastard offspring of dubstep and Nico Muhly, the brilliant composer whose string and choral arrangements inhabit the open spaces between contemporary classical and art-rock.

Blake clearly revels in the invention and freedom of the exploit. “Fall Back” comes across as a very organic, found-sound kind of ambient concoction, as if someone has worked out how to recycle DJ software out of firewood and hemp.

It reveals a broader musical and emotional palette than they've exposed before.

Wonderfully unsettling.

On his most rewarding release since The Beta Band, Steve Mason grapples with politics both public and personal, but in a warm, engaging manner that draws the listener in.

Their latest EP, Lout, is only three songs long, but even in under 15 minutes, the short-player packs a wallop.

Butler performs miracles as producer, sprinkling flute like pollen over “An Angel’s Wing Brushed The Penny Slots”, and haunting “Nothing And Everything” with spectral backing vocals. Eitzel’s glass-half-empty attitude, however, grips the songs too tightly.

On her second album, Anna Calvi has lost much of the distinctive guitar work that helped make her debut so intriguing, but gained a deeper breadth of texture and structure to carry her emotional excursions.