Sprints are smarter, and louder, than ever before.

As you’d expect from Elbow’s frontman, the songs on this debut solo album rarely stray too far from the sleeve on which Guy Garvey wears his heart.

The Ship is a strange amalgam of Eno’s familiar ambient approach with poetry--the latter delivered in a sonorous basso profundothat resonates with a sort of looming, warning warmth.

Both artists sound far more liberated here than on each of their separate solo projects; it’s a collaboration many will want to continue.

It’s emo at its finest, and the record ends as emotionally as it begins. By the final track, How to Socialise & Make Friends shows that Camp Cope are driven by the band unapologetically being themselves

A wealth of arresting images sprinkled throughout another excellent album.

On Blunderbuss, he's stumbled into some nasty business. These are songs of ruthless temptresses and treacherous men, of uncontrollable desire and unbearable guilt.

Despite the diversity of themes and styles, the sense of a confident single voice comes through much louder and clearer than before in this new context.

By the time you reach the angelic post-rock “Rubicon”, you’ve given up looking for any cohesive thread in Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 and given in to its hazy momentum. Like the post-pandemic age, you never know what’s coming next.

It’s BUSY. The trick – as with a Pollock – is to stand back, soften the joints and enjoy the energy. That energy is delightfully consistent.

Though by no means as complete and satisfying as Demon Days or Plastic Beach, there are enough intriguing moments to make Humanz a worthy addition to Gorillaz’s cartoon universe.

The result is a series of huge-sounding, stadium-ready pop anthems of undeniable charm.

More Light is Primal Scream's best effort in some time.

A lovely long bask in Cyrus’s maturing talent.

With strong, clear-eyed subtext, overlaid by compositions that touch on every influence from TV on the Radio to Prince, Childish Gambino and Radiohead, Smiling With No Teeth is not so much an album as it is a memoir – a story both unique to Owusu and universal to anyone who has ever felt “othered”.

The New Abnormal – a spookily prophetic title – is stacked with rolling, streetwise grooves, boldly graffitied onto the chipped paintwork of NYC past.

Chromatic is an extravagant, sometimes even overblown album – but I suspect it will keep revealing itself over time. And by that point, she’ll be on to the next era.

The Purple Bird is reassuringly well-crafted and woodsy.

The band may have achieved Ivor Novello and Mercury Prize nominations, as well as their highest chart position, with 2016’s Curve of the Earth, but A Billion Heartbeats aims higher, and doesn’t miss.

The palette is tender, and the changes subtle: it’s like climbing a mountain, the same view altering by slight increments over the course of the ascent.

Blending Cline originals and recent covers with reimagined standards by the likes of Jerome Kern and Rodgers & Hart, all realised in beautifully enigmatic arrangements which wrap woodwind, horns, strings and tuned percussion around Cline’s guitar. Throughout, atmosphere is paramount.

This apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree: like her dad John, Lilly Hiatt has a gift for unpicking knotty lyrical themes in a personalised blend of countrified rock music.

Quite, quite lovely.

Ron Sexsmith writes with a similar emotional honesty to Mark Everett, but in a more classic style, akin to the moving simplicity of Tim Hardin.

Working with avant-rock guitarist James Sedwards, My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe and his old Sonic Youth colleague Steve Shelley, Thurston Moore has created one of the cornerstone works of his entire career with Rock N Roll Consciousness.

The result is a record as expansive as it is overwhelming.

She’s uniquely gifted--one’s only reservation concerns her inclination to pack everything into each track.

This collection of early 1960s Stones sessions vibrates with youthful revolutionary fervour--though sadly, there’s none of the witty, whimsical mini-interviews with which the Fabs’ performances were punctuated.