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.

Sound & Color brims with the confident ambition of a band discovering and exploring exactly what they’re capable of.

You Signed Up For This is an effortless pop debut. As an already established singer, Peters had little to prove, but after a shimmering first album, she has laid any residual doubt to rest.

It’s an attractive, still beguiling attitude that courses through the album like ambrosia, offering a welcome, if unworldly, alternative to pop’s prevailing discourse of acquisitive antagonism and automated emotions.

Bouger Le Monde offers a celebration of life.

As with all of The 1975’s escapades, it ought to be a disaster. Instead, the showpiece triumphs as an unlikely paragon of social media-era pop. In a glass bottle, tamed and ridiculed, the inferno is strangely beautiful.

Right from the lolloping big-beat Goth motorik of “Vessels”, there’s a confident, low-life muscularity to the album, partly recorded with Sean Lennon at his upstate New York studio.

This follow-up to the original 2006 Rogue's Gallery sea-shanty compilation is slightly less salty but just as broad-ranging musically.

["Mr Tembo" is] a rare moment of extrovert cheer on an intimate, introspective album that takes tentative steps to reveal the soul behind the star.

The riffs are better, arrangements more textured, harmonies more interesting (there’s a great contribution from some female backing singers on “Oblivion”). Then there’s the surprising closer “All We Have is Now”, a poignant moment of calm after the storm. Royal Blood have finally found their own voice.

This album is unlikely to win him any new fans. But, for the many millions whose lives intersected with the original music, Reprise offers a graceful and nuanced opportunity to take stock.

This follow-up builds on the feisty freshness of Caitlin Rose's Own Side Now, her debut from 2010.

Understated, beautifully crafted and always emotionally involving, Wanderer shows an artist who has found strength in her convictions, and a new pace of life.

Swift has said she has no idea where she’s going from here. She doesn’t need to. But it’s a Christmas treat to hear her enjoy creating a whole magical, mystical world away from the spotlight. No reinvention required.

It may not reach the pinnacle of sex or sadness, but Fine Line is a fine album nonetheless.

The first Union Station album since 2004 is, as usual, something to treasure.

It has everything the Adele album lacks: real emotional insight, couched in genuinely soulful arrangements bristling with imagination.

Overall, this is a powerful statement from a laudably liberated artist. A record red in tooth and claw.

Arrows may also be trying for anyone tired of Welch/Goulding/Houghton orchestral overdrive. But it's worth fighting through that for the cacophonies of prettiness.

The results have a lingering, languid charm, which does, as he suggests, help to liberate the material from the rusting manacles of big-band and cabaret mannerisms.

Isolation represents the different facets of Uchis: the survivor, romantic and the rebel. But she still manages to keep herself a mystery through moody metaphors and Uchis--who grew up in between Colombia and Virginia--has been largely underrated the past few years, but Isolation might just finally give her the attention she deserves.

Tackling topics like technology addiction (“Disillusioned”) and the deaths of celebrities (“So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish”), the band forges a sobering look at the world with the maturity that comes from being on a long break. Despite the changes Eat The Elephant is a solid return for the supergroup.

Liberally spattered with sonic exclamation marks.

While the record could have been a few songs shorter, Expectations is expansive in that it isn’t one big radio hit after another, which proves Rexha is opting for longevity instead of manufactured pop.

It's a one-tone listen. But that shout-in-your-face directness is exactly what makes Ultra Mono so powerful. This is rock music that compels you to pay attention.

Weird, wonderful and whimsical, McCartney III finds the walrus on inspirational form.

It’s the album equivalent of someone who can finally handle their liquor. Someone fresh out of their 20s and contemplating life via moments of late-night melancholy, as opposed to worrying implosion.

His grievances on For All the Dogs seemed exclusively directed at women, causing some to wonder whether we’d ever see a return to his puppyish, boy-next-door type. Scary Hours 3 isn’t that, but it does even the playing field somewhat, not least by praising the women in his life and castigating the men.